Jo Hsieh's Self-Portrait Series

By Chen, Kuang-Yi, Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at National Taiwan University of Arts

A lesser-known but unique series by Jo Hsieh is her Self-Portrait series. Of course, self-portraits are a common genre of portrait painting, but the role they play is uncommon. A self-portrait can be seen as a kind of self-presentation of the artist, and this genre of art emerged, strictly speaking, during the Renaissance. It first appeared in “拜參肖像畫”, with artists such as Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378–1455), who put a self-sculpture of himself in his famous The Gates of Paradise. Another example is Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510), who cleverly painted himself as one of the pilgrims in his 1475 historical painting Adoration of the Magi with his head turned to look directly at the viewers. And then there was Raphael Sanzio, who painted his young self and friends among the sages in The School of Athens. 

Artists cannot see themselves when painting a self-portrait. They must use an image reflected in a mirror. So in the mirror-image-filled Dutch paintings, Jan van Eyck (1390–1441) depicted his own figure inside a convex mirror in his highly praised painting The Arnolfini Wedding (1434). Artist self-portraits were commonly seen during the Renaissance, but in the 17th century, these self-portraits or self-sculptures became even more prevalent. They were often set in an art studio and used various accessories to flaunt the artist’s professional and social status, indicating some sense of self-esteem from elevated socioeconomic status. However, the first artist to systematize the creation of the self-portrait and produce them on a regular basis was Rembrandt (1606–1669). The forty and more portrait paintings he left behind shows the artist’s need to depict personal life, as well as an interest in the interplay between his outer appearance and inner psychological state. In addition to personal exploring self-consciousness, self-portrait paintings also served some social functions. They were often given gifts or commissioned by art museums and celebrity galleries. 

The techniques used for painting self-portraits are no different from those used for general portrait painting. The types of self-portraits can be divided into standing and sitting portraits, according to the poses presented; head and shoulders, bust, half-length, and full-length portraits, according to the length; or full-face and profile portraits, according to the direction of head. There is no specific type of self-portrait. The only self-portrait that caused controversy is Dürer’s front-facing self-portrait in 1500, as it seemed to imitate and follow the Christ (Yimitatio Christi) at a time when front-facing portraits were reserved for the figure of Jesus Christ. 

In the 19th century, the number of self-portraits exploded, in particular between the second half of the 19th century and the First World War. The 1985 travelling exhibition Self-Portraits in the Age of Photography in Stuttgart, Bern, and Lausanne clearly pointed out this phenomenon. From the period of proliferation of self-portraits, many scholars even suggested that avant-garde painters such as Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901), Edvard Munch (1863–1944), Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918), Egon Schiele (1890–1918), Max Beckmann (1884–1950), and Otto Dix (1891–1969) are far more interested in and produce more self-portraits than academic painters with superior socioeconomic status. However, some of the academic painters were also fond of self-portraits, such as Henri Lehmann (1814¬–1882), a student of Ingres (1780–1867). 

Gemanité is another concept used to describe the phenomenon. Germanic artists seem to come out on top in terms of the number of self-portraits. However, despite Schiele painting many self-portraits, Gustave Klimt (1862–1918) did not have any. The only thing we can be sure of is that self-portraits are related to the artist’s social status and mental health, and they are difficult to classify according to aesthetics or techniques. 

When photography was invented in 1839, many thought it would impact the demand for portrait painting. But Erika Billeter believed that photography was actually helping rather than hindering the prevalence of self-portraits, as it greatly increased the artist’s perception of their own appearance. 
The French term autoportrait was coined after the 1950s to replace the traditional appellation: portrait de l'artiste par lui même. The latter emphasizes “a portrait of the artist,” while the new term stresses “self” (auto). 

These terms point out that the biggest difference between self-portraiture and other portrait painting lies in the former’s reflexivity, as well as the mutual subjectivity between the artist and the object they depict. And the selfie fever among contemporary artists in the 1980s fully demonstrated such characteristics. In the creations of artists such as Cindy Sherman, Arnulf Rainer, Klaus Rinke, Giuseppe Penone, and Pierre Molinier, selfies have been used as both means and purpose.
 According to Jo Hsieh’s family, her earliest self-portrait was produced in 1992, but it wasn’t until September 15, 1993, that Hsieh re-embarked on her journey of painting self-portraits. She broke out of the model of creation she followed for other works and created one of her own, which became a unique part of her art. Given the uniqueness of these self-portraits, we can infer that they were produced and kept for herself. She had no intention of making them public, just like Rembrandt, who made a list of all his works except his self-portraits. 

The way Hsieh produced her self-portraits is also unusual: beginning in 1993, she started drawing one self-portrait a day on an A4 size sheet (30.4cm x 22.8cm), and she carried on with this project until July 19, 1999. But there were some gaps. In 1994, 7 portraits are missing from January, 1 in February, and 3 in May. A whole month was missing in 1996, and nearly 9 months are missing from 1998. Hsieh produced some self-portraits intermittently in 1999, and she stopped on July 19, 1999. According to the family's statistics, the total number of existing self-portraits stands at 1,619. The reason for the gaps is unknown. It  could be that the artist was interrupted for some reason, or they were simply lost.

Despite the vast amount of these works, they were all the same size and feature similar compositions — head portraits that focus on facial expressions. The importance of facial expressions in portraiture goes without saying. Philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas wrote a book called Le Visage de l'autre, and Gilles Deleuze proposed the hard-to-understand concept of “faciality.” Undoubtedly, the face has an attractive trait and is the soul of figure painting. We can even question whether the face is a part of the body, as the face itself seems to be enough for portraiture. 

No wonder Hsieh focused entirely on close-ups of the face and experimented with various techniques, styles, mediums, and expressions as freely as Rembrandt did. These self-portraits present an astonishing diversity in form that cover almost all possibilities in painting. Hsieh used a mixture of media — such as oil, watercolor, ink, and pencil — and tried all kinds of styles. In addition to regular practice of portraits and expressions, some of the works are related to her blue series (Self-Portrait 0073), some are extremely minimal (Self-Portrait 0092), some are severely distorted (Self-Portrait 1091), some are graffiti-like (Self-Portrait 0115), some are barely recognizable under the frenetic and dynamic brushstrokes of abstract expressionism (Self-Portrait 0145-0152), some are weird and funny (Self-Portrait 0166), some are nearly swamped by the waves of frantic and dynamic composition (Self-Portrait 0193-0204). Some are even created in comic style (Self-Portrait 0309), where the facial expressions contain all kinds of emotions, from happiness and anger to sorrow and joy. 

Although Hsieh paints only the face, her methods of expression are somewhat unusual. For example, Self-Portrait 0097 has the face covered, Self-Portrait 0134 has eyes but no face, Self-Portrait 1218 has a face but no features, and Self-portrait 0120 turns the face into symbols. After Self-Portrait 0623, Hsieh created a series of self-portrait sculptures, photographed them, and collaged the photos into a face-like pattern to create a pareidolia effect that challenges the viewers to spot faces in any patterns that look like a face. It’s worth noting that, in addition to faces, the presence of either one or both hands resting on the cheeks, holding the forehead, caressing the face, covering the face or mouth, propping up the chin, putting fingers in the mouth, or holding a cigarette, also played a significant role in many of the self-portraits. The addition of these suggestive gestures enables Hsieh’s faces to have emotions such as annoyance, pain, anxiety, surprise, frustration, and distrust that can connect with the viewers. 
Furthermore, the only other object allowed to appear in Hsieh’s self-portraits is her cat, which even replaced the artist’s face in several self-portraits, indicating that Hsieh seemed to identify with her pet, or that her pet represented her metaphorically.

It’s difficult to interpret this painting series, but I believe that the phenomenon of an artist producing a large number of self-portraits is related to solipsism, especially those that obviously combine the trend or tendency of symbolism and expressionism in the history of art. Self (soi) is undoubtedly an expression of consciousness, which is also the only verifiable existence relative to the external world. 
For example, the Belgian painter Fernand Khnopff (1858–1921) named his painting Lock My Door Upon Myself and set up an altar inscribed with the phrase "On n'a que soi" (One has only one's self) in his Brussels studio. However, for this type of artist, the core of their existence and constantly examined self is usually full of death anxiety. The most notable example is Autoportrait au mirroir (1908) by Léon Spilliaert (1881–1946), where the artist seems frightened by himself in the mirror and the clock represents the threat of time (death). 

Artists reveal the dark side of their psyches through their works, a phenomenon connected with mental illnesses such as hysteria and neurosis. The internal life may be the only way for an individual to explore the mystery, but the self, cut-off from the external world and freed from rational constraints and social norms, seems so strange, or exists only in dreams or the subconscious state. The self-exploration of Symbolist artists also opened the door to surrealism. 

Hsieh's interest in surrealism was mentioned several times by her and researchers. Despite some of her self-portraits being rather colorful, the majority (in terms of quantity) are still dark and full of anxiety. Hsieh’s family said that she was suffering from depression during her period of producing self-portraits. The most striking piece in Hsieh’s self-portrait series is Self-Portrait 0012, in which she drew a death-symbolizing skull on her back and painted her face like a skeleton to some extent, echoing Böcklin’s Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle (1872). Hsieh’s Self-portrait 0590 was marked with such a question: “I don't know? Is this my life? Or?" Hsieh's question about her own existence and the essence of life prompted her to draw herself daily, just like the French-born Polish artist Opalka, who devoted 46 years to creating his only art project One to Infinity. Opalka had been painting numbers on canvases to reflect the progression of time and took selfies at the same time with the exact same posture and facial expression until the end of his life. Similarly, Hsieh created self-portraits for a long period of time, and even though she stopped in 1999, what she aimed to produce is also the work of “Life.”