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Schad, Self-Portrait
Christian Schad, Self-Portrait, 1927, oil on wood, 29 x 24-3/8 inches, 76 x 62 cm (Tate Modern, London) Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
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- Is this the same woman as in the Otto Dix painting "Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden" from the year before?(10 votes)
- I don't understand why the man is wearing a veil shirt. Is it supposed to signify that you can see right through him?(7 votes)
- It's true that you can see right through him, but it's more than that. The two presumably had sex, but even in sex, he wears a see through clothing. In sex, he wears some type of clothing. I see it almost as a type of condom. A condom is also see through. This "body condom" shows like the speakers said, a sense of a cold world. This is worse than just a regular condom that would go on the penis as this sheathes the whole body. In actuality, the transparency of his clothing juxtapose how the it is that very transparency that hides him from truly being intimate with the woman. I believe that the veil behind them exposes them to the outside world for all to see and them two in bed would seem to portray love as they are having sex, but it is that transparency that once again hides their true relationship.(4 votes)
- I don't see the "coldness" the speakers refer to. It looks like the annoyance of a couple interrupted. He's pretty angry at the interloper and she's exasperated. Did Schad leave notes or interviews that support the perception voiced by the narrators?(5 votes)
- What does the scar i her face mean. I didn't even notice it until they zoomed in.(3 votes)
- I can only relate the scar to the distortion of the human bodies after WWI which we saw in the photographs by Sanders. Schad may have represented this condition symbolicly by referenceing it with a scar that cannot be healed. The unhealed condition of the German people for loosing the war and the original condition of the population would never be returned to its original condition - mentally or physically. For me that is why this painting is so very brutal as he torturously looks straight at the viewers gaze with this new reality of hardened people who will never be able to love again.(3 votes)
- At0:11, what makes this a "tough painting"?(3 votes)
- it is unpleasant to look at, and difficult to figure out.(1 vote)
- Why is the man shirt in this way? Also why does he have a shirt on but not the female?(2 votes)
- perhaps he wants to protect himself from her. perhaps the artist wants to show that he can paint transparency.(2 votes)
- Why is there a flower in background standing in a unrealistic angle ? Does it mean something or is it just there ?(2 votes)
- I noticed a black ribbon on her wrist, like a mourning ribbon that people used to wear after loosing someone. Perhaps, it is connected to the scar and the whole intensity of the painting.(2 votes)
Video transcript
(lively piano music) Voiceover: We're in the Tate Modern, and we're looking at Christian
Schad's "Self-Portrait." It's a painting from 1927. It's a tough painting. Voiceover: It is. It shows two figures who really take up the entire space of the canvas, with the male figure in
front looking very menacing, and a passive, very sexual,
female nude behind him. Voiceover: He's the artist,
looking almost directly at us. There is a very hard edge. The figures are on a bed together, and yet they feel worlds apart. Voiceover: She has none
of the erotic sensuality that one normally associates
with a female nude. She's very sexual, but
she looks very modern. She's not an idealized Venus. She's got makeup on. She's got a 1920s hairdo, and
a ribbon around her wrist. She very much looks of the city, but then she's got this
terrible scar on her face, and the way that the male figure in front, who looks directly at us, as you said, and looks kind of menacing, one wonders what kind
of harm he's inflicted on this female figure behind him. Voiceover: Or perhaps metaphorically, what kind of harm he inflicts
through his painting, perhaps in his life more directly. Now, let's just replace these figures. They're both on a bed, very,
very close to the foreground. They're really immediate to us. But then, we see a very, very
thin veil behind these figures. Voiceover: Separating them from the city. Voiceover: Right,
[unintelligible] the city. We can just see the last
traces of light fade away. Voiceover: He's wearing a shirt
that's very much like a veil, that's almost completely transparent. Voiceover: Yeah, that's
a pretty wild outfit for him to be wearing. Notice that the shirt continues down past the roll of his
waist, down to his hips. Voiceover: And casts a
greenish tonality on his flesh. Voiceover: For all the sexuality here, there's really no passion. Voiceover: There's no warmth at all. Something in this painting that speaks to a kind of ugliness, and
difficulty, and harshness of sexuality of the body, of ... and a harshness human relations. Voiceover: It's interesting
to put this, then, in historical context. Germany had been a fairly
agrarian society for a long time. In the years that preceded this, in the several decades that preceded this, had caught up to much of the West in terms of industrialization, in terms of the city becoming
central to German life, and the sexuality and the
freedom that comes with- Voiceover: The sexual
freedom of the city. With the anonymity of the city. You have an artist that
seems to be directly dealling with that new reality. Voiceover: As many German
artists had before him. When we think about
Kirchner's street scenes. Voiceover: Absolutely, but
whereas Kirchner was dealing with Voiceover: Kind of distortion. Voiceover: Or a kind
of Dadaist distortion. Here, you have a return
to a focused, clarified, intense rendering, where you can't
even hide behind abstratction. It's absolutely there. Voiceover: That's exactly,
I think, what these artists were looking for, the
[unintelligible] artist, this new objectivity, new
realism rejecting the distortions used by expressionist artists before them who used those kinds of distortions to represent emotional states. Here saying, "No, we're
not going to do that. "We're going to represent
this cold reality." (lively piano music)