About this artwork
Gordon uses doubles and opposites in his work to question ideas about good and evil, positive and negative, male and female. As a Scottish artist, he often uses his own image to explore the ‘dual’ identity of Scottish culture, as exemplified in Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. This work is a double self-portrait, and is the same photograph used in the artist’s 1996 work Monster, except here the image is reversed so that the distorted face is on the left instead of the right. Gordon has used sticky tape to distort his face, making him virtually unrecognisable from the sober-looking man on the right. The viewer is thus prompted to wonder if both states can co-exist in one body, and who came first, the monster or the artist?
Updated before 2020
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artist:Douglas Gordon (born 1966) Scottish
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title:Monster Reborn
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date created:1996/2002
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materials:Colour coupler print
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measurements:70.00 x 113.00 cm
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object type:
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credit line:Purchased with assistance from the Patrons of the National Galleries of Scotland, 2006
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accession number:GMA 4799
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gallery:
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subject:
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artwork photographed by:Antonia Reeve
Douglas Gordon
Douglas Gordon
Gordon was born in Glasgow and studied at Glasgow School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art, London. He has worked in video, photography, sound, text and other media and uses predominantly 'found' material. Gordon is fascinated by our binary nature and our tendency to split things into...