‘Self-Portrait, You + Me’ is an installation by Douglas Gordon comprising a series of mixed-media prints, featuring celebrities such as Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor. In most of the portraits, the eyes, noses or mouths have been charred and removed from the faces, while in some, the whole face is eliminated. A mirrored surface is placed beneath each of the remaining defaced portraits. The prints are framed in black, densely hung all over the walls of a blacked-out exhibition room in a salon-style setting. In this set up, the works reflect each other with their mirrored surfaces.
The genesis of the works dates back to the period from 1991 to 1992. At this time, the artist had several posters of celebrities in his flat, and when he found their stares discomforting, he ripped out their eyes. This sparked the creation of ‘Self-Portrait, You + Me’. In making this series, Gordon referenced the practice of American Pop artist, Andy Warhol (1928–1987). He re-created Warhol’s workshop, Silver Factory in his studio by festooning the walls and floor with aluminum foil. Afterwards, he placed the ready-made posters of celebrities – the icons adopted by the Factory – on the floor, poured egg white and sugar on the face of each of them and burnt them with a candle and blowtorch as if in a voodoo ritual. The disfigured portraits that make up ‘Self-Portrait, You + Me’ resulted. All the prints in the series are unique.
Through this work, Gordon demonstrates both an affinity with and a challenge to Warhol’s Pop Art practice of the 1960s. ‘Self-Portrait, You + Me’ adopts the celebrity icons that Warhol admired and used in his work, and was made in a ritualistic manner in a studio that had echoes of Warhol’s. Through this process, Gordon symbolically connected with and incarnated the spirit of the Pop artist. However, the violent destruction of the photographic prints suggests a critical attitude towards Warhol’s mythologized icons. This forces viewers to reflect upon the emptiness of the worship of contemporary celebrities, rather than elevating and deifying them as Warhol did. As art critic and curator, Francis Mckee has noted, ‘earlier exhibitions of the Self-Portraits of ‘You + Me’ explored the ambiguous relationship we now have with the icons of celebrity, adoring and despising them, elevating and crucifying them in the media’ (Mckee 2008, p.11). Gordon also explored these themes in another series, ‘100 Blind Stars’ 2002/2003, in which the artist meticulously cut the eyes from photographic portraits of film stars. Both of the works provide a critique on celebrity visualization with a similar methodology.
In referencing Warhol, the series demonstrates Gordon’s characteristic practice of creating works based upon the work of others in the arts. Curator Mark Francis has remarked: ‘Douglas Gordon has made many works that extend, double, mirror, or shadow the work of another artist or filmmaker. He has transcended the anxiety of influence by which artists both continue and re-create their own tradition in an Oedipal struggle with their forebears’ (Francis 2008, p.11). This approach can also be found in Gordon’s seminal video work ‘24 Hour Psycho', 1993. In the work, Gordon slows down the classic film ‘Psycho’ (1960) by Alfred Hitchcock from 109 minutes to 24 hours, deconstructing the closed narrative of film. Through this approach, Gordon creates a posthumous collaboration between himself and precedent artists and filmmakers.
Further reading
Francis Mckee, ‘Possessions’ in Douglas Gordon: self-portrait of you + me, after the factory, exhibition catalogue, Gagosian Gallery, New York 2008, pp.7–10.
Mark Francis, ‘Repeat After Me’ in Douglas Gordon: self-portrait of you + me, after the factory, exhibition catalogue, Gagosian Gallery, New York 2008, pp.11–12.
Interview by Lynne Cooke in Douglas Gordon: self-portrait of you + me, after the factory, exhibition catalogue, Gagosian Gallery, New York 2008, pp.13–22.
Grace, Lam Pui Shan
The University of Edinburgh
December 2016
