Postscript: Ex Machina

On 31 January, saw Ex Machina. The write up has shades of Blade Runner and The Matrix.

Ex Machina is an excellent sci-fi movie. Celeb wins a competition to spend a week with the leader of the IT company for which he works. Thrilled, he is flown by helicopter to spend a week courtesy of the CEO's house in the middle of nowhere. Nathan, the CEO, is a strange individual, programming artificial intelligence women. His latest model is Ava, on who he wants Caleb to perform the Turing test. In moments when Nathan is not listening (or so Caleb believes, incorrectly as it turns out) Ava implores him to help her escape. They hatch a plan that goes wrong as first Nathan is killed by Ava and another robot, his last words being "this is fucking unreal", then Caleb is deserted by Ava and left in the locked building as she catches the helicopter to meet reality.

It is a well crafted script, using the Turing test, and the concepts of Boudrillard and others. It plays too on sexism, as the robots are female, constructed by a male who has, it is ultimately realised, a depraved mind. Ex Machina is explored as Caleb is introduced as the metaphorical machine that is released into the comfortable set established by Nathan, bringing about the destruction of Nathan and his world.

Reflections on Understanding Visual Culture

This will be my penultimate post - one more for the Assignment 5 feedback, then UVC will be completed.

Overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed this course. It has been hard work, has taken many more hours than I anticipated; probably well over the 400 hours OCA use as a guide. It is not just the reading and research, but also the blog maintenance (Blogger behaves in strange ways occasionally; one post was lost completely and had to be retyped).

Outcomes

In the introductory post of exactly 11 months ago, I set out three anticipated outcomes:

1. The challenge of "understanding and criticising more general theories in a visual context". This has undeniably been met: the theories of Berger, Marx, Debord, Bourdieu, Benjamin, Freud and Lacan (to mention just a few) have been read. Interpreting them has been a significant challenge in some cases, particularly due to the arcane language used in places, as discussed below;
2. Broadening the range of academic skills to incorporate those seen as relevant to this course: knowledge and understanding; research skills; critical and evaluation skills; and communication. Tutor has judged Assignments 1,2 & 4 as excellent across all criteria, and Assignment 3 as very good across all. Subject to comments on A5, this objective has been met also (postscript 10 December 2014: A5 was marked as outstanding in all respects);
3.  The final outcome of relevance to future courses will be outstanding for some time. but it seems highly likely that the concepts and theories in UVC will be useful in future modules. Completion of UVC marks a significant milestone: I have now completed Level 1, having started in 2011 with The Art Of Photography, followed by People and Place, and now Understanding Visual Culture. I have decided to carry on to Level 2, commencing with Landscape  then, probably, Documentary. The decision has been made easier by the move in the new syllabus towards reading, challenging, interpreting, and communicating via the photographic medium: to 'articulate your individual perspective of place' in the words of the course summary for Landscape. Documentary encourages us to advance communication skills and apply semiotics to images. Specifically, one assignment in each module is a 2,000 word essay. This all seems to chime with the approach in UVC.

But studying UVC has provided much more than these three outcomes. It has broadened my knowledge generally; I freely admit to knowing little about Art now, but at least I know more than 11 months ago. Visiting the Tate Modern a few weeks ago, I felt more confidence in understanding what I was looking at. I have some idea of the theories of Freud, Lacan and others. And, most of all, I have enjoyed the 'voyage of discovery'. Unlike the photography modules, I started many of the sections of UVC with zero knowledge. Reading and interpreting the works in the course was challenging, but even better was researching material for the Assignments. 

Despite the cautionary note in Assignment 5, digital technology has been empowering in this course. All the notes, logs and assignments have been created and stored digitally and, more important, the internet has been the source for a large chunk of my Assignment material. As well as the work of Jeff Koons, Sherry Turkle, Sarah Lucas, Hannah Höch, to mention just a few well-known names, I came across and used sources and authors that were writing on matters and in ways that were not directly relevant to what one might term 'academic UVC', but struck me as very relevant to the subject-matter. There are several examples in Assignment 4 - the use of the story about the uniform of the Colombian women's cycle team and Brogan Driscoll's coverage of nude sports photography in the Huffington Post. A quote from a blog by Christy Stewart-Smith was used in Assignment 3.  

And in a wider sense, the course has provided opportunity to explore media that I otherwise would not have: Jay-Z and others performing rap videos in Gendering the Gaze, and watching the films: Vertigo, Simba, Battle of Algiers, The Matrix and Blade Runner. Battle of Algiers is an outstanding film; I have suggested it to many family and friends since watching, as it has an almost disconcerting relevance to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example. There were, too, some references that added humour with their irreverence: Craig Brown's My Turd , a satire of Tracey Emin's My Bed, is one I returned to several times when despairing of understanding what a particular article was driving at.

I learnt more too about using software, and annotation. An internet search revealed how to ensure that a link, when clicked, opens in a new page; important so I could incorporate links to annotated pdfs in the blog that open in a separate page. (The default position in Blogger, is such that viewers are required to use the back button to get back to the original post after clicking and reading a link). Thanks to my wife, Sue, who helped with MS Publisher, the software used for the annotations. Not studying Art, I had to assume how an annotation worked for an academic assignment; seems that the results are satisfactory as had no adverse comment from tutor. Sue also found a link on how to insert superscript for use in the text to refer to notes, used in Assignment 5, another of those little touches that provide a more professional result. Wordpress would probably be a better software than Blogger, but the latter has worked so far in the three OCA modules. 

It is what you make of it

To quote again from the  introductory post:

"Probably my main concern is not understanding the subject, finding the jargon arcane, and the arguments highfalutin. I have little time for academic study that is deliberately opaque so as to appear more difficult than it truly is. The challenge will be to avoid scorn or dismissiveness when reading an commenting on such material."

This was prescient, or at least the first part (I think I have avoided scorn and dismissiveness, albeit shown some exasperation at times). A lot of the reading - Lacan, Barthes, Derrida, Debord, Altthusser, Baudrillard - is really very difficult to interpret in the original for an unpractised reader (for anyone). My favourite phrase was by Althusser, referred to in Reflections on Chapter 1:

 "[The Absolute subject] subjects the subject to the Subject..." I was whimsically reminded of Major Major Major Major, a character from Joseph Heller's novel Catch 22. 

Latterly I have come to wonder why it seems necessary for these authors to be so oblique. Is it some sort of conspiracy or game with the audience, challenging them to struggle and make meaning of the writings? 

Firstly, let's bear in mind these thinkers come from a strong French tradition of philosophical thinking. Philosophy remains a strong influence in French education so it is hardly surprising that it has produced some leading academics on philosophy and related subjects. It can be argued that it is not the place of leading thinkers to be accessible; let those coming behind do the spade work of helping the rest of us understand the opaque prose. My second sentence in the above quote is therefore misguided - these are difficult concepts that do not lend themselves to direct and easily readable prose.

An internet search of 'Why are French philosophers so difficult to understand?' adduced nothing of assistance but refining the search came up with a review of a book by Bruce Fink (2004). The following extract from the reviewer's comments is instructive:

"Firstly, he [Fink] reads Lacan literally to the letter, arguing that if one is prepared to undertake a close reading of the text, he is quite often not obfuscatory, but actually says what he means.  Secondly, he reads Lacan to the letter in the sense that he attempts to understand him on his own terms as having an artistic, literary style of writing.  This argument is sustained by Lacan himself, who often seems to have more in common with literary criticism than clinical psychoanalysis.  Lacan criticizes analysts who over-use the word “analyze”, because they “no longer know what it means to interpret.”

Fink, the reviewer continues, contends that Lacan’s mode of writing is a part of his philosophy, and attempt to psychoanalyze psychoanalysis. One could perhaps say that Lacan looks at the reader looking at his work. He challenges the reader to interpret, rather than to analyze. 'Interpret' in the English language has connotations of of holism and of individuality, that one person's  'interpretation' will be different from another's; 'analyze' has connotations that the subject can meaningfully be disaggregated into smaller more understandable parts each of which will have an objective truth. Nusselder (2009, loc52), in a similar vein, quotes Lacan as saying that it is so much better when one does not understand his writings, since it gives a chance to explain them. Lacan, at least, it seems is challenging his reader to make sense of his prose. Shades too of Derrida, who reportedly tired of explaining "il n'ya pas de hors texte" in his later life.

So it is up to us to read, interpret and (by implication) set out what we consider the meaning is without fear of contradiction because each 'intepretation' is unique. It is perhaps not a giant leap of generalising faith to extrapolate this to all the writers above, because that is the way with arts and the social sciences: universal, unassailable, objective truth is hard to to find. This remains an incomplete explanation of the issue of the tortuous nature of the language - you can openly invite your reader to interpret your work in his or her own way without writing in riddles - but it goes some way to explaining it. 

Conclusion

2014 has been an eventful year personally: retiring from employment in August, and completing The South West Coast Path (followed in October by the much shorter Ridgeway.) It is an arresting thought that considerably more hours were spent on this course than walking 630 miles (albeit that many hours were spent planning and travelling to and from each stage of SWCP as well as the 283 actually walking). Both projects require structure: SWCP requires planning of accommodation, transport and itineraries; UVC requires reading, researching material, executing projects and assignments. Yet within the structure, there is room for improvise, to confront the unexpected, to explore something different than was planned. Some things exceed expectations, others disappoint. Open mindedness is an essential. Not only have SWCP and UVC been in their own ways intrinsically challenging and rewarding, they have also been cathartic.

References:

Fink, Bruce (2004) Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (ebook version)

Nusselder, André (2009) Interface Fantasy: A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology Kindle version. Amazon  

Reflections on Chapter 5

Reading and the projects

I recall wondering a few months ago when looking ahead what Chapter 5 was about. How does it relate to anything I have done so far in OCA? How, indeed, is a project entitled "Illusion only is sacred, truth profane" or "Ecclesiastes misquoted" relevant to visual culture? Never mind Schrödinger's cat.

The chapter title, The concept of reality, suggested that psychology would feature significantly, although the first project took us back a couple of stages to consider advertising again. Because of its openly manipulative raison d'être, advertising is a rich source of material for visual culture analysis. Preceding that was a reread of Debord's Separation Perfected; gained much from a second read. The project was interesting, especially finding adverts for products past and present; I incorporated the current Guinness More Than campaign.

Reading around the project, I was struck again by the contrast between academic visual culture approach to advertising, and articles from those within the advertising industry. No apologies for 'leading the reader' or 'manipulating the message' from them; this is what they do. It is straight to the point as to how you get the viewer to absorb your message, from subtleties like colour or positioning of objects within images, to the textual message. The photographer for the Barclays ad proudly announces on his website how he set up the image to promote the required lifestyle of the ad agency. It reminds one of the quote from Scott Clifford, the author of the Top 20 Sexiest Female Athletes of 2014 that was included in Assignment 4: after musing over the inherent sexist nature of what he does, Clifford concludes: "....I really need to get paid so enough with the words and such." Barthes would doubtless say this is symptomatic of accepting the existing as the natural order of things, and maybe it is, but Clifford does need to be paid, and the advertising industry does need clients.

The intriguingly entitled Ecclesiastes Misquoted required reading of Baudrillard and his misquote from the Old Testament. The article is absent from the third edition of the course reader, requiring some reading around (unusually could not find an online copy). Baudrillard seemed prescient; the idea that reality however described is basically a single construct was timed very well when digital technologies were beginning a period of rapid development, and formed the basis for the second part of the Assignment.

Alongside, Blade Runner and The Matrix were good viewing. I had not seen them in the cinema when released. The academic significance of both is perhaps overstated - like Scott Clifford, the film studios have to make money and there is more to be made from the entertainment value of violence and special effects of which there is plenty in both movies - but there is also congruence with the Baudrillard's view of reality. A few images from Dr. Who in other projects have been used in a similar vein in other projects.

I had difficulty finding Lacan's What is a Picture? as it is not included in third edition of the course reader. One advantage of having an open blog (>2,500 visitors to date) is that, after posting that I had given up looking for it, a helpful reader pointed out in a comment where I could find the article online. It is not an easy article to read (more of this in the final post) but I referred to the concept of the image screen in the Assignment.

Perhaps the most bizarre project of the whole course was to read about Schrödinger's cat, but does highlight (and provide some theoretical credence) that one observer can face two realities. The concept of dual reality is used a lot in sci-fi (I referred to Dr. Who but it is equally relevant to the two movies above). Was pleased to find six images demonstrating Lacanian gaze for the associated project as at first sight could not fathom what to do. As with many other projects, not quite sure whether I hit the right notes, but it was a challenging project, and, incidentally, emphasised what a brilliant work Holbein's The Ambassadors is.

I was not a Buffy fan. Viewing Restless scarcely convinced me that there is a gaping hole in my cultural existence as a result. The dreams lend themselves to some psychological analysis, notably Willow's discomfort at being exposed in front of class and in a situation where she does not know her lines for the imminent performance of a play, or where Xander confronts his dysfunctional father. I was rather less convinced about the significance of Giles' and Buffy's dreams, but then may have missed something. Joyce has the best line: in response to Willow's announcement that the spirit of the first slayer had tried to kill them all in their dreams, she offers hot chocolate, the panacea of all ills.

The Assignment

I aimed to present two rather different examples of how the virtual and real boundaries merge in contemporary culture: one with a relatively narrow focus, based on personal experience, and very much 'visual'; another, wider, example considering how current technological advances impact us socially and culturally.

Throughout the course, I have attempted to use photography as examples when discussing ideas and concepts as it is the course I am following. The course notes actually mention digital manipulation as an example one might use in the Assignment. Considering the virtual nature of photographic manipulation provided an opportunity to step back for moment and think about the why rather then the what and how. Howells and Negreiros discuss manipulation in their book Visual Culture, and this provided an opportunity to address their conclusion. 

 One of the paradoxes of this course has been the lack of contemporary material in what is a very dynamic and rapidly changing digital world. The impact of technology and in particular how the Law of Unintended Consequences raises its head in so many developments. Technological advances have seldom if ever come without some negative baggage attached; only this week, Sue Perkins considered the impact of damming the Mekong in the third episode of her BBC2 series. It is a classic case of the dilemma between the big economic argument - the generation of more electricity than Laos can use with the added benefit of using no fossil fuels - against the inevitable impact on the livelihood of millions downstream. Perkins ends confused, not least because she acknowledges her privileged Western view that risks being patronizing whatever she concludes.

Yet the iPhone has come on to the market as result of a masterpiece of design by Apple - and rapidly 'copied' (or at least as close as the lawyers can argue about to not being a copy) by a plethora of hardware that use the Android operating system - with very little consideration of the unintended consequences for society as a whole, and users individually. We are already on iPhone 6, only seven years after the 1st generation; just hours before writing this entry, Apple's market capitalization hit $700bn for the first time (it was already the world's largest company by market cap, not much more than a decade after it was in the doldrums). It is valued at more than Switzerland's GDP. 10m iPhone 6s were sold in the opening weekend; 71.5m are due to be shipped in Q4 2014, (source: Time business), an archetypal example of commodity fetishism. It is always tempting to assert a phenomenon as a 'revolution' in order to emphasises the importance of the point one makes but I think the smartphone (and of course, its partner, WiFi) mark at the very least a sea change in which the real and the virtual interact; the clue is in the point Sherry Turkle makes in the interview embedded in the Assignment: if you act out your virtual self seated at a computer, you get up at the end and resume 'normal life'. It is maybe not quite as clear cut as that, but the point is well made. The smartphone (with WiFi) is qualitatively different because of its transportability, and the consequence of us being 'always on' with respect to the virtual world. It is a hook.

The aim of this part of the assignment was to address this implications of this. I commenced by the now familiar routine of searching for relevant material. I read substantial part of Nusselder's Interface Fantasy: a Lacanian Cyborg Ontology (Kindle version), which helped put cyberspace into a psychological framework. Nusselder refers to the work of Sherry Turkle in several places; I searched for her work and read much of Alone Together. Her messages chimed exactly with what I was seeking; she has the ability to make serious points in a way that is comprehensible to the ordinary viewer/reader, as she demonstrates in the interview. She emphasises the superficiality of the cyber existence - "moments of more, lives of less" - with some examples. We vote online on many issues nowadays by checking a box but we tend not to go meetings to engage with others on these issues or to act on them.

Interestingly in the context of OCA, she talks about online learning. There are advantages - I could scarcely engage in a Photography course around a busy life without it, as a very proximate example - but, as she says, there are also disadvantages: the inability to engage with others doing the same course, or with tutors, on a regular face to face basis. For many, she argues, 'it is better than nothing', but, she emphasises, there is a risk that it becomes the delivery mechanism with inherent unintended consequences: "better than nothing becomes better than anything."

Space precluded detailed discussion on other technological advances. I would have liked to include more on artificial intelligence (AI) and the likely impact of robots on our lives. On the premise that virtual sex was very likely to be a feature of AI, I searched for articles/books on the subject and found Daniel Levy's interesting book. Turkle covers AI in her book, but Levy's slant was more positive, and added a specific dimension.

Lastly, my online research uncovered the I-Seeing project, a virtual reality experiment that was timed to perfection for this Assignment as it is ongoing as this is written. The project may be seen as the apotheosis of the merging of virtual and reality: the complete mirroring of another's existence.

Conclusion

This was a fascinating section. Probably the most significant learning outcome is a volte face regarding the psychological approach to the subject. Having previously shed doubt on the applicability of Freud in particular to visual culture, I reconsidered in previous blog entry. The reading of Lacan and, especially, the reading above re the Assignment, have led to a Damascean conversion. If we wish to understand the underlying processes to visual culture, then psychologists provide the theoretical framework, albeit that the authors considered in this course could explain their points more succinctly and clearly, as will be discussed in final post.

I have found all the Assignments to be the best part of each chapter, and this was no exception. Although the subject-matter is prescribed, there is a great deal of latitude to explore it in ways that are relevant to you. I had a rough idea of what to write about, but thoroughly enjoyed, and felt enriched by, reading the sources located for the essay.

Reflections on Chapter 4

I knew from early on that Looking and Subjectivity would take some time to complete. The study guide suggests 110 hours of study time to complete this chapter, compared to 60 hours for Part 1; 5 for Part 2; and 70 for Part 3. There are eight projects, most of which are multi layered and therefore time-consuming; I certainly have spent many more then 110 hours on this chapter, which has taken five monthe to complete, partly it has to be said because of other commitments.

It is alos a complex area, covering some of the more difficult areas of visual culture, notably Freud, race, and the viewing of women, the last of which was used as a basis for my Assignment.

The chapter starts by revisiting Freud, this time considering the Oedipus complex. Because I had published the associated blog entry before tutor had considered assignment 3, he took the opportunity in his summary to consider my three objections to Freud: that his thesis is unprovable; that it is sexist; and that it has limited relevance to visual culture.

Broadly, with caveats, tutor agrees with the first two, though points out that Freud was a 'man of his time with many of the prejudices of his age'. That is partly my point; society has moved on since Freud wrote, and visual culture should surely reflect current Zeitgeist. 

It is the third argument where I boldly stepped on a banger.  Tutor points out that Freud is relevant because he is relevant to so many artists, just as Christianity was to earlier artistic generations. The implication is that one needs to understand Freudian thesis in order to understand the messages of artists who are influenced by him. That has to be right. My error was to take Freud too literally. I find it difficult to believe that little boys really do worry overly about their penis once they notice that girls do not have one, but that is not the point. What we need to understand is the fascination that artists (even recent ones like Sarah Lucas) have with the repressed subconscious sexual drive that Freud brought to our attention, and the impact thereof in their work. Freud's impact is broader and perhaps less tangible than I had accounted for.

I do not entirely give up on the point of Freudian relevance, however. Whilst I understand the relevance it has to the work of artists, that is only a part and, critically, I would say a much reduced part nowadays, of visual culture.  The study of artistic works is the highbrow end of the visual culture market - the 'legitimate sphere' in Bourdieu's terms. What we have now (and explore more in next chapter) is an explosion of visual culture resulting from the development of the internet, and fast streaming and social media in particular. These developments have led to our world being almost entirely visual. YouTube seems to have been with us for ages, but actually only started in 2005. Now we have video mashups, vblogging and many other visually related online media that are visual and definitely part of our culture, albeit at the 'arbitrary sphere' end of the market, again borrowing from Bourdieu. And I am not sure how relevant Freudian analysis is to a study of these media; perhaps the subject needs to define its boundaries in light of the extension of the visual into areas that were previously off the visual culture radar as they were technologically not possible. This is an area I wish to explore in Assignment 5 where we look at the boundaries between reality and virtuality, very relevant to the growth of visual social media. It leads too to discussion of whether there is a difference between entertainment and art, and if so what it is, and what this means to visual culture in an increasingly visual world.

Lacan's mirror phase was one attempt to extend and update Freud. It is difficult reading, not least because of the contorted and opaque language that I have criticised before. One ends up having to read what others think of the thesis before reading it in order to have any hope of unpicking the meaning.

Panopticism by Foucault was a very interesting article, and blissfully clear prose. The associated project was valuable; I thought about writing further on the topic for the Assignment as the topic of what I shall 'business use' of visual culture is not covered elsewhere. By business use, I do not just mean surveillance cameras in car parks, on buildings etc, but also as used in forensic police work (some photographers have studied crime scene photography), medical images, and detailed scientific images to name a few.

Three projects then focussed on the visualisation of women, taking Laura Mulvey's essay  Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema and John Berger's Ways of Seeing as a base. The projects were challenging and varied; I particularly enjoyed the visual essay; as a photographer I find this genre interesting in light of my comment earlier that our world is becoming entirely visual. Henry Wessel's Incidents discussed in another post provides an example. The project to locate and discuss four female artists was interesting; I had not heard of Cecily Brown, Lisa Yuskavage, or Justine Kurland before rieviewing thier work, and selecting a piece from each to discuss inthe context of the course. Kurland in particular uses her gender to her advantage, portraying naked women in natural settings.

The last two projects contrasted black and white perspectives, based on writings by Fanon and Dyer. The Fact of Blackness by Fanon is a classic essay, but I thought rather dated. In White, Dyer attempts to set out a view of visual culture from a majority perspective, pointing out that the concentration of many writers on the issues of minorities may inadevertently make those issues seem larger than they actually are, that they are 'departures from the norm', while the norm carries on in a natural way. The implication is that the causes identified by the commentators may not be best served by being highlighted as departures from the norm.

The last project was very long, requiring both a review of media for a week noting and commenting on racial identity. I coupled this with a visit to Tate Modern, where I found two works to include. Watching the two films - Simba and Battle of Algiers - was an interesting and enjoyable project, exactly the sort of thing I would not have watched but for the course, but very glad to have done. Battle of Algiers  is an excellent movie, occupying 48th place on the Critics' Top 250 Films of the 2012 Sight & Sound poll.

For the assignment, I selected the subject of the portrayal of women as the topic covered in the chapter to be discussed. Having an interest in sport, I combined the two topics into a visualisation of women in sport. I researched the topic in some detail, adducing  number of relevant essays (pincipally by women) and combined these academic studies with supporting articles and examples from the internet. 

As with all the chapters, I found Chapter 4 introduced me to many concepts and artists that knew little or nothing about. This was a principle aim of the course. having more time available now, I aim to complete the shorter final chapter in time for the March 2015 assessment.

Visit to The Tate Modern 28 September

I took the opportunity of a trip to London to visit the Tate Modern, partly  to obtain some inspiration for the final project of Chapter 4 (achieved this with Nciholas Hlobo sculpture entitled Balindile and the painting Family Jules: NNN (no Naked Niggahs) by Barkley Hendricks, discussed in the blog entry Racial Identity in the Media) and partly to see what else grabbed my attention.

I concentrated on a few subjects, mostly relevant to this section of the course. These are some examples:

Christian Schad Agosta, the Pigeon-Chested Man, and Rasha, the Black Dove 1929

Schad's picture is an example of New Objectivity, an artistic movement that combined social criticism with a near-photographic realism. It is a direct poke at objectification,unusually in this case of male as well as female nude. The pair earned a living as a sideshow act in Berlin funfairs.

Henry Wessel Incidents

Henry Wessel, Incidents 021, from Incidents 2012

  Available from http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/display/henry-wessel-0

This is a series of images of social America, intended to be seen in a clockwise direction, though the reason for that is not understood.The above is an example of the 27 images: everyday America doing everyday things, a social documentary without words.

 Picasso The Reclining Nude

Pablo Picasso Nude Woman with Necklace 1968

Available from http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/display/reclining-nude

Unlike 19th century artists who painted their odalisques reclining submissively, Picasso added a sense of energy. Gone are the snowy white complexions and curves, replaced by angular contortions. No niceties in the genital area either, encapsulated by an exhalation of air.

Christian Schad Self-Portrait 1927

© Christian Schad Stiftung Aschaffenburg/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn and DACS, London 2014

Schad's self portrait is a provocative sign of male dominance of women. The man looks out of the picture with an expression that show impatience and aggression, questioning the viewer's right to be looking in. The narcissus connotes the male vanity; the freggio on the woman's face, inflicted on Neapolitan women by their lovers to make them unattractive to others, denotes male ownership. The woman has almost male facial features.