I snapped this selfie to check the lighting from this direction at this time of day, and I both laughed at how that mask and I happened to echo each other here and found myself snagged in the rush of a memory-whirlpool. The image pulled me towards something, someone, some other image . . . .
I had recently picked up Christopher Wright's Rembrandt: Self Portraits as a consequence of another memory-snag, though I have only flipped through some of the reproductions, haven't quite read the text itself. I had obtained Wright's book because of my recently recalling, once again, how Prof. Andrew Griffin, one of my major influences at Berkeley, used to teach a unit on Rembrandt's self-portraits in his autobiography/biography seminar, and while I did not take that specific class from Prof. Griffin, he generously shared in office-time much about the subject. (That the Dutch master had painted himself so often, so many times, over the course of his life was a compelling conceit to me, particularly caught as I was between Joyce's young Stephen Dedalus and my sense of the older Shakespeare-As-Lear, As-Prospero.) I was drawn to these conversations by the professor's compelling and humorous delivery, but also by my own compulsions in the areas of self-representation and Rembrandt himself. That Pocket Library of Great Art edition of Rembrandt pictured above was a book that just happened to be stuffed into the family bookshelves in the back bedroom I shared with my brothers, a book that I happened to discover in my childhood, far before I could understand the words or the images beyond the obvious, a book that I have puzzled over and studied from my earliest years. I have carried that book from the family home to my first apartment and to every subsequent dwelling, though I can't say that I've actually looked into or, perhaps, even at this pocket volume for years and years now until today.
Still, once I looked away from my mask laughing in the background and thought, "What image am I aping (unconsciously) here?", well, "Rembrandt -- the cover portait!" was the immediate answer. (I was then compelled to root out that specific volume, though that took two days.) Now, reading this and comparing (contrasting?) the two images may not bring such an answer to your mind. The link may be more emotional than anything else. As a maker, I bow with the utmost respect from a station far far below the great Dutchman. And, as a child, I was probably fascinated by the age, the agedness, in that cover shot, by the old, old man with the funny hat. As an adult, Rembrandt seems steady, steadfast and sober, weighing himself in the scales of life, not entirely happy with the balance at hand; the artist doesn't seem near as old, either, as he must have seemed in my relative infancy. But my peers will understand that shiftiness of perspective, I think. (There's a key scene in John Fowles' Daniel Martin in front of one of Rembrandt's portraits, perhaps this one, and that novel was quite formative as well. Another echo, another mirror.) Even as a boy and a young man, I'll bet Rembrandt's gaze held me, for it certainly holds my own gaze even now. Rembrandt's mirror, each of us looking at, looking into, this portrait, don't you think?
Maybe so; maybe no. Hats, brows, noses, lines, chins, cheeks: I see likenesses, though differences too. I could have dressed the part, certainly, to heighten the linkages, but that's an accidental shot, more or less. Anyway, the way I'd like to see it, the Dutchman's looking back at me, back at us; and, I'm looking at him, at you.
Facetious echoes, as I've announced above.
The mirror, I'm forgetting: the mirror and the making. Rembrandt is gazing into that mirror, that reflective canvas, into himself, weighing and balancing; and, therefore, he's a fine model for yet another painting; therefore, a fine model for himself and for us.
