Torso, Front

John Coplans

1984 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

As he aged, Coplans catalogued his flesh in wry detail. A cogent art critic, curator, museum director, and editor of the influential journal Artforum, Coplans espoused the conceptual art of his peers, but his own work was insistently corporeal. Inspired by the work of Hans Bellmer, Coplans’s poses referenced the history of art but were disconcertingly fragmented. With the immediacy of skin-to-skin contact, the series urges meditation on a phase of bodily experience often ignored by cultures obsessed with youth. Self Portrait is a poignant reminder that the nude body is at once timeless yet ephemeral.

Artist

John Coplans

Date

1984

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gift of the artist, 1988