Over the last twenty years, Rudolf Stingel has both seduced and attempted to inform the viewer. Every piece he creates he names a painting, for the very reason that many of his works do not appear to be traditional paintings based on the classical definition. To Stingel, a true painting is not simply the result of moving a brush over a piece of canvas, however well, but the result of careful observation. Painting should be used as a means of observing reality in order to fashion a different reality. This elevated notion is both elusive and profoundly simple.
This essential theory of his work is perhaps never invoked as poignantly as it is in his series of photo-realist canvases. This series of self-portraits is an autobiographical study of both the artist and of painting. The reality that Stingel is both examining and revealing in the present piece is the role of the artist. There are no false pretenses in his work and he does not attempt to hide either his process or his intention. The title of this series, Untitled (After Sam), acknowledges both the photograph and the photographer, Sam Samore, upon which these paintings are based. In turn, the present work is the very first painting of this series upon which Stingel’s subsequent versions were based.
Stingel remade the black and white projection of the photograph into a mirror-imaged painting swathed in shades of black, ivory and charcoal. We must not forget that these works are very deliberate—he staged the scene for Sam and then meticulously recreated it on canvas. In doing so, Stingel questions both the authenticity of the painting and his role in creating it. This series is a psychological study of mortality and self doubt and raises far more questions than it can answer. Stingel’s attempt to demystify the art object and his purpose in creating it has only served to confound both himself and the viewer more.
In Untitled (After Sam), the first of these self-portraits, Stingel looks brooding and rather world-weary as he reclines on a hotel bed with eyes averted. His physical presence is undeniable, filling up the majority of the picture plane. The dramatic foreshortening of his body unequivocally brings to mind Andrea Mantegna’s The Lamentation over the Dead Christ. However, his emotional presence is a bit more subtle: as with any self-portrait he, the artist, is the subject of the painting yet Stingel also makes himself the object of this painting. Untitled (After Sam) is, in many ways, evocative of a memento mori—reflecting the artist in contemplation of his own mortality. The pensive and uncertain look on his face, evidenced by the crease in his forehead, shows that he has n ot yet answered his own questions.
Stingel’s paintings are, without a doubt, shockingly beautiful and the present work adds a new decidedly personal psychological element of examination to what he has offered before. Instead of trying to address or answer questions as he has sought to in the past, he reclines and rests, letting the questions and doubt speak for themselves.