selfportrait iconoclasm by stabbing

Three stages of a self-portrait stabbed with an awl.
image
picture
statue
figure
representation
portrait
icon
metaphor
diagram
simulacrum
amulet
charm
talisman
fetish
voodoo
potlatch
initiation

selfportrait iconoclasm by sandpapering out

Another three stages of a self-portrait photo which is destructed with rough grained sandpaper. It is more or less precise executed within the contour of the head. Therefore the background in the photo stays visible as a room. Do we call a photograph figurative? There are photos which are abstract. Figurative images are constructed in stone or with pencil or paint. A photo isn't a construction, often a photo isn't a construction but something captured by chance. Even though a lot of styled photo-models are posing during photo shoots in what is construction of images on a high level, those photos we don't call figurative photography.
Does it matter, figurative or abstract images? Yes, it matters. Abstraction to figuration is superior, abstraction thinks. God had no stature, shape, form, figure nor posture when he spoke to Moses on the mountain Horeb, therefore figurative images are inferior. Plato posits that reality is an idea of the higher unknown. So a figurative image is an idea of an idea and therefore unnecessary and superfluous. For Plato and Yahweh it isn't allowed to play and entertain with figurative images because it distracts from the world of ideas and will lead to idolatry. Figuration is inferior to abstraction, abstraction is superior to figuration.
Still we feel this distinction, in art we work with this distinction.
Malevitsj, Mondrian, Newman and Reinhardt are superior to Magritte, Picasso, Dali and Duchamp.
Magritte, Picasso, Dali and Duchamp are inferior to Malevitsj, Mondrian, Newman and Reinhardt.
Magritte, Picasso, Dali and Duchamp is entertainment for the bored "looking for stories" junkies.
Malevitsj, Mondrian, Newman and Reinhardt is pleasure and delight for the spoiled "longing for emptiness" addicts.

selfportrait iconoclasm by scratching out

Scratching out the self-portrait with a cutter through scratching the brilliant top layer of the photographic paper.

selfportrait iconoclasm by blacking out

To recapitulate what was already executed in November last year. From the photos of different stages of the five iconoclastic actions on self-portraits here are three photos of blacking out the first self portrait. A residue of the portrait remains, the portrait became masked. It isn't Voodoo, nor exorcism. It is research, image research.

new office

The two residents at the Rietveld Academie, Ann Meskens and Henri Jacobs, got a new office in the academy. It isn't big news, but we feel comfortable in our new "kitchen" where we can drink our thee and coffee and eat madeleines.
On Thursday March 3 a presentation of my research into Idolatry and Iconoclasm was given in the Researchgroup Art and Public Space at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.
It is my intention to write a recapitulation of this lecture for this blog and to post it as soon as possible.