EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Why Artists Execute Themselves

Time and again we have shown how an execution in art depicts an artist executing his picture, even when the genders are switched. Judith executes Holofernes' head, David Goliath's head. That is, in part, why so many artists have portrayed themselves as David. In Italian there is even a pun on the word for a masterpiece, capolavoro, which literally means head-work. Decapitation-in-art and painting-in-art, as Michael Fried has noted, are virtually synonomous.¹

Fried is puzzled, though, by a painting of David by Hendrick ter Brugghen (above) in which the artist’s self-portrait adorns the figure of both David and Goliath. David holds his own "self-portrait" by the hair which, according to Fried, makes little sense.² Despite his long-term insights into the allegory of painting, Fried does not know – and cannot even imagine – that every painter paints himself. Once the concept is recognized as part of art's basic paradigm, the meaning of this image is fairly obvious, a lack of mystery that makes ter Brugghen – like Salvador Dali - a somewhat less interesting artist to follow.

1. Michael Fried, The Moment of Caravaggio (Princeton University Press) pp.236-8

2. ibid., pp.238-9