Self Portrait 1995
1995
Mixed media on canvas
20" x 26"
50.8cm x 66cm
Status & ownership
Currently in artist's studio, Berlin
About the work
Fisheye self-portrait, oil on canvas, painted on the artist's 21st birthday from a hill in the SF backyard, with San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge (visible as a thin red structure) across the water. The last of three birthday self-portraits (1993-1995) made during a brief figure-painting period before the artist's attention turned outward toward travel and cityscape/landscape work. Painted from a mirror in the artist's SF backyard on his 21st birthday. A fisheye distortion places the artist's head and shoulders looming in the foreground while an invented landscape -- an imagined road, a compressed and geographically inaccurate arrangement of two bodies of water -- curves away below toward San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. The viewer occupies an elevated, near-satellite position looking down at the artist, who looks up and out of the canvas with direct, mirror-sourced eye contact. The artist was working toward a realistic (not idealized) likeness and felt he had not yet reached the skill level he was striving for; the face is the most resolved passage in the painting, with the landscape carrying some of the ambition he felt less equipped to bring to the figure itself. Influence drawn from Salvador Dali's late distorted Christ/Gala paintings (formal interest in the body-as-distortion, not devotional), part of the artist's earlier, active-influence phase (pre-dating the later recognition-not-influence pattern), alongside an active, contemporaneous fascination with Henri Rousseau's paintings (The Dream especially) -- appreciated purely on visual terms at the time; the biographical resonance (self-taught, inventing worlds from imagination, e.g. Rousseau's jungles he never saw) was only recognized years later. Painted at the tail end of a purely self-taught, autodidact period -- no formal training, self-directed study of philosophy, literature, and art history, materials picked up and used without instruction. This session identified the painting as a possible earliest, unrecognized seed of the vantage-migration throughline (DCS -> Megacities -> Deutsche Stadt's orbital overview -> Skate City's ground-level return): uniquely among the works in that arc, this painting holds an intimate, close-range human face and an elevated, satellite-like viewing position within a single frame -- a synthesis the later series took three decades and multiple works to arrive at separately. The artist connects this to a broader realization: not-yet-knowing formal rules and constraints was itself what made the synthesis possible ('making things possible because it wasn't taught'). The painting also sits alongside the (uncatalogued) SFMOMA guerrilla installation as one of two works from the same hinge-point in the practice that the artist has long felt, in hindsight, as premonitions -- this one anticipating the vantage arc, the SFMOMA piece anticipating his relationship to the art world and its institutions.
Intent
Attempt a realistic, unidealized self-likeness using a fisheye lens/composition the artist had been testing in a couple of other paintings around the same time, partly inspired by Dali's late distorted-body Christ paintings -- pursued as a formal problem (does the distortion work, can it be pulled off) rather than for any devotional or symbolic reason.
Making
Painted from a mirror in the SF backyard on the artist's 21st birthday, near the end of a self-taught (autodidact) period with no formal art training -- self-directed study of philosophy, literature, and art history preceded picking up oil paint and canvas without instruction in stretching, gessoing, or technique. The artist was consciously working toward a realistic, unidealized likeness (not 'classical' in the academic sense) and felt his skill had not yet caught up to that ambition, which is part of why the surrounding landscape reads as more confidently handled than the figure. Third and final work in a birthday self-portrait ritual (1993-1995) that stopped afterward -- not from discomfort with the face, but because attention turned outward: the SFMOMA guerrilla installation followed shortly after, then travel, then a growing pull toward cityscape and landscape as primary subjects. The artist has since expressed regret at not continuing the ritual for every birthday since.
Context of making
A fisheye self-portrait painted on the artist's 21st birthday from the SF backyard, using a mirror. The composition places the viewer in an elevated, satellite-like position looking down at the artist, who is looking up. On confirmation the artist revised his own long-held reading of the piece mid-session: previously understood as 'about to leave' San Francisco via an imagined road, it shifted in this session to 'ascent and return' -- a road up to a vantage point with the road home still intact, not a departure.
In the practice
Painted near the end of a small, self-contained figure-painting cluster (Space Time, The Stage, Corner, Self Portraits 1993-1995) that preceded the artist's turn toward cityscape and landscape work. Last of three birthday self-portraits; followed shortly after by the uncatalogued 1996 SFMOMA guerrilla installation, then a period of travel.
Process
Self-taught technique throughout -- no formal instruction in canvas preparation or painting method. Face painted with more deliberate control/realism; landscape and figure/ground transitions handled more loosely, reflecting a documented skill-confidence gap between the two passages at the time.
Source material
Mirror (self-observation, source of the direct, straight-on eye contact in the final work); memory/imagination for the landscape and water geography (not observed directly from the actual vantage point).
Salvador Dali (late distorted Christ/Gala paintings) — Active, direct influence at the time -- artist owned Dali books and was specifically drawn to the late-career distorted-body Christ works, appreciated as a formal problem of distortion rather than religious content. Part of an earlier, active-influence phase in the artist's development, preceding the later recognition-not-influence pattern documented elsewhere in the archive (Goethe, Durer, Constable/Turner, Karel Appel/COBRA). Henri Rousseau (Le Reve / The Dream and related works) — Active fascination with Rousseau's paintings at the time, appreciated purely on visual terms. The biographical parallel -- a self-taught artist inventing imagined worlds (Rousseau's jungles he never saw; this artist's invented SF coastline geography) -- was not recognized until years later.
Salvador Dali (late distorted Christ/Gala paintings) · Salvador Dali (late distorted Christ/Gala paintings)
Active, direct influence at the time -- artist owned Dali books and was specifically drawn to the late-career distorted-body Christ works, appreciated as a formal problem of distortion rather than religious content. Part of an earlier, active-influence phase in the artist's development, preceding the later recognition-not-influence pattern documented elsewhere in the archive (Goethe, Durer, Constable/Turner, Karel Appel/COBRA).
Henri Rousseau (Le Reve / The Dream and related works) · Henri Rousseau (Le Reve / The Dream and related works)
Active fascination with Rousseau's paintings at the time, appreciated purely on visual terms. The biographical parallel -- a self-taught artist inventing imagined worlds (Rousseau's jungles he never saw; this artist's invented SF coastline geography) -- was not recognized until years later.
Visual Similarity
Works with similar visual structure, found by comparing image embeddings across the archive.
Related Patterns
Throughlines and bio events that include this work — the same connections shown on those pages, linked back here.
Vision Analysis
Extreme fisheye distortion places the artist's head and shoulders in dramatic close foreground, tilted upward toward the viewer, while a wide-angle sweep of green hillside, a winding road, and two bodies of water curves away below. San Francisco appears as a distant cluster of buildings across the water with a thin red structure suggesting the Golden Gate Bridge. A diagonal dirt/paved road cuts in from the bottom-left corner. The figure wears a near-black shirt that reads as a near-void against the surrounding saturated green and blue. The face is comparatively tightly modeled and resolved; the landscape, while vivid, shows flatter, less atmospheric modeling in places. Direct, straight-on eye contact with the viewer. Overall palette is saturated blue-greens and blues with warm flesh tones concentrated in the face.
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