Self Portrait in Mirror #1

In 1969, Roy Lichtenstein completed Mirror #1, the first of more than fifty mirror paintings the artist went on to paint over the next four years, of all of Lichtenstein’s mirror paintings, it is perhaps the most iconic. The mirror is both a metaphor for painting (art), and its bitter rival in the contest to “add to the stock of available reality”. It is therefore of little surprise that Lichtenstein’s choice of subject-matter offered him countless precedents, from the Arnolfini Portrait to Las Meninas to A Bar at the Folies-Bergere, to aspire and allude to. In this artist book, Jonathan Horowitz present a series of paintings inspired by Mirror #1. Each painting is made by a different individual, including Horowitz himself, and painted by eye from a small printout of the original. Only brushes and paint, and no additional mechanical apparatus, were used. While the dots in Lichtenstein are a sign of the absence of hand and also a sign of massive reproduction, the dots in the Horowitz paintings trace the body’s presence, and the fact of their hand-made-ness. Horowitz stresses the tactile marks that make up the painting, just as Lichtenstein does. But the prize for each artist is different. Every mark within the Horowitz declares itself as human and subjective, a living and mortal self. Each mark bears the imprint of the individual who made it. Horowitz revives the first viewer, the maker, and makes them, though not literally visible, present and felt.