The Self Portraits of Tony Bevan

Tony Bevan - Self-Portrait (PC9211), 1992
powdered pigment and acrylic on canvas

The Self Portrait of Tony Bevan shows all possible scars. It is like the artist carries all wounds of the world. These wounds are at once independent of the body (as they would have an existence of their own), masters of the body (strictly controlling its degrees of liberty) and pure mental representations, pure products of a schizophrenic imagination. This way, external and internal, the universes of the outside world and of the inside mind, become a whole and schizophrenia is no more.

In the words of art historian Klaus Ottmann, the self portraits of Tony Bevan possess a first order of presentness and intensity that transcends the schizophrenic split of the external world of objects and the internal world of the mind.

You should look also at this other work of Bevan, entitled Head. As I took a shot from the image in the catalog of the exhibition, it is not particularly fidel to the original. It is actually a sphere, delimiting the inner of the head from the exterior world. Whom belong all these networks of nervous ramifications, drops of blood, signs of injuries? To the exterior world or to the inner? The answer cannot be otherwise than ambiguous: are the injuries and pains assumed by the artist real or just schizophrenically imaginary? The canvas would suggest that in fact it does not matter that much.

Tony Bevan - Head, 2005
acrylic and charcoal on canvas

(Paint Made Flesh)