Torso, Front
As he aged, Coplans catalogued his flesh in wry detail. A cogent art critic, curator, museum director, and editor of the influential journal Artforum, Coplans espoused the conceptual art of his peers, but his own work was insistently corporeal. Inspired by the work of Hans Bellmer, Coplans’s poses referenced the history of art but were disconcertingly fragmented. With the immediacy of skin-to-skin contact, the series urges meditation on a phase of bodily experience often ignored by cultures obsessed with youth. Self Portrait is a poignant reminder that the nude body is at once timeless yet ephemeral.
Artwork Details
- Title: Torso, Front
- Artist: John Coplans (American (born England), London 1920–2003 New York)
- Date: 1984
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: 44.4 x 31.3 cm. (17 1/2 x 12 5/16 in.)
- Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Gift of the artist, 1988
- Object Number: 1988.1131
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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