Portrait of the Artist as a Strange Man

Edouard Levè pulled no punches when titling his books: when you open one, you know what you’re getting into. When you pick up Suicide, you know you’re reading a book about suicide. Conversely, with Autoportrait you can expect just that. Although in English “autoportrait” would have been “self-portrait,” translator Stein decided to maintain the original for its resonances; the auto- prefix — from the Greek autos for self  — comes with the connotation of self-reflexivity (e.g. auto-mobile, auto-focus, even auto-biography), and it underscores the entire work. Self-portraiture is necessarily self-reflexive and reflective, but it can’t exist in a vacuum; it’s beholden to context. Looking at a given artist’s self-portraits over time, it’s impossible to focus on the changing image of a self, without wondering about the forces that changed that person. Vincent Van Gogh comes to mind, before and after cutting off his ear.