Photograph, black and white, on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Tate American Fund
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/john-coplans-2353" aria-label="More by John Coplans" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">John Coplans</a>
SelfPortrait Back with Arms Above
Presented by the American Fund for the Tate Gallery, courtesy of Marsha Plotnitsky 2000
actions: postures and motions
adults
arts and entertainment
back
birth to death
body
Coplans, John
emotions, concepts and ideas
fist / fists clenched
formal qualities
hand
male
man
named individuals
nudes
old age
people
photographer
photographic
portraits
self-portraits
society
torso
work and occupations
<p>Coplans was one of the most influential art critics in America in the 1960s and 1970s, championing Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Donald Judd. In 1971 he was appointed editor of the influential magazine, Artforum and in 1978 he became director of the Akron Art Museum in Ohio.</p><p>In the mid 1960s Coplans began taking photographs of his own ageing naked body. The photographs focus on isolated body parts showing them enlarged and close-up, so that they seem at once familiar and unfamiliar. Coplans' monumental images recall classical sculpture, whilst emphasising the relentless progression of the ageing process.</p><p><em>Gallery label, August 2004</em></p>
paper print photograph black white
28 October 2002 – 5 January 2003
2003-01-05
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2002-10-28
Self Evident
Collection based display
6 June 2007 – 9 September 2007
2007-09-09
6 June 2007 – 9 September 2007
2007-09-09
2007-06-06
Scottish National Portrait Gallery (Edinburgh, UK)
29 September 2007 – 9 December 2007
2007-12-09
2007-09-29
Compton Verney (Compton Verney, UK)
2007-06-06
Naked Portrait
Loan-out
15 October 2020 – 17 January 2021
2021-01-17
15 October 2020 – 10 January 2021
2021-01-10
2020-10-15
Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum (Zürich, Switzerland)
2020-10-15
The exhausted man
Loan-out
Self-Portrait (Back with Arms Above)
image: 1213 × 935 mm
frame: 1290 × 1002 × 39 mm
Presented by the <a href="/search?gid=999999976" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">American Fund for the Tate Gallery</a>, courtesy of Marsha Plotnitsky 2000
<p>This is a black and white <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/photograph" title="Glossary definition for 'Photograph'"><span>photograph</span></a> of the artist’s back and hands with a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/s/surrealism" title="Glossary definition for 'Surrealism'"><span>surreal</span></a> appearance. Cropped just below the top of the hips, Coplans’s back extends upwards in a solid rectangle, above which protrude two unexpectedly small, clenched fists. Curling himself round over his chest and belly, the artist hunched his shoulders inwards and bent his head down forwards so that it disappears. His shoulder blades form the gently contoured upper limit of the block. His wrists and hands emerge from this. The incongruity of the large back and small fists is accentuated by the shallow focal depth: the surface of the back is not quite in focus and has a soft appearance, while the knuckles of the hands are more sharply defined. The body is dramatically lit, resulting in strong contrasts between light and dark. Black shadows on the underside of the fists and the wrists add to their alien appearance. Extending out of the top of the back, they recall the antennae of an insect or snail. The centre of the back, the area of maximum curvature, is hairless and appears smooth and light reflective. Around it, curling black and white hairs soften the edges of the body, which is thrown into relief against the white background. Viewed from a distance, it has a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/s/sculpture" title="Glossary definition for 'Sculpture'"><span>sculptural</span></a>, monolithic appearance. Up close, the silver gelatin print has the graphic quality of a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/charcoal" title="Glossary definition for 'Charcoal'"><span>charcoal</span></a> <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawing</span></a>. 
<br/>
<br/>Born in London, Coplans initially trained as a painter and moved to the United States in 1960, the year after seeing an inspirational exhibition of <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/a/abstract-expressionism" title="Glossary definition for 'Abstract Expressionism'"><span>Abstract Expressionist</span></a> <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a>, <i>The New American Painting</i>, at the Tate Gallery. He stopped making paintings in the early 1960s, working as a teacher, curator, writer and editor and was intimately involved with the art magazine <i>Artforum </i>until the end of the 1970s. In 1979 he took up photography. He explained: ‘I decided to become a photographer because I wanted to go back to being an artist. I had had enough of art history, critics, museology ... I chose photography because I could not go back to painting ... photography ... is a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/m/medium" title="Glossary definition for 'Medium'"><span>medium</span></a> to build an identity out of a composite personality, to find an artistic identity.’ (Quoted in <i>John Coplans: Self <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/portrait" title="Glossary definition for 'Portrait'"><span>Portrait</span></a>: Hand/Foot</i>, p.46.) Since 1984, his subject has been his own body. Central to Abstract Expressionism was a concern to express unconscious elements deep within the psyche. For Coplans, this relates to a kind of universal <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/primitivism" title="Glossary definition for 'Primitivism'"><span>primitivism</span></a>, which he has referred to as ‘being in touch genetically with the inheritance of mankind as an inner thing, something that we all have within. The genetic code has a memory embedded in it, a memory of our past ancestry ... when I began those photographs; I was very interested in this idea of genetic memory.’ (Quoted in Morris, p.75.) He began to think about the body as being able to express a language originating in a collective unconscious, something universal, primordial and direct. 
<br/>
<br/>Coplans uses a video camera and monitor to view parts of his body. Once he has selected an area, an assistant takes a photograph using positive/negative Polaroid film. This film creates instant images at the same time as a negative which may be used for later printing in large scale. Coplans deliberately avoids any kind of pose or gesture which may communicate a familiar message. By photographing sections of his own body, but always excluding his face, he divests it of a sense of wholeness. While the fragmentation of a male body may recall such <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/classicism" title="Glossary definition for 'Classicism'"><span>Classical</span></a> sculptures as the <i>Belvedere Torso</i>
(1<span>st</span> century BC, Vatican Museums, Rome) and, more recently, Surrealist photographs such as <i>The Big Toe </i>1929 by Jacques-André Boiffard (1902-61), the presentation of a naked patriarchal body is traditionally taboo in Western culture. Coplans has commented that: ‘these photographs refer to “body politics” in the sense that “oldness” is a taboo in American society, which tends to worship beauty and youth, consequently the aging of old bodies must be hidden from view, for they are imperfect, very often diseased and [will] soon perish.’ (Quoted in Morris, p.76.) Presenting an ageing male body as textured surface or surreal object rather than the locus of a thinking subject depersonalised rather than defined by his identity, Coplans subverts traditional self-portraiture and historical representation of the body in photography.
<br/>
<br/><i>Self Portrait (back with Arms Above)</i> was produced in an <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/edition" title="Glossary definition for 'Edition'"><span>edition</span></a> of three, of which this is an additional artist’s <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/proof" title="Glossary definition for 'Proof'"><span>proof</span></a>.
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<br/><b>Further reading:</b>
<br/><i>A Body: John Coplans</i>, New York 2001, reproduced p.38
<br/><i>John Coplans: Self Portrait: Hand/Foot</i>, exhibition catalogue, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam 1990
<br/>Stuart Morgan, Frances Morris, <i>Rites of Passage: Art for the End of the Century</i>, Tate Gallery, London 1995, pp.74-87
<br/>
<br/>Elizabeth Manchester
<br/>May 2003
<br/></p>

Summary
2005-09-15T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="para10">
<span class="text0">Coplans was one of the most influential art </span><span class="text11">critics in America in the 1960s and 1970s, </span><span class="text0">championing Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Donald Judd. In      1971 he was appointed editor of the influential magazine, Artforum and in      1978 he became director of the Akron Art Museum in Ohio. </span>
</div>
<div class="para1">
<span class="text0">
<br/> </span>
</div>
<div class="para10">
<span class="text11">In the mid 1960s Coplans began taking </span><span class="text0"><a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/photograph" title="Glossary definition for 'Photograph'"><span>photographs</span></a> of his own ageing naked body. </span><span class="text1">The photographs focus on isolated body parts</span><span class="text0"> showing them enlarged and close-up, so that </span><span class="text11">they seem at once familiar and unfamiliar. </span><span class="text0">Coplans' monumental images recall <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/classicism" title="Glossary definition for 'Classicism'"><span>classical</span></a> <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/s/sculpture" title="Glossary definition for 'Sculpture'"><span>sculpture</span></a>, whilst      emphasising the relentless progression of the ageing process. </span>
</div>

Display caption
2004-08-18T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
actions: postures and motions adults arts and entertainment back birth to death body Coplans, John emotions, concepts and ideas fist / fists clenched formal qualities hand male man named individuals nudes old age people photographer photographic portraits self-portraits society torso work and occupations