Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/keith-arnatt-666" aria-label="More by Keith Arnatt" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Keith Arnatt</a>
Portrait artist as a shadow his former self
Transferred from Tate Archive 2010

actions: postures and motions
adults
ambiguity
architecture
Arnatt, Keith
artist - non-specific
arts and entertainment
college / university
drainpipe
education, science and learning
emotions, concepts and ideas
ephemerality
features
formal qualities
man
named individuals
natural phenomena
Newport
Newport, Newport School of Art, Media and Design
pavement
people
philosophy
places
public and municipal
shadow
society
standing
street
townscapes / man-made features
truth
UK cities, towns and villages
UK counties
UK countries and regions
universal concepts
visual illusion
Wales
wall
work and occupations
<p><span>Portrait of the artist as a shadow of his former self</span> 1969–72 uses the cast shadow to question accepted limits of photographic veracity, while also offering a portrayal of the disappeared or absent artist and the trace that he might leave behind. Arnatt has commented: ‘I was beginning to become aware of the unreliability of photographic evidence and began to play with that feature. I felt that what a photograph could not tell or show might be just as significant as what it could.’ (Quoted in John Roberts, <span>The Impossible Document: Photography and Conceptual Art in Britain 1966–1976</span>, London 1997, p.47.) For this work, Arnatt stood on the pavement at the door to the Newport College Art department while a colleague drew a chalk line around the shadow he cast on the pavement and the wall behind. The silhouette was filled in with semi-transparent grey-brown paint and the scene was photographed. The resulting image depicts the fixed outline delineation of the artist’s shadow appearing as if a distorted figure is standing on the pavement. It is pictured as an image of a shadow among other, real shadows, revealing the trace of a now absent figure, fixing in time that which is ephemeral and fleeting. As he explained in a 1972 letter to the art critic Barbara Reise: ‘It is, of course, the title that interests me. How can one have a shadow of one’s former self? The date of the title explains this.’ (Keith Arnatt, letter to Barbara Reise, 1972, Tate Archive TGA 786.5.2.6.) The dating of the photograph indicates that the photograph was taken in 1969 and titled in 1972.</p>
paper print photograph gelatin silver
Portrait of the artist as a shadow of his former self
image: 605 × 665 mm
Transferred from Tate Archive 2010

<div class="text">
<p>
<i>Portrait of the artist as a shadow of his former self</i> 1969–72 uses the cast shadow to question accepted limits of photographic veracity, while also offering a portrayal of the disappeared or absent artist and the trace that he might leave behind. Arnatt has commented: ‘I was beginning to become aware of the unreliability of photographic evidence and began to play with that feature. I felt that what a photograph could not tell or show might be just as significant as what it could.’ (Quoted in John Roberts, <i>The Impossible Document: Photography and Conceptual Art in Britain 1966–1976</i>, London 1997, p.47.) For this work, Arnatt stood on the pavement at the door to the Newport College Art department while a colleague drew a chalk line around the shadow he cast on the pavement and the wall behind. The silhouette was filled in with semi-transparent grey-brown paint and the scene was photographed. The resulting image depicts the fixed outline delineation of the artist’s shadow appearing as if a distorted figure is standing on the pavement. It is pictured as an image of a shadow among other, real shadows, revealing the trace of a now absent figure, fixing in time that which is ephemeral and fleeting. As he explained in a 1972 letter to the art critic Barbara Reise: ‘It is, of course, the title that interests me. How can one have a shadow of one’s former self? The date of the title explains this.’ (Keith Arnatt, letter to Barbara Reise, 1972, Tate Archive TGA 786.5.2.6.) The dating of the photograph indicates that the photograph was taken in 1969 and titled in 1972.</p>
<p>A number of different versions of the work exist, both in black and white (as here) or colour, printed to different sizes and with different crops. One such colour variant is <i>Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of his Former Self</i> 1969–72, printed 2000 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/arnatt-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-shadow-of-his-former-self-t07647" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>T07647</span></a>). Additionally, the work could have been shown as a sequence of four photographs – ‘one large … and three smaller indicating how it was carried out’, as he explained in the letter to Reise (Ibid.). This provides a characteristic example of his sometimes open-ended approach to the layout and presentation of individual work by different means and according to different contexts.</p>
<p>This is one of a number of existing materials that were proposed by Keith Arnatt at the time of his participation in <i>Seven Exhibitions</i> at the Tate Gallery, London, in 1972. Other works that were exhibited alongside it included <i>Invisible Hole Revealed by the Shadow of the Artist </i>1968 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/arnatt-invisible-hole-revealed-by-the-shadow-of-the-artist-p13145" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P13145</span></a>), <i>Art as an Act of Retraction </i>1971 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/arnatt-art-as-an-act-of-retraction-p13140" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P13140</span></a>), <i>Art as an Act of Omission </i>1971 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/arnatt-art-as-an-act-of-omission-p13144" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P13144</span></a>), <i>I Have Decided to Go to the Tate Gallery next Friday </i>1971 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/arnatt-i-have-decided-to-go-to-the-tate-gallery-next-friday-p13142" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P13142</span></a>, exhibited with the title <i>Tate Work</i>), <i>Rejected Proposal for the Peter Stuyvesant ‘City Sculpture Project’ (For Cardiff City) </i>1972 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/arnatt-rejected-proposal-for-the-peter-stuyvesant-city-sculpture-project-for-cardiff-city-p13141" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P13141</span></a>), <i>Self-Burial (Television Interference Project)</i> 1969 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/arnatt-self-burial-television-interference-project-t01747" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>T01747</span></a>, exhibited with the title <i>The Disappearance of the Artist</i>), <i>2448000–0000000</i> 1969/1972 (described as ‘an “exhibition” of the duration of the exhibition by the following means: a digital count-down system will count down the duration of the exhibition in seconds’), <i>Type-Token </i>1970, <i>Art and Egocentricity – a perlocutionary act? </i>1971 and <i>Tate Gallery Staff Exhibition</i> 1972. The content of the exhibition changed during its run. Because of widespread power-cuts at the start of the exhibition, <i>2448000–0000000</i> was initially replaced by <i>Tate Gallery Staff Exhibition</i>, though this – a presentation of the staff cards of all employees of the gallery – was removed after three days and it is thought that <i>2448000–0000000</i> was activated on the seventh day of the exhibition. In their range, the works brought together as Arnatt’s presentation for <i>Seven Exhibitions</i> illustrate the move in his work from the making of situational sculptures to a documentation of actions that question – through a linking of philosophical text with image – the status of art and the role and identity of the artist, whom Arnatt shows to be in different states of disappearance. This work was transferred from the Tate Gallery Archive in 2010.</p>
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<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>
<i>Seven Exhibitions</i>, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1972.<br/>
<i>The New Art</i>, exhibition catalogue, Hayward Gallery, London 1972.<br/>
<i>I’m a Real Photographer: Keith Arnatt Photographs 1974–2002</i>, exhibition catalogue, Photographer’s Gallery, London 2007.</p>
<p>Andrew Wilson<br/>May 2010 <br/>Revised February and July 2019; November/December 2020</p>
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Summary
2021-06-14T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
actions: postures and motions adults ambiguity architecture Arnatt, Keith artist - non-specific arts and entertainment college / university drainpipe education, science and learning emotions, concepts and ideas ephemerality features formal qualities man named individuals natural phenomena Newport Newport, Newport School of Art, Media and Design pavement people philosophy places public and municipal shadow society standing street townscapes / man-made features truth UK cities, towns and villages UK counties UK countries and regions universal concepts visual illusion Wales wall work and occupations