Oil paint on wood
Tate Collection
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<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/christian-schad-2331" aria-label="More by Christian Schad" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Christian Schad</a>
SelfPortrait
Lent from a private collection 1994
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Schad, Christian
self-portraits
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<p>Schad claimed that 'no-one is entirely free from narcissism.' This self-portrait is loaded with symbols connected to identity and appearance. The artist is positioned in front of the woman, but only partially conceals her nakedness. In contrast to the naked woman, Schad wears a transparent shirt. A narcissus flower, indicating vanity, leans towards the artist. The woman’s face is scarred with a sfregio, a wound inflicted as a punishment by Neapolitan criminals. The work contains violent and erotic suggestions. Despite this, Schad said, 'it is not about the aftermath of heat and passion but is meant as an allegory of narcissism.’</p><p><em>Gallery label, August 2020</em></p>
painting oil paint wood
8 September 2001 – 15 February 2002
2002-02-15
8 September 2001 – 25 November 2001
2001-11-25
2001-09-08
Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus (Munich, Germany)
20 December 2001 – 15 February 2002
2002-02-15
2001-12-20
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen (Kassel, Germany)
2001-09-08
Pygmalion's Workshop, Magic and the Academic Way
Loan-out
5 November 2002 – 9 June 2003
2003-06-09
5 November 2002 – 14 February 2003
2003-02-14
2002-11-05
Musée Maillol (Paris, France)
14 March 2003 – 9 June 2003
2003-06-09
2003-03-14
Neue Galerie New York (New York, USA)
http://www.neuegalerie.org
2002-11-05
Christian Schad
Loan-out
20 October 2005 – 14 May 2006
2006-05-14
20 October 2005 – 29 January 2006
2006-01-29
2005-10-20
National Portrait Gallery (London, UK)
http://www.npg.org.uk
2005-10-20
Self Portraits
Loan-out
15 November 2006 – 15 February 2007
2007-02-15
15 November 2006 – 15 February 2007
2007-02-15
2006-11-15
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA)
http://www.metmuseum.org
2006-11-15
Glitter and Doom: Portraits from the Weimar Republic (1919-1933)
Loan-out
26 September 2008 – 6 January 2009
2009-01-06
26 September 2008 – 6 January 2009
2009-01-06
2008-09-26
Leopold Museum (Vienna, Austria)
http://www.leopoldmuseum.org
31 January 2009 – 10 May 2009
2009-05-10
2009-01-31
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (The Hague, Netherlands)
2008-09-26
Christian Schad Retrospective
Loan-out
5 August 2011 – 4 March 2012
2012-03-04
5 August 2011 – 6 November 2011
2011-11-06
2011-08-05
Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia)
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au
25 November 2011 – 4 March 2012
2012-03-04
2011-11-25
National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia)
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au
2011-08-05
The Mad Square: Modernity in German Art 1910 - 1938
Loan-out
2 May 2015 – 17 January 2016
2016-01-17
2 May 2015 – 30 August 2015
2015-08-30
2015-05-02
Museo Correr (Venice, Italy)
4 October 2015 – 17 January 2016
2016-01-17
2015-10-04
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, USA)
2015-05-02
Neue Sachlichkeit
Loan-out
5 June 2018 – 23 September 2018
2018-09-23
5 June 2018 – 23 September 2018
2018-09-23
2018-06-05
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2018-06-05
Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One
Exhibition
13 May 2024 – 11 October 2024
2024-10-11
13 May 2024 – 11 October 2024
2024-10-11
2024-05-13
Leopold Museum (Vienna, Austria)
http://www.leopoldmuseum.org
2024-05-13
New Objectivity in Germany
Loan-out
20 February 2025 – 26 May 2025
2025-05-26
20 February 2025 – 26 May 2025
2025-05-26
2025-02-20
Neue Galerie New York (New York, USA)
http://www.neuegalerie.org
2025-02-20
Neue Sachlichkeit / New Objectivity
Loan-out
Self-Portrait
support: 760 × 620 mm
frame: 1040 × 910 × 92 mm
Lent from a private collection 1994
<div class="text">
<p>
<i>Self-Portrait</i> 1927 is a portrait-orientated oil painting on a wooden panel that depicts the German artist Christian Schad and a young woman tightly framed in a domestic interior. The artist appears in the foreground on the left side of the composition, turning slightly to his left and staring directly at the viewer with a sharp, tight-lipped expression. He is pictured from the waist upwards and wears a translucent, collarless green shirt with a tasselled opening at the chest. Immediately behind him on the right side of the work is a naked woman sitting upright on a bed which has ruffled white sheets and a purple check-patterned cover. Shown in profile from her left side, the woman has a prominent nose and a lengthy scar running vertically down her cheek. She has a small blue ribbon wrapped around her left wrist, while the top of her red stocking is just visible on the far left of the painting. Rising from just behind the woman’s right shoulder is a single narcissus flower with white petals and a yellow pistil. In the background a nocturnal city skyline can be seen through a thin, dark blue curtain. The painting is signed and dated by the artist in the bottom right corner.</p>
<p>This work, which has also been known as <i>Self-Portrait with Model</i> (see, for example, Bond and Woodall 2005, p.168), was made in 1927 in Vienna, where Schad lived between 1925 and 1927. The face of the woman depicted was inspired by someone Schad encountered in a Viennese stationery shop. He added a scar based on those he had seen on the faces of women in Naples, where he lived in 1923–4. Known as <i>freggio</i> scars, these markings were inscribed by men on their lovers as a sign of possession and as a warning to potential rivals (see Rewald 2006, p.76).</p>
<p>In a 1977 caption for this work, Schad claimed, ‘My pictures are never illustrative, if anything, they are symbolic’ (quoted in Rewald 2006, p.76). Accordingly, his <i>Self-Portrait</i> contains several symbolic elements particularly connected with notions of identity and appearance. For instance, the transparent shirt worn by the artist suggests a veiled approach to his own self-presentation, especially as his companion is shown without clothing. In addition, the narcissus flower – which in Schad’s painting leans discernibly towards the artist – evokes the eponymous Greek myth in which a vain man drowns after trying to embrace his own image in a pool of water. Schad himself claimed, ‘no-one is entirely free from narcissism’ (quoted in Bond and Woodall 2005, p.168), and in 2006 the curator Sabine Rewald argued that despite the erotic connotations of the scene, <i>Self-Portrait</i> ‘is not about the aftermath of heat and passion but is meant as an allegory of narcissism’ (Rewald 2006, p.74).</p>
<p>Born in Bavaria in 1894, Schad trained briefly at the Art Academy in Munich in 1913, where he made expressionist woodcuts. He moved to Switzerland in 1915, living first in Zurich and then from 1916 to 1920 in Geneva, where he became part of the emerging dada movement. In 1918 he began a series of ‘Schadographs’ , which consist of photographic images produced not with a camera but by placing objects on photosensitive paper that is exposed to sunlight (see, for example, <i>Schadograph </i>1918, Museum of Modern Art, New York). Between 1920 and 1925 Schad lived in Italy, where his practice was especially influenced by Renaissance artists such as Raphael (1483–1520). Subsequent paintings such as <i>Self-Portrait</i> can be closely related to the development of <i>Neue Sachlichkeit</i> (New Objectivity), a style of precise realist painting that first emerged in Germany in the early 1920s. Schad returned to Germany in 1927, living in Berlin until 1943, when he moved to the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg to complete a commissioned full-scale replica of Matthias Grünewald’s <i>Stuppach Madonna</i> 1514–19.</p>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Christos M. Joachimides, Norman Rosenthal and Wieland Schmied, <i>German Art in the 20th Century: Painting and Sculpture 1905–1985</i>, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy of Arts, London 1985, pp.39, 498, reproduced no.172.<br/>Anthony Bond and Joanna Woodall, <i>Self-Portrait: Renaissance to Contemporary</i>, exhibition catalogue, National Portrait Gallery, London 2005, pp.20, 22–3, 168–9, reproduced p.169.<br/>Sabine Rewald, <i>Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s</i>, exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2006,<i> </i>pp.7, 27–9, 74–6, reproduced p.75.</p>
<p>Richard Martin<br/>May 2016</p>
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Summary
2016-06-06T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>Schad claimed that 'no-one is entirely free from narcissism.' This self-portrait is loaded with symbols connected to identity and appearance. The artist is positioned in front of the woman, but only partially conceals her nakedness. In contrast to the naked woman, Schad wears a transparent shirt. A narcissus flower, indicating vanity, leans towards the artist. The woman’s face is scarred with a sfregio, a wound inflicted as a punishment by Neapolitan criminals. The work contains violent and erotic suggestions. Despite this, Schad said, 'it is not about the aftermath of heat and passion but is meant as an allegory of narcissism.’</p>
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Display caption
2020-08-21T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
actions: postures and motions adults architecture artist, painter arts and entertainment body emotional states and conditions emotions and human qualities emotions, concepts and ideas female gender male man named individuals narcissism narcissus nudes people plants and flowers portraits reclining scar Schad, Christian self-portraits sex sex and relationships social comment society symbols and personifications townscape, distant townscapes / man-made features vanity - narcissus woman work and occupations