Reflections
[cover image: Metamorphosis of Narcissus, Salvador Dalí, 1937]
Dali painted his surreal interpretation of Ovid's myth of Narcissus in 1937. Ovid, in his poetic chronicle of myths, Metamorphoses, relates how Narcissus, the son of the water nymph, Leiriope, and the river god, Cephissus, was so beautiful everyone was drawn to him. But Narcissus rejected everyone who loved him. The mountain nymph, Echo, fell so deeply under the spell of his beauty that when he rejected her too, she pined away until only the sound of her voice remained.
Narcissus never knew the source -or the power- of his appeal until Nemesis, the goddess of retribution for defiance of the gods, seeking revenge for Narcissus' hubris particularly in regard to Echo, lead him to a pond where he saw his reflection for the first time. Narcissus fell in love with his reflection. Unable to turn away, Narcissus himself pined away until he metamorphized into a flower - a narcissus, aka a daffodil.
The power of our reflection is compelling.
A few months ago I stumbled on an article about the history of mirrors and mankind's relationship with the looking glass. This lead me to a long journey of processing the societal, psychological and personal infatuation with one's own refection and finally to the artistic portrayal of all these things (since a fascination with the use of mirrors in paintings was what lead me to the above article in the first place).
When one writes, outside of poetry, it's incumbent upon oneself to actually say something readily comprehendible. Art, like poetry, tends to be less direct, somewhat inscrutable and open to interpretations.
Reflection can mean looking at yourself from the outside, but it can also mean looking at yourself from the inside. I imagine one can even reflect on one's reflection or one's innermost reflective thoughts can be likewise reflected in one's expressions of actions.
The appeal, attraction or just fascination of seeing oneself in a mirror (or any reflective surface) can have many reasons. The most commonly attributed explanation is Vanity.
Vanity, thy name is Woman
This misquote of Shakespeare [from "Frailty, thy name is woman!" —Hamlet, Act-1, Scene-II] has wormed its way into the English language and modern culture. Women are portrayed as a preening, self-absorbed and vain gender while mirrors are used as a contrivance for exposing these feminine characteristics.
While not the purpose behind this exploration, it's worth noting that the original Narcissus was male. and if that's not enough, some modern thinking suggests that males, not females are the narcissistic gender (see: 1, 2, 3, 4)
Even the reasons that men and women look in mirrors are now thought by some psychologists to be substantially different - women tend to look into mirrors for more practical reasons: to put on make-up, check their hair, etc. while men are more fixated on admiring their face or body. Whether, or how much, any of that is true for either group, it does put the stereotype into question.
Girl Before Mirror
Pablo Picasso, March 1932
The painting depicts Picasso's young lover/model Marie-Thérèse Walter. The meaning, of course, is obscure but it's clear that what the women sees in the mirror differs from how we see her.
Marie-Thérèse Walter (1909-1977) in 1935
Babies respond to mirrors but psychologists claim it's not until age 18 months that they are cognizant that the reflection is themselves. Certain animals are thought to recognize themselves in a mirror. Researchers use a somewhat controversial method of testing created in 1970 by Gordon Gallup called, the mirror self-recognition test. The animals that test positive with significantly reliable frequency are most great apes (strangely, gorillas have less reliable results than most), Asian elephants, bottlenose dolphins, orcas, more surprisingly, magpies and most inexplicably, ants. It's unlikely that vanity plays a part when babies or animals see and recognize themselves. That seems to be a human trait developed over time.
Merriam-Webster (since 1828!)
Vanity, according to Merriam-Webster, involves excessive pride in one's appearance (and obviously in other aspects of one's existence).
Ben Franklin, however, in his autobiography wrote:
Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life.
. . . indicating that vanity within limits has a postive value.
Vanity is, of course, a reason for self-gazing but from all I've read, a rather minor one. Most women, it seems, spend less time admiring their reflections than searching for flaws to dwell on. So looking into a mirror for most is done when deemed necessary and avoided by most women, other than those seeking misery.
In "The Art of Reflection" by Marsha Meskimmonm the author suggests there exists an artistic paradigm:
...the traditional representation of vanity (the female figure with a mirror) is implied by these works and act to legitimate our voyeuristic looking at the body of a woman. Woman 'want' to be looked at - it is the nature of women to be passive and viewed, while the man looks, actively. The gendering of our whole specular economy is in-built in fine art representations of 'woman,' and especially in those which incorporate the tropes of the nude female and the mirror.
Can this be true? Marsha M. does go on to investigate what she calls "the logic of the mirror" in art as a tool for marginalizing and disempowering women. But all this presupposes a lot, maybe too much, as I see it. Sometimes mirrors are metaphors; sometimes mirrors are just mirrors; sometime we just see what we want to see. To misquote Shakespeare again: Frailty, thy name is Human. But what it does provide for me is a reason to look at a painting with a whole new, or at least different, set of eyes. A mirror is a prop... but props have a purpose - maybe important, maybe insignificant, but a purpose nonetheless.
Culturally, women have expectations. Media ads constantly push products for women to buy in order to enhance their beauty, their desirability, their self-esteem. And women do buy them by the truckload. This complicates women's relationship with their reflection. We, at least some of us, see ourselves not as we are are but as how much we measure up... or more likely, don't measure up. Mirrors often reflect our insecurities.
Looking at oneself in a mirror can be a very intimate experience. People are sometimes embarrassed if caught checking themselves out. Such a personal experience can be uncomfortable if knowingly observed (unless one is an exhibitionist, of course). This makes me think that a painting of a women looking at herself in a mirror as opposed to, say, sitting in a garden or lying on a blanket beside a lake, is far more intimate and revealing.
One particular artist, Francine van Hove, a still active French painter known for her classical, realist style, is fond of painting beautiful women caught in a moment of reflection - inward, but in the following examples also outward. There is no vanity, just pensiveness. One must wonder what they are thinking. The women are as obviously beautiful as they are oblivious to their beauty and we see them captured in private alone moments.
If there is vanity, it seems to be that of the artist, who shows off her very profound skill in painting reflections from different angles.
Sylvia Plath - the extraordinary poetess who suffered terrible depression and killed herself in 1962 - wrote the following verses in 1961 from the mirror's POV:
Mirror
“I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful —
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.”
I am not cruel, only truthful
The above painting (found on the March 6, 1954 cover of The Saturday Evening Post) by the famous illustrator Norman Rockwell shows a very young girl looking at her reflection - a doll lied on the far side of the mirror while a brush, comb and lipstick lies in the foreground. She seems to be studying herself, contemplating her growing maturity.
Frederick Warren Freer (184-1908) had a talent for capturing a woman's expression. In the above painting called "The Old Veil," the winsome look in her eyes and face makes me think she is remembering something endearing or regretting something she can't change... maybe what once was or perhaps what could have been. The titular veil might be a hint. The mirror seems to magnify her feelings.
Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun was an immensely talented French neoclassicist painter who served as the official portraitist for Marie-Antoinette. After the French Revolution she fled France for Italy with her daughter Julie, the subject of the above painting. Elizabeth caught an element of wonderment in her seven year old daughter's face while eyeing her reflection. After Julie grew and married someone of whom her mother didn't approve, they became estranged for the remainder of their lives. It might be a good thing one can only capture the present.
The above painting is called alternately "At the Psyche" or "The Cheval-glass," both titles referring to the full length tilting mirror the young girl stands before in this impressionistic work by Berthe Morisot. Berthe associated with Monet, Degas, Renoir and Pissarro but her work was heavily influenced by Édouard Manet, and in fact, she married his brother, Eugène. The girl seems more interested in fashion than in herself with the mirror acting as her casual friend.
(on exhibit at the N.Y. Met)
Frederick Carl Frieseke, on the other hand, was an American impressionist. The above 1911 work bears a French title, "Femme Qui Se Mire" or "Woman with a Mirror." The woman seems to be holding her necklace close to her earring, as if to see if they match. Her look is one of indecision. (another Frieseke mirror painting anchors this exploration)
Jules-Émile Saintin was a French painter who emigrated to the United States when he was 25.
He painted many notable personages such as Abe Lincoln, Steven Douglas and Millard Fillmore. The above painting is called, "Distraction" and suitably so. One must wonder what caused the refined lady to put down her book and fan and stare intently into the mirror. Just maybe, with all her privilege and finery, she's as insecure as the rest of us?
The girl seems mesmerized by the mirror image in this painting created by Karl Bryullov in 1836 in the then-new-in-Russia Romanticist style. Appropriately, this painting is of the title character from the 1813 poem Svetlana, by Vasily Zhukovsky who is thought to have introduced Romanticism to Russia.
Svetlana is a young girl waiting for the return of her lover and, as the poem says: "Svetlana is suffering from separation." In an attempt to see into her romantic future on the evening of the Epiphany:
White tablecloth on the table in the light, on it – two instruments and a mirror with a candle. At midnight, Svetlana will see her fate, her lover, in the mirror. Sobbingly she sits down to the mirror, but in it only darkness, and only the trembling of the candle on the table.
At midnight Svetlana does have a terrible, seemingly prophetic dream, but the reality turns out to be much sweeter.
Entitled "A Passing Glance," this 1907 painting by Thomas Pollock Anshutz, an American artist and art teacher, captures a more handsome than beatiful woman glancing at her reflection as she walks by a mirror. Who knows what she's thinking but her expression to me seems one more of resignation than of pleasure.
Contrary to what most places say about the title and date of this Eugène Accard painting, it was created in 1866 under the title, "Le Miroir." Accard was mainly a portraitist until his later life. Capturing this woman's face indirectly in a private moment adds an element of intimacy to what might have otherwise been a run of the mill, even if richly constructed, portrayal.
(on exhibit at the Dallas Museum)
This 1911 painting by Frederick Carl Frieseke, just like the one above by the same artist, in entitled "Femme Qui Se Mire" or "Woman with a Mirror." In both paintings the women seem to be more interested in their accoutrements than in their own features.
While the women/mirror/vanity trope may or may not have been on the minds of these artists, what seems apparent to me is that vanity or narcissism plays a less important role in self-appraisals that any stereotypes might suggest. I don't know if I've learned anything from this exploration, but I did get to admire and examine some exquisite works of fine art in a purposeful manner.
I'm perfectly satisfied.
