Autoportretas 1992

Curator: This is Šarūnas Sauka's "Autoportretas," a self-portrait rendered in oil paint in 1992. What's your first impression? Editor: My first thought? The grotesqueness is the point, right? It's hard to ignore. The colors are earthy, like old clay, and that just adds to the…unsettling nature of it all. Curator: Definitely unsettling. Self-portraits have always been a vehicle for artists to explore their inner selves, their relationship to the world, and here, Sauka presents us with a pretty raw version of himself, poking his tongue out, pulling at his ears. Editor: And those techniques. Look at how thick the paint is applied! It gives this self-portrait so much texture and presence, its almost palpable revulsion. One wonders about the economic realities that determine material constraints, the specific ways artists produce emotion. Curator: You're right, the materiality contributes to the overall expressive quality. Notice how the distortion might represent an almost defiant subversion. His gesture might indicate self-mockery, an interesting exploration of identity and perhaps societal expectations through an exaggerated pose. Editor: Perhaps. The question remains about labor and class and how that contributes to expression, here. Did Sauka spend painstaking hours perfecting a self portrait that seems outwardly gestural? And with what means did he come to use such impasto application with those oils? What stories do those details, often ignored, carry about the broader socio-economic moment of creation? Curator: I concede there is that too. Either way, he wields his art to make an introspective yet confrontational declaration of existence. Editor: Absolutely, that is undeniably. His grimace sticks with me after our discussion even if the modes of painting, so intimately linked with self, are a broader commentary. Curator: Well, the potency of visual symbols always affects one longer than its materials, doesn’t it?