Self Portrait 1986

Here's a self-portrait by Andy Warhol, who took his image and screened it, again and again, each time, with a different color. I’m thinking about the tension of the image, the flatness, and the iconicity. I imagine Andy like a machine, pushing the image through the screen, spreading ink across the surface. A camouflage of yellow and blue flattens his features. It’s like he's playing with identity, hiding and revealing himself at the same time. Warhol does something important here, which is to remind us that surface, like skin, is a kind of mask, a theatre. We put it on every day, layer after layer, until we are finally seen, or perhaps, finally hidden. He was constantly investigating the relationship between surface and depth, which is so amazing. It's like he's daring us to look beneath the surface, to see what's really there.