HANS BELTING

HANS BELTING

oil on Belgian Linen
cm 30x40



"My resistance to comment on my portrait is explained by the fact that I am presently writing a book on face and mask. In my view , the difference between face and mask should be reconsidered. The face is to some extent also a mask, a mask of the self. Nietzsche, in his essays on “Jenseits von Gut und Böse”, even claimed that we need a mask to remain or to become ourselves. In your case, you have produced without knowing me in person, a portrait after a photograph and turned it into a painting which I only know from the digital reproduction. What then is it what I see? My expression is or seems spontaneous , and I have forgotten when and in which context the photograph was taken which you used. I smile in your portrait but why and to whom? Maybe, I have changed since, as we always only remain ourselves on the condition that we change. In my manuscript for the book I even suspect that we only represent the self , since we aim at and exercise , or avoid ,such a representation. Thus, my hesitation to write about what I see ( and what it is what I see or don’t see) , may be the only reaction which is more than a play with empty words and questionable ideas. In the meanwhile, I continue to write a chapter on the portrait in my “history of the face” and I claim that what in other cultures was the mask, in the European tradition has become the portrait as a place holder , but a placeholder for what and for whom?"
Hans Belting, 2011
(copyrights by Hans Belting. All rights reserved)