Mirrors – by Gaia Livay, 2020
They surround us everywhere, and when I stop next to one I can’t help myself but look. We look at them every morning and every night and with our phones in our hand more than ever, they follow us everywhere we go. I am talking about mirrors, in the bathroom, in the street, our “selfie” camera in our phones and of course in art. Mirrors have been around us as far as history goes. In this essay I will give few examples of the many in which mirrors meat us in art, media and technology.
Perhaps the first mirror is mentioned in the Greek mythology in the story of Narcissus. A young hunter from Thespiae in Boeotia who was known for his extraordinary beauty. One day while hunting, he came across an untouched, glassy spring, he was drawn to its beauty and lied down to take a drink. Suddenly he saw himself reflected in the still water and fell in love with his vision, his hair, his eyes, his porcelain skin and rosy cheeks. Narcissus was amazed by the image in front of him, when he blinks the image blinks, when he waves the reflection waves as well. The young hunter was not able to move from the spring as he has fallen in love tragically with himself. When he died next to his own image he became the beautiful floating flower we all know, Narcissus.
Since the early 15 century mirrors play a crucial element in the art of painting. It is usually interpreted as a tole to show self-admiration, hidden objects or people, a different perspective and perhaps reviling a deeper truth.
One of the first painting with a mirror is Jan Van Eyck’s “The Arnolfini Portrait” in 1434, depicting a couple as they exchange vows. The two are holding hand when between them on the back wall lies a mirror which in its reflection is the beautifully painted couple in the room but also two other people that could be interpreted as accidental witness of the wedding ceremony. It could be that Jan Van Eyck wants us, the viewers, to feel as if we are reflected in the mirror and as if we are a part of the painting.
Another example is “Las Meninas” by Diego Velázquez, a leading artist in the Spanish golden age and the contemporary baroque period. His painting from 1656 portrays the members of the Royal House of Habsburg, while on the left of it we see the artist himself holding a brush and a pallet, looking straight at the viewer. When looking further into the painting we can see a mirror in the back depicting the king and queen which are the object of his painting, again, Velázquez, like Eyck, gives the viewers a sense of being part of the art piece.
Numerus examples of artist incorporating mirror in painting exist, if it’s the self-portrait in a Convex Mirror by Parmigianino in 1524, the Rokeby Venus by Diego Velázquez in 1647, the Music Lesson by Johannes Vermeer in 1662-1665 or perhaps A Bar at the Folies- Bergère by Édouard Manet in 1882. All of these paintings include mirrors in a way that gives the viewer, the audience, a different perspective of what is happening, maybe, an altered angle that tells a new story.
Moving few centuries ahead to the 20th century, mirror had an important role in contemporary art. In n these years we stumble upon several forms of mirror art, some use real mirrors in order to make the viewers see themselves in their art, while others chose to use mirror to distort our perception.
Roy Lichtenstein, a key figure in American pop art, painted rooms in that are depicted through a mirror wall, that way approaching the subject in a new lens.
One of the pioneers of mirror art is the Italian painter, performance artist and theorist, Michelangelo Pistoletto. He is best known for his stainless-steel paintings with mirror like surfaces beginning in 1961. With time he began to use large, real size, photographs of his friends and family, silk-screening them into large mirrors, and creating an illusion between the mirrored art piece and the audience. He continues this series, Quadri Specchianti (mirror painting) until the 1980s. Pistoletto was able to catch the reflection of the audience within the work itself and encourage the viewers to interact with his piece. Pistoletto says that the image in the mirror “remains still in a world that is moving, a world that in a certain way includes everything and most importantly the viewer”. He explains in an interview in 2017, that the two images; the moving one (the audience) and the static one (the painting on the mirror), create an entire dimension of time, the time that passes and the time that stands still.
Another artist using mirrors in a form of making one with the art piece and the viewer is Douglas Gordon, a Scottish artist who works with installations, photography and video. His series Self Portraits of Me and You depicts famous figures when their eyes are removed, burned and replaces with a mirror surface, challenging the viewer to look beyond the remained, perhaps to unveil the deeper truth, as we saw in the paintings from the baroque period.
As I searched the topic, mirrors in art, I stumbled upon different ways of using reflections. A form that was used quite a lot was in nature, somewhat the opposite of want I talked about till now. One of the artists I found is Alyson Shotz with her Mirror Fence. Shotz, the American large-scale sculpture, explores the nature of an ever-changing landscape, viewing the piece from a far it almost looks camouflages, her work relays entirely on the nature around it and changes accordingly. Another artist is Anish Kapoor with his piece Sky Mirror, and as the name, it is a large mirror reflecting the moving sky, it is publicly displayed in Nottingham, England.
Philip K Smith an American artist added mirrors to the walls of a desert shack in California to create the illusion of seeing right through the house, the work is called Lucid Stead. The color of the installation changes depending the light and the hour of the day, Smith says “I like to interact with the movement of the sun so that the artwork is in constant state of change from sunrise to 9am to noon to 3am to 6pm and into the evening.“
From Smith building it is a must to talk about architecture. Designer Tomas Osinsk and Los Angeles film producer Chris Hanley have created a mirrored house near Joshua Tree National Park, designed to look like a New York skyscraper on its side. They developed a 511 square meter long steel frame house covered in mirrors. The house is available to rent for filming, photography and events. They used the same glass mirror we see on skyscrapers, which surround us and seem to be multiplying every year.
I’ll move on to performance art with mirrors, the famous Michelangelo Pistoletto I mentioned before used to smash mirror in front of audiences in his expeditions, Josiah McElhenny, the American artist, created a performance in which Harvard university dance students walk around with mirror structured costumes creating mirror moving sculptures that change and evolve. He made two pieces regarding that idea, one Interactions of the Abstract Body in 2012 and another one Two Walking Mirrors in 2015.
Another performing art is theater, music concerts and even fashion shows. All of these have included mirrors in their art. One of my favorite stage designers is Es Devlin, a British artist that worked from designing theater stages, to fashion shows and to music concerts with big name such as Kanya West, Beyonce, Adel and more. Mirrors are a crucial element in her work and perhaps a big reason for my decision on researching this subject.
Devlin worked with two big fashion brands, Louis Vuitton in 2015, creating a mirror catwalk sort of maze, reflecting the models and the looks. Another similar project she made was with the big fashion house Chanel, creating a mirror maze inspired by sent and promoting the house new fragrance. For the play The Nether in The Duke of York’s Theatre, Devlin created a two-way mirror box, in which when you look inside you can see the actors, but they see themselves. This piece reminded me of Alexander McQueen’s’ VOSS Spring/Summer 2001 collection. The show was situated in a dimly lit room with a gigantic mirrored cube sitting in front of the audience. The show started 2 hours late forcing the audience to stare at themselves, then finally the cube lit up and reveled a room with white wall and more mirrors inside. The cube was made from a two-way mirror, that way, the audience were looking at the models looking at their own reflection. The show continued and just when it seemed as if it has finished, a glass box that stood in the middle of the mirrored cage fell open and reveled a naked Michelle Olley lying in a chair, connected to an inhaler when all around her are flying moths which where free once the walls of the glass box dropped open. McQueen with this mirrors boxes was questioning the notion of conventional beauty, asking the audience what normal beauty is.
From theater and fashion shows, I must touch base on mirrors in film. One of the known fairy tales is Snow White, originally written by The Brothers Grimm in 1812 and 100 years later on converted into a Broadway play, of course later on was created the 1937 Walt Disney’s film. The well-known story depicts an evil Queen asking her Magic Mirror the famous question “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is fairest of them all?”. The mirror is known to always tell the truth, and rivals to The Evil queen that snow white is indeed “the fairest of them all”, again we see how the mirror plays a role in unfolding a deeper truth.
The second movie depicting a mirror scene is the French black and white film, Le Haine, directed and written by Mathieu Kassovits in 1995. The plot is a story about three young friends living in Banlieues, the suburb of Paris. The famous mirror scene depicts See Vins, played by the actor Vincent Cassel, a young Jewish man with an aggressive temper who wishes to revenge. See Vinz reacts in front of the mirrors the scene of Travravis Bickle from the movie Taxi Driver. In the scene we are able to enter to Vinz’s real world through the mirror, another aspect is he is looking directly to the camera (the mirror), something not so common in films.
I assume that the last topic left is indeed mirrors in technology.
Daniel Rozin, an Israeli American artist and developer, who works in the area of interactive digital art, creates installations and sculptures that have the ability to respond and change to the viewer. Most of Rozin’s work is with mirrors, he created several mechanical mirror, which are made from different materials but share the same behavior. Any person standing in front of them will be reflected on its surface thanks to its technology of video camera, motors and computers on the board.
His first mechanical mirror in 1999 was made from 830 square pieces of wood. It explores the line between digital and physical, using a natural material such as wood to portray the abstract notion of digital pixels. With the same mechanism Rozin created the trash mirror, shiny balls mirror, circles, weave, rust, snow, fans, pom pom, sunset, penguin mirror, and many more.
I guess one of the closes mirror we have is our phone, and with today technology these create a virtual mirror, meaning they display our image and can help us modify our appearance. Virtual mirrors can be simple as filters on Instagram and Snap Chat and as complicated as creating a virtual avatar of the user, for video game or even online shopping. All of these use technologies such as face tracing and face detection to analyze the visual patterns of the user.
These reflecting surfaces, that surround us daily have and had the ability to revile throughout the years secrets and a deeper truths. The mirrors are able also to change our perspective, to confuse us, to create illusions and interactions between surfaces. Maybe now, I will look at mirrors in a special way, and perhaps our own reflection could disclose something deeper.
I recently heard a song by Kali Uchis featuring Tyler, the Creator and Bottsy Collins called After the Storm. Apart from begging a fun song there was one line that stayed with me and it goes; “If you need a hero, just look at the mirror”.