The Self-Portrait of the Artist and the Re-Start of Animation

Introduction

Originally, the self-portrait was a pictorial subgenre of portrayal, in which the artists became the model for their own paintings. However, it is also present in mediums such as cinema, when directors appear in their films, from ephemeral manifestations, like the Hitchcockian cameo performance, to the assumption of a protagonist role like Takeshi Kitano in Takeshis’ (2005). Equally, the self-representation of animators establishes a privileged association between the artist and the animated film – a fabricated world that depends on its creator and demiurge. Moreover, self-representation has accompanied key moments in animation history, such as the early endowment of comic strip characters with motion. Here, the animated self-caricature of pioneering American animators is often apparent, and, in a more conteporary context, the advent of CGI has established new relationships between authors and their ‘creatures’ in a virtual environment.

The first self-portraits of animators, notably Winsor McCay in the live action scenes of Little Nemo (1911) and Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), helped to position the audience towards a new form of entertainment, as well as to consolidate the emerging profession of animator. Though these films were midway between comedy and documentary genres, the appearance of the draftsmen in their own films soon evolved to become a standardized representation, a stereotype for animated comedy, where the now fictional author is embedded in the cartoon universe, as in the Fleisher Brothers’ series Out of the Inkwell (1921-1927) or Guido Manuli’s short film Solo un bacio (1983). More recently, the self-portrayal of animators has recovered autobiographical aspects, due to a renewed interest in animation as a means to express more serious concerns.

Despite excellent studies on interactivity, intertextuality and self-reflectivity in animation, such as Lindvall and Melton’s essay “Towards a post-modern animated discourse: Bakhtin, intertextuality and the cartoon carnival” (1997), the self-portrayal of animators is under-addressed in Animation Studies. This article will consider the animated autoportrait from an interdisciplinary point of view, relating it to both painting and literature. Equally, the relationships between animators and their own representations will be elucidated by considering self-portrayal in Jacques Derrida’s prominent essay Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins (Mémoirs d’aveugle: L’autoportrait et autres ruines, 1990), in which he formulates the Abocular Hypothesis; that is, the self-portrait as a ghosted image between artists and their reflection, or a falsification of the self, because artists cannot look directly at themselves while painting, but rather to a reduplicating object and remaining necessarily blind for themselves (1990, p. 44).

Read more… »