I am Gustave

Jessica Webster and I shared a 7th floor studio at University Corner Studios (WITS University) during our post-graduate studies. We had collaborated before when Jess spent time at the David Krut Print Studio making monotypes with me.

Having recently read about the French painter Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), Jess noted that his self-portraits bore a strong resemblance to me and suggested that this observation be used to explore a series of paintings. This could happen through a form of ‘doubling’ by inserting my image

in the guise of another painter (Courbet), and secondly in the act of doubling up as collaborative painting partners. As Jess put it:

An issue in the play and performance of two people at work on a painting is the question of painting as ‘truth', as an autonomous act of originality and integrity (Personal communication 14th October 2015).

​

Mocked for being extravagantly proud of his looks, Courbet’s self-portraits are often fictions or inventions in which he repeatedly projects himself into fantastical scenarios.

The narcissistic self-absorption, adoration and vanity underlying Courbet’s portraits and the conceitedness of the self-image of the artist in love with himself was something that Jess and I wanted to ‘double-up’ on. The small text seen in the manifesto is a handwritten excerpt from a Derrida quote that served as a kind of mantra throughout our collaboration.

​

​