Reflective surfaces have entranced us for millennia. Today, a mirror is a common everyday object, found in bags, pockets and the front of our phones. But that’s not always been the case. Mirrors have held a number of symbolic meanings across the ages: 5,000 years ago, in ancient Egypt, they were extremely valuable, placed in tombs and believed to capture the soul of the deceased – illuminating a path to the afterlife. Dark obsidian, a reflective volcanic glass, was used by Aztecs (1300-1521) to divine the future. During the Renaissance, they were powerful technical tools in the quest towards real- ism; Leonardo da Vinci said: “The mirror is our teacher.” By the 1600s, the The Hall of Mirrors was under construction in Versailles, exalting Louis XIV’s authority. Later, as the Gilded Age ushered in the rise of consumerism, Americans began to see their reflections in department store windows more and more often, rubbing shoulders with mannequins attired in the latest wares. Thousands of years apart, these case studies demonstrate the importance of mirrors in human identity construction: asking who are we, and who do we want to be?
“Holding a mirror up to yourself, be it an actual or a metaphorical one, is quite a difficult task to undertake,” writes Mi- chael Petry (b. 1960) in MirrorMirror: The Reflective Surface in Contemporary Art, a new book that looks at this phenomenon across painting, installation, sculpture and multimedia. It’s a who’s who of contemporary artists working in the space: Anish Kapoor, Cindy Sherman, Doug Aitken, Lee Bul, Tracey Emin, Olafur Eliasson, Trevor Paglen, Sarah Sze, Yayoi Kusama and more. But it also looks back to history to establish the legacy upon which these artists build. MirrorMirror features architectural installations, reflective metal sculptures, shining light displays as well as self-portraits. Some artists centre the mirror as their physical and conceptual subject, whilst others use it as a conduit to different ideas, like digital selfie culture.
Petry’s own artwork, The Pool of Narcissus (2019), is featured in the book. The installation, exhibited at the Joshua Treenial, is an example of how mirrors, when positioned in the right place, can disrupt the status quo. “The one thing that happens in the desert is you have mirages, where it looks like there’s water, but it’s this weird reflection in the sky on the land. I thought: I want to make a pool of water that you can look into, but is not actually water. And it’s so strange … you see this pool, and what happens is you look into it and see yourself. We’re all able to look, but not everyone can see that, sometimes, things are actually a trap.” It featured a sheet of blue glass placed amidst the arid Californian desert, the pul- sating heat of the sun projecting hazy images on its surface.
Here, Petry draws on the Greek myth of Narcissus, a famous tale about the perils of pride and self-absorption. The story continues to inspire creatives to this day; Petry references other 21st century interpretations from David Trullo, Susan Silas and Sarah Purcill in MirrorMirror. Just like in the fairytale Snow White, when the queen asks: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” The looking glass remains a metaphor for deception and seduction, which can trick the eye just as easily as it can promise truth and clarity of sight.
So, how does one approach the task of making a book about such a wide-reaching subject matter? “In terms of the way the book is laid out, I thought, let’s look at what actually constitutes a mirrored artwork.” Petry is a multi-media artist who co-wrote the authoritative book on installations, The Empire of the Senses, and is author of The Art of Not Making: The New Artist / Artisan Relationship. He is also Director of MOCA in London. “I wanted to show how artists have always used mirrors to either look at themselves or have the audience look at themselves. The book has a chapter on history, because I think that it’s important to show how contemporary work comes from a dialogue with the past.”
Petry introduces Jan van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Portrait (1434), one of the most famous Renaissance examples, which depicts a couple – a man clad in a fur-trimmed cloak and black hat, and a woman, visibly pregnant, who is dressed in green. The pair hold hands, framing a chandelier above them and, importantly, a circular mirror hanging on the wall in the background. It repeats their likeness and ex- pands the picture space, a revolutionary technique for the time. There are also examples of artists “breaking the fourth wall”, like in Diego Velazquez’ Venus at her Mirror, painted around 1651, which shows a naked woman propped up by a cherub, her back turned to the viewer, soft features hazy in the sheen of a looking glass. Later, John Water- house’s 1891 Pre-Raphaelite painting Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses showed the sorceress sitting on a makeshift throne mounted by an imperial mirror, a potion in her out- stretched hand. Shifty Odysseus smooth-talks his way out of her wrath – but, crucially, he’s only seen as a reflection.
The 20th century saw Surrealism enter the conversa- tion, and with it came discussions of introspection and the subconscious. Masterworks like René Magritte’s Not to Be Reproduced (1937) offered unsettling depictions of the self. Petry reads Claude Cahun’s Reflected Image in Mirror, Checked Jacket (1928) as a precursor to today’s self portraits. Indeed, there are echoes of Cahun in contemporary lens-based artworks, including the fragmented, multilayered portraits of photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya. He uses mirrors as a way of discussing queer identity and Blackness.
“All of my books come directly out of my practice as a visual artist,” Petry says, referring to his installation The Pool of Narcissus. “This piece is from 2019, at the height of Trump’s presence in America. His notion of self was un- altered by reality or other factors. That’s the whole idea of narcissism. At that time, we were also starting to see the everyday person engaging in a kind of narcissism that just didn’t happen before: the selfie. It became such a huge phenomenon … people were taking selfies in front of artworks. Maybe they had a following of 200 or 300, or they may even have thousands, or millions if they’re influencers. But the impulse to do that is the same.” In many ways, the selfie is a form of identity construction, of saying: “I was there.”
Yayoi Kusama’s blockbuster Infinity Mirror Rooms, which also feature in the book, are a popular choice for those who wish to snap such pictures. Her unfurling mirrors, which stretch into a kaleidoscopic forever, immerse anyone standing in the room into a starlit experience that trans- mutes reality into an endless dream. But they are much more than a photo opportunity. In Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, exhibited in New York City in 2013, Kusama managed to tap into the innate human desire for wonder and awe. The experience is much like looking up at an unpolluted night sky, where multicoloured lights beam across an otherwise dark space. Mirrorsare used to annihilate boundaries of the self, making it difficult to discern where the reflection ends and viewer begins. Similarly, Mischa Kuball’s five planets invokes the cosmos,
as five glittering disco balls hang and rotate in space whilst shards of stunning light refract across midnight-drenched walls. It’s not unlike the inevitable orbit of earth around the sun. In the installation space-speech-speed, originally made in for the Power Plant in Toronto and exhibited across the world since then, a mirrored ball anchors the dark room, as two others rotate and spangle the gray walls with fluorescent figures of light. Kuball’s deep interest in producing light experiences inspired by early scientific discovery, such as the 2018 installation five suns: after galilei, recalls the use of telescopes and other mirrored objects by Renaissance-era astronomers like Galileo Galilei and John Dee, who were intent on understanding the movement of the planets in outer space and their relationship to humans.
This same continuity with history is present in Olafur Eliasson’s 2016 installation Solar Compression, which was shown in the Palace of Versailles. A mirrored disc haloed with artificial light hung in a pared-back room, the natural sunlight pouring from the windows altering visitors’ colour perception as they glimpsed themselves in the barely- revolving mirror. Doug Aitken’s Mirage, part of Desert X 2017, featured a silver house shimmering in the wilderness outside Palm Springs. Its exterior and interior were covered entirely by mirrors, causing the building to blend with the rocks, trees, sky and sand. As such, the effect of the instal- lation is of dreamlike doubt: did the house ever even exist in the first place, or is the desert playing tricks on the mind? The same can be said of Sarah Sze’s Fallen Sky (2021), a jigsaw of 132 flat polished stainless steel pieces that echo changing sun and cloud conditions throughout the day.
In photography, MirrorMirror features lens-based artists who expose how social media is distorting our sense of self. The deceiving nature of reflections appears in Cindy Sher- man’s grotesque portraits, which show her face distorted in fantastical ways through digital technology – a satirical commentary on plastic surgery and beauty ideals fed to us via algorithms. Meanwhile, Tracey Emin’s 2019 Insomnia Room Installation interrogates the selfie in a different way, featuring several different portraits Emin snapped when she could not sleep over the course of four years. In the pictures, Emin looks tired, doesn’t wear any makeup, and the natural effects of aging are visible on her face. The artist’s unapologetic decision to frame selfies showing stress and vulnerability in an exhibition denigrates established beauty standards, questioning a culture obsessed with defining women by their capacity to perform for the male gaze. For
The Screenface Ones (2023), meanwhile, Tim Willcocks contacted sitters on social media, then met them in real life to make a portrait that puts their digital devices in the frame. Ultimately, the appeal of mirrors lies in their relatability: everyone wants to know what they look like. “You have an idea of what you look like or how you want to look, and you check in the mirror to see if the idea of you and what you actually look like is a relatively good match,” Petry notes. “But it’s never a match. Everyone in the book is addressing the fact that people look into mirrors all the time. You often see people walking on the street and catch their eye in a pane of glass, and if their hair is out of place, they will fix it. It’s so ingrained that people will do it without even thinking.”
Words Iman Sultan
MirrorMirror: The Reflective Surface in Contemporary Art Published November 2024
thamesandhudson.com
Image Credits:
1. Anthony James, Constellation, (2020). Installation view. Stainless steel, glass, LEDs. Dimensions of largest: 2.54 × 2.54 × 2.54 m (81/3 × 81/3 × 81/3 ft).Courtesy Anthony James & Melissa Morgan Fine Art. Photo: Anthony James Studio.
2. Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, (2013) Wood, metal, glass mirrors, plastic, acrylic panel, rubber, LED lighting system, acrylic balls and water 113 1/4 x 163 1/2 x 163 1/2 inches 287.7 x 415.3 x 415.3 cm © YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy the artist, David Zwirner, Ota Fine Arts, and Victoria Miro. (Detail).
3. Mischa Kuball space – speech – speed, (1998). Centre for International Light Art, Unna, Germany (permanent collection). 3 mirrored balls, 3 projectors, 2 ceiling motors, 3 slides. Dims variable. Photos: Frank Vinken, © Archive Mischa Kuball, Düsseldorf / VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2022.
4. Mischa Kuball space – speech – speed, (1998). Centre for International Light Art, Unna, Germany (permanent collection). 3 mirrored balls, 3 projectors, 2 ceiling motors, 3 slides. Dimensions variable. Photos: Frank Vinken, © Archive Mischa Kuball, Düsseldorf / VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2022.
5. Mischa Kuball, five planets, (2011). Times Art Museum, Beijing, China, 2022. 5 mirror balls, 5 rotating motors, 5 gobo spots, 5 lenses, 5 gobo masks. Dimensions variable. Edition 1/2. Courtesy Museum Folkwang, Essen Germany. Photo: Yuqi Wei, © Archive Mischa Kuball, Düsseldorf / VG Bild- Kunst Bonn, 2022.
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