Self-Portrait (Frieze No. 2, Four Panels)
1994 · 4 photographs, black and white, on paper
support: 619 x 800 mm frame x 4: 1980 x 880 mm
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John Coplans
1920
Photography
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None documented
0
Institutional Exhibitions
20
Works in Collection
51
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2
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0
Publications Referenced
70%
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About
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John Coplans made large-scale black-and-white photographs of his own aging body, always excluding his head, transforming anonymous sections of flesh into monumental abstract forms. Beginning this body of work in his sixties, after careers as a curator, museum director, and Editor-in-Chief of Artforum, he brought an art-critical rigour to a practice that treated the aging male body as both subject and formal problem. The photographs resist portraiture while insisting on physical presence, their scale and tonal severity refusing sentiment. His work has been exhibited widely across Europe and North America.
Source: Moma Bulk 2026 05 04 · Trust score: 92% · Updated 25d ago
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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Cleveland Museum of Art
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Art Institute of Chicago
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