Arnold Böcklin, Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle, 1872

Arnold Böcklin, Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle, 1872, oil on canvas, 75 x 61 cm (Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin)

(piano music playing)

Steven: Usually, when you
look at a self-portrait,

you see an artist staring
directly at himself in a mirror,

but in Self-Portrait
with Death by Bรถcklin,

he seems not so much to
be looking, as listening.

Female: That menacing figure of death is

not only playing the violin,

but seems to be whispering
something in his ear.

Steven: He seems ecstatic,
where you can see clearly

the skull, with all of its teeth,
that seems to be smiling demonically.

Female: Grinning, I would say.

Steven: Yeah, eager and rather excited.

We see that claw-like hand of bones

that clutches the bow.

and the violin is being played,

but it's being played on
a single remaining string,

as if Bรถcklin has only
that one string to go.

It seems so final.

Female: Death knows he's won here.

Steven: Art outlasts
the life of the artist

and so there's something
very self-conscious about

the act of making a work
of art and especially about

making a self-portrait.

Female: That sense of death
is present in portraits,

generally, not just in self-portraits.

Portraits can make the dead alive,

so I think often when
we look at portraits,

we have a sense of going back in time

of looking at someone who has lived.

But you're right, it's
certainly more poignant

in self-portraits, especially
in the way that Bรถcklin

has collapsed the space here.

Steven: The personification
of death, that skeleton,

is so intimate. It's so close.

You said "whispering in his ear",

it's almost as if Bรถcklin can
literally feel his breath,

if there were such a thing.

Female: The artist, himself,
is very close to us.

His palette is half in our space.

Steven: And you see the raw paint,

it's a depiction of paint made of itself,

that speaks to the lie of painting.

The raw materials that
make up this painting

are made present.

Female: Made honest.

Steven: Made honest. That's right.

Stripping away the veils of
our life, the veils of society.

The palette and the raw
depiction of the paint

is a kind of reminder of the essential.

Bรถcklin is showing us
both the flesh and blood

representation of the artist of the man

clothed in the fashions of his day,

but then he also shows us this skeleton,

in a sense this essence
of what he will become.

The painting as a whole
is beautifully manipulated

to show us the illusion of these figures,

but then it's also laid bare.

Female: The idea of man returning to dust,

from which he was created.

That's what I was reminded of when you

talked about the materiality of the paint.

Steven: He's holding
a rag under his thumb.

Female: To wipe his brush.

Steven: To wipe his brush,

but the way that death wipes us all away.

There is this wonderful way in which

the act of painting is
echoed by the way in which

death transforms us.

(piano music playing)