A Phenomenology of Vision: the Self-Portraits of Jean-Étienne Liotard

Abstract

This essay analyses the self-portraits of Jean-Étienne Liotard (1702-1789). Interpreting these objects through the lens of Maurice-Merleau-Ponty's writings on art and vision, I argue that Liotard's self-portraits can be understood as artistic experiments relating to the fundamental phenomenological problem of seeing and representing the lived-body. In making this argument this essay re-evaluates the art-historical tendency to read Liotard's self-portraits biographically as pictures of his unusual life or as tools of self-promotion.

Keywords

• Jean-Étienne Liotard
• self-portraiture
• phenomenology
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty
• eighteenth century
• Selbstbildnis