Tormented Self-Portrait (Susie at Arles)

Ashley Bickerton

1987-88

A towering mixed-media wall sculpture of painted anodized aluminum, leather, rubber and chrome-plated steel that Bickerton assembles like a traveled billboard plastered with corporate logos to stage a satirical “self-portrait” about identity as commodity.

You first notice a glossy panel crowded with familiar corporate marks and the stenciled phrase “SELF PORTRAIT,” its slick advertising surface framed by straps, buckles and a rolled leather case so the object reads as both luggage and billboard—simultaneously commercial, ornamental, and oddly intimate.

Made during the 1980s art-market boom, the work fuses advertising imagery and industrial materials to perform and critique the artist’s branded identity, helping to legitimize the use of corporate logos and consumer detritus as autobiographical and critical language in contemporary art.

Palette

Art Terms

Acrylic paint Appropriation Assemblage Contemporary art Found object Investigating identity Pop art Sculpture Self-portrait

Exhibitions

Contemporary Sculpture: Selections from the Collection of The Museu...

1979

A Penthouse Aviary

1980

Prints by Sculptors

1975

Contemporary Print Acquisitions, 1986–1988

1988