"In self-portraiture, you can never depict what the mirror reflects," Heffernan said.
The ancient Greeks believed that painting stemmed from a man wanting to trace his shadow's outline on the ground, according to Heffernan. The goal of painters in ancient Greece was therefore to replicate what was already presented in real life. Heffernan said, however, that he questions whether any painting has the ability to accurately represent reality.
Besides the logistical impossibility of looking at one's self in a mirror and focusing on a canvas at the same time, abstraction also inherently exists in the process of composing a work of art, Heffernan said. Art historians and literary critics have asserted that in some cases there is one truly "accurate" self-portrait of a particular artist, but Heffernan pointed to the many nuances of famous self-portraits to show that the word "accurate" cannot be applied to representations of reality.
To illustrate his point, Heffernan cited the painter Rembrandt, who finished 90 self-portraits. Heffernan displayed several of Rembrandt's self-portraits some of which showed the artist depicted as a beggar, a reveler and a saint to highlight the self-dramatization inherent in each painting.
Literary examples such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Confessions," Augustine's "Confessions" and Lord Byron's autobiographical poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" also represent the difficulties of self-representation. Passages that Heffernan cited from Rousseau's "Confessions" suggested that Rousseau felt most himself while pretending to be someone else.
"[Autobiographers and self-portraitists] expose the illusion in the very act of creating it," Heffernan said.
Heffernan also used a selection from William Wordsworth's poem "Prelude" to demonstrate how autobiographers had "the impossible task of looking through the mirror."
"In autobiography, you always have a negotiation between two selves," Heffernan said. "You have a mature self reflecting on a past, younger self."
Although autobiographies typically represent many events throughout an individual's life while self-portraits focus on a single moment, Heffernan offered interesting examples of overlap between the two disciplines. David Bailey's 1651 painting "Self-Portrait with Symbols of Vanity," which shows his younger self presenting a portrait of himself as an old man, is one of a few known paintings that show the artist in multiple stages of his life.
Artists also subtly insert themselves into works that at first glance have nothing to do with self-portraiture, as in the case of English Romantic landscape painter J.M.W. Turner, Heffernan said.
Heffernan, who was never formerly trained as an art historian, said he first became interested in the overlap between literature and art while studying Romantic poets and landscapes.
"Language shapes our response to art," he said.
Heffernan's most recent book, "Cultivating Picturacy" (2006), discusses diverse periods in art ranging from the prehistoric to the postmodern.
"One thing lead to another," he said. "I thought, let's add this in. I found [studying art and literature] stimulating."
Heffernan's lecture, titled "Cracking the Mirror: Self-Representation in Literature and Art," was sponsored by the Hood Museum of Art.
