A Brief Introduction to John Coplans - Dana Lawrie

Born in London in 1920, John Coplans grew up in South Africa. He spent the better half of his twenties in service, soldiering in Somalia, Burma, and Ethiopia, before returning to Europe and finally settling in America in the 1960’s. He was an advocate for pop art and was himself an abstract expressionist painter, critic, curator, as well as an editor of Art Forum until the late seventies. 

Photography was an approach to art-making that was borne of John’s sixties and saw him gain recognition in the art world as a great talent. John Coplans’ autobiographical photographs approach the human condition in a manner that is relative to every viewer. Although the act of photography may be, in this case, intrinsically linked to personal trauma, the greater human populous is affected by the themes he brings forward; those of ageing, detachment, isolation, and selfhood.  Deliberately avoiding depicting his own face in the portraits, Coplans’ work is allowed a function beyond the genre of self-portraiture – one that is deeply embedded in the worth of art as an expressive or healing act.  Through his photographs, Coplans confronts personal sufferings, gaining understanding of selfhood and, in doing so, alters the means by which the viewer of his artwork understands themselves. In this way, each viewer of Coplans’ work is as a voyeur to his personal trauma, and therefore, the viewer confronts their own trauma by proxy.

I intend to discuss the work of John Coplans in greater detail in both my proposed seminar presentation and further essay. in which I will discuss his critical written work and photographs with reference to ideas on the function of self-representation, healing, and identity in art. Examples of my own painting will also be discussed and situated within the framework of relevant topics; namely those of selfhood, detachment, and art as a psychological tool of understanding.

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Images:

Fig. 1. John Coplans, Self Portrait (Back and Hands) (1984), image, viewed 30^th August 2011,

                  Source: < http://www.artpublic.ch/artists/coplans/coplans3.php>