Photo on 2011-05-09 at 21.59

This is the latest in a series of self portraits entitled “Me” by the Russian-born artist Alexander Kargaltsev. The series is characterised by a striking self-analysis and visual drama. A number are nude or semi-nude and reveal the artist’s inward fascination and absorption. Although they are necessarily narcissistic, they are positively so. They chart the artist’s life from early boyhood, a charming childhood shot taken by his father, through adolescence—a wonderful image shows the boyish photographer glancing obliquely but knowingly at a basket of fruit, an almost unnatural bounty of nature, the subject reminiscent of some Caravaggio youth. Others show the artist as film director, on set, with actors, in charge. Many are striking, disturbing, even shocking, presenting the subject in extreme, challenging natural surroundings: a nude lapping water in a forest glade, leg cocked in the air; the nude artist seemingly fucking a haystack; a nude standing on a frozen pool. Among the highlights of recent photographs is a wonderful chiaroscuro full-length nude portrait taken in the window of a Manhattan loft. Others appear more conventional: the subject in Russian sailor-style shirt, a smile playing around his lips; a stern shirtless figure against a red door with braces; a similar shot in underwear on a beach, unsmiling, unflinching, unyielding, uncompromising. The nails portrait seems a prima vista to take a new direction. The subject has painted his finger nails different colours, greens, yellows, greys and blues. The quality of the manicure is personal, rather than professional, touching in its innocence and enthusiasm. The hands are curled, framing his face, his left eye obscured by his painted thumb. The artist seems to be unsmiling, the focus is on his languid right eye surrounded by the constellation of stars which are the painted nails. The upper part of the portrait is bathed in an acid lemony light; the lower in a baleful mauve, including the subject’s hands; and the composition is suffused with sadness. This apparently artless image is one of the artist’s great achievements: the face like the young Rembrandt of the etchings, melancholic and pensive. In a combative note in Russian, Kargaltsev reveals his intention to challenge the viewer, dividing the reactions into the shocked, the impassive and the positively accepting, with the latter only getting the author’s approval. It is the artist daring and challenging his public. And yet, for this spectator the challenge is not the nails, which seem at once decorative and unshocking, and at the same time a formal point of the composition in its fascinating perspectives. Rather, the challenging aspect is one of tone and key and the sadness radiating from the artist’s eye, omniscient and unseeing. The technical challenges of the composition seem effortlessly overcome. The face seems to defy analysis, sad, impassive, perhaps even filled with regret, there is not enough of it for certainty. The finger-nails provide the artist’s challenge to his viewers, in the quality of the image and composition and in the strong emotional power, there is much more to this wonderful portrait than just the dare of the eccentric manicure. SR