One of the quickest ways to understand an artist is to look at his self portraits. Van Gogh's reveal his intensity and passion, while Rembrandt's show the calm dignity to which he aspired in his art and his life, and with which he faced aging. But what is to be made of the self portraits of Horst Janssen, the German artist whose work is now at the Museum of Modern Art Saitama (MOMAS)?
In a series of pencil and pastel works from the 1980s -- all showing a great instinct for the expressiveness of line -- the artist, who died in 1995, seems to be caught up in a bout of self laceration. One shows him puffed up like a ball of fat, while another shows the opposite, the lines of the skull protruding through his fleshy features.
In another he presents himself as the Cyclops, peering over his glasses with one eye, while the most memorable image, "Selbst -- Zu Paranoia" (1982), shows the artist with a look of idiotic surprise on his face and a gaping, toothless mouth.