On Mutilation by Jim Sherry

Among the more uncommon experiences is the realization that one of your close friends is destined for greatness. Thus was the singular thought running through my mind after witnessing my friend Jim Sherry’s sublime talent manifest in a collection of paintings on display in our high school common areas. His was a category all its own: a series of surreal, dreamlike visages, each making some profound assessment of the nature of interpersonal relationships,¹ the crushing reality of terminal illness,² or the abstract quality of modern individuality. The last of these messages was encapsulated in Mutilation,³ a pseudo-self-portrait which I consider the crowning achievement of his high school career. With its nightmarish style and images, Mutilation offers several stirring commentaries on the modern ideas of individuality and identity from within the artistic school of surrealism, including the transience of one’s “virtual” identity, the perceptibility of individuality, and the transformability of personality.

The idea that Mutilation represents the mutability of individuality stems from the multiple incarnations of subject Sherry’s face in the painting. Becoming something of a self-portrait, the faces melt into one another and overlap in many places, suggesting a conflict or crisis in identity or self-awareness. This inferred conflict is the basis for my interpretations of Sherry’s painting, and I believe the work has a few important messages which it can share with viewers of any age or background.

In order to fully appreciate a work of art, it’s important to understand it in context. Jim was working within the artistic school known as surrealism, the same category as prominent works by Salvador Dali and others. Surrealism is famous for its “compelling dream-related images” and the frequently-employed “juxtapositions of unrelated objects” which made the style unique.⁴ For these reasons, the content, style, and themes contained within Mutilation place it well within the school of surrealism. But what does this suggest about identity within the piece? Since surrealism often dealt with the relationship or connections between the conscious and subconscious minds, usually exploring these correlations through dream analogies, the psychological aspects of surrealism—like the studies of dreams and of the subconscious—are intrinsically linked with the subjects of identity, self-awareness, and self-image.

Since Clifford Geertz⁵ argues that art and culture are intrinsically linked through a bond of mutual influence, it would stand to reason that, crafted during the advent of computerized communication and specifically social networking websites, Mutilation presents a timely criticism of the contemporary idea of internet identities. In creating profiles for ourselves on any number of social websites, we not only place a little piece of our identity upon the site’s server, but we also inadvertently participate in what could be considered an invisible, unmonitored social experiment. For people with whom your only interaction is virtual, this online profile may be the only representation of your identity they ever experience. While the screen may point out your interests and redeeming qualities, they’re in reality interacting with a machine, which presents a reproduced version of your individual essence. As Staniszewski argues on page 59 of her book,⁶ Believing is Seeing, “Today we live in a world where the image, the reproduction, is more powerful than the original”. Applied there to reproduced pieces of art, her argument gains new meaning when applied to a work like “Mutilation,” which raises some important questions: which of the three shown figures is the original, and which are variations or copies? Does it even matter?

These questions extend further, inspiring a certain degree of introspection and helping the viewer recall instances of self-doubt. How can I be sure of who I am? Am I really a unique person, or am I the product of my environment? Would someone else with identical circumstances as me emerge as the same person? The ability to perceive and appreciate one’s identity is a concept with its roots in classical philosophy, but whose power extends to and translates well in the modern era. Because its images conjure visualizations of multiplying identical individuals, Mutilation has the power to force viewers into introspection and self-consideration regarding their own uniqueness—or lack thereof—a quality even the most prominent and influential artists in history strove to achieve.

If the lines governing individuality are liquid in cyberspace, the same is likely of them in the material world. Another idea brought to light by Mutilation is that of one’s inconsistencies, the alterations made consciously or otherwise to one’s identity depending on the social circumstances. The multiple visages could represent the different “masks” donned by the subject in some situations, one for each unique social group or condition. These subtle changes in the fine details of one’s personality can render the same effect on real-world social interaction as maintaining contact merely through electronic media—the other people the subject encounters may each know only a fraction of the whole, for the remaining intricacies lie concealed behind the appropriate masks.

With its underlying meanings and multilayered messages, Mutilation can be easily understood to be the handiwork of a truly talented craftsman. The great wealth of commentary it can offer on the issues presented by contemporary identity make it an important, influential, and essential work of our technological generation. As we continue to hide behind façades built of computer screens and code, only an artist like Jim Sherry will be able to pry open the digital rock and lay our inconsistencies out in the unforgiving sunlight.