The Portrait of Père Tanguy

Overview

The trace is similar to the index, but there is a more complex relationship to the original referent because the trace is at once a repetition and an erasure. In his 1974 film The Portrait of Père Tanguy, Goldstein traced a reproduction of the famous Vincent van Gogh painting of the same name. While on the one hand Goldstein's presence is affirmed by the mark which he makes on the paper, on the other, his sense of selfhood or individual identity is called into question by the fact that he is merely tracing an image produced by another individual, an image originally intended to assert van Gogh's individuality and sense of selfhood. The repetition is compounded by the fact that the tracing is, in fact, a tracing of a reproduction so that we are faced with a seemingly endless trail of doubling and disappearance.