ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with an analysis of Self-Portrait in order to outline the ways in which Charles Sheeler deliberately creates tension through the interplay of title and image, not only in this work but others, such as View of New York. The ongoing interest in the connection between the title and the work of art was undoubtedly stimulated by the ironically titled Dadaist works of Duchamp and Picabia, both of whom exerted quite a considerable influence on the fledgling American avant-garde. Constance Rourke notes that at the time of the production of Nature Morte-Telephone, the telephone was considered at that time ‘an unsuitable subject for art’. The subject’s identity is reduced to a number, a fact reinforced by the disembodiment of the reflection and the compositional alignment of the telephone and the human body. The shock or shudder is the culmination of the individual subject’s mimetic experience of the work of art.
