ABSTRACT
This chapter expands upon the explorations of genre previously addressed in the book, while also interrogating the way in which self-portraiture can reveal the ideological milieu of its creator. Taking Louis Althusser’s concept of interpellation as a starting point, this chapter claims that the two self-portraits by Pyke Koch shown at the 1938 Venice Biennale exhibit competing ideological subjects that had permeated popular media at that time: the martyr and the strong man. These self-portraits force the audience to grapple with the inherent ambiguity of these paintings, while also taking into consideration the ways in which such contextual framings—in either the press or the Biennale—acted to effectively deny that ambiguity.
