Summary
Woman in Bathtub is one in a portfolio of fourteen drypoint etchings collectively titled Autobiographical Series. Like another image in the series, Toilette (Tate P77682), it portrays the artist in the bathroom in front of a mirror. Toilette offers a voyeur's view of a young woman standing, naked, washing her hair while a male figure spies on her (his face framed in the window is also reflected in the mirror above the young woman's head). In contrast, Woman in Bathtub is a view taken from the eyes of its subject. Instead of being presented with the spectacle of a woman at her toilette, the eyes of the viewer are directed through the viewpoint of the woman who is looking at herself in the mirror while sitting in the bath. The image represents the potential scism in identity on seeing oneself reflected in a mirror. This involves two simultaneous, contradictory positions: that of an invisible but seeing consciousness and that of a physical object in space. In psychoanalytic terms, the mirror functions as an important symbolic means of recognising the double condition of self and other inherent to every individual… (read more)
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