Francis Alÿs

El Soplon (The Prompter), was part of the self proclaimed "feasible experiments" by the artist, in which a suited male protagonist engages his surroundings in a surrealistic, but recognizable manner. Alÿs would paint small "originals" and pass them on to rótulistas (sign painters), who would repaint their versions of Alÿs' painting. Further thwarting the idea of collaboration and authorship, Alÿs would then paint a "new" original based on the copies. Thus began the project Self-Portait Made by Others, from which the present work is arguably the most important.  He commissioned his most favored rótulistas, Enrique Huerta, Juan García and Emilio Rivera, and requested them to make a likeness of him in front of a background that included a series of portraits based on their particular genre specialty.  After modeling for each artist, Alÿs developed his own miniature self-portrait on encaustic, taping a piece of paper over his face in order to disguise his identity. (image a) By design, the realized copies executed by the rótulistas ultimately represent more of the personilty of each sign painter than the actual artist and vice versa.