In a recent article in The New York Times, Natalie Angier wrote about the complex psychology involved in how we see ourselves in the mirror. It seems that whenever we look in the mirror, we see what we want to see. For example, Angier points to a psychology experiment that demonstrates that when presented with images of ourselves that are enhanced, made uglier, or left untouched, we’re most apt to call the enhanced image the image of our true, unblemished selves. Another experiment demonstrated that people behave better when they’re in a room with mirrors. Yet another psychological truth is that people rarely estimate correctly the size of their head as it’s reflected in the mirror (the size of the reflected head in the mirror is always half the size of one’s head).

Although Angier’s article is pretty interesting, to an artist like me it misses the real power and enigma of the mirror. Angier asks “how we can be so self-delusional when the truth stares back at us?” Well, the truth about mirrors is precisely that the truth does not stare back at us. Mirrors offer illusions — even delusions — and are only superficially true.

First of all, mirrors reverse the chirality, or handedness, of objects viewed in the mirror. Our right hand appears as our left hand in a mirror image of ourselves. We’re told that what we see in the mirror is what others see, when they look at us. But that’s not quite true, since others can tell very easily that our right hand is our right hand.

We can hardly be blamed, then, for not seeing ourselves correctly — whatever that would mean. (If you think I’m confusing here, try figuring out why mirrors reverse chirality but do not reverse heads and feet so that we see ourselves upside down.)

Secondly, mirrors and art both reveal virtual, or artificial, worlds, which, though connected to the natural world, should never be confused with it. For ages, painters have used mirrors to help them order their pictures compositionally (e.g., that too-big shape that seems O.K. when it enters the picture stage left, is revealed as way too big when seen in a mirror, exiting stage right), and to edit down from the plethora of sensations presented by the natural world to only those essential to the painting.

In the Middle Ages, artists belonged to the same guild as mirror makers. Both were secretive about what went on in their workshops, and artists rarely mentioned how, exactly, they used mirrors. The invention of linear perspective, at the beginning of the Renaissance, involved the mirror, and Leonardo, who understood and applied the laws of linear perspective in his art, not only kept mirrors in his own studio, but advocated all artists use them to check the balance of their compositions.

It’s interesting that when art historians discuss the rise of the self-portrait in Western art, the mirror is neglected. It should be obvious that the rise of the self-portrait, as a genre in itself, required not just a rise in the social status of the artist, but also that artists have access to excellent mirrors.

Consider, for a moment, the problem (and fascination) the mirror presents to the artist who paints a self-portrait. The self-portrait holds the unsettling paradox that it’s an image of the artist’s self that’s built on an unstable connection to the truth of what that appearance is. If the artist paints what he sees, as reflected directly in the mirror, the results are profoundly incorrect. For if the artist is left-handed, his or her brush will appear in the right hand, and if right-handed, it will appear in the left hand.

Moreover, faces are not fully symmetrical; with age, they become increasingly asymmetrical. People see their own likenesses most often in mirrors. Unless they’re actors or models gazing at their own headshots every day, or news anchors who watch themselves on monitors, they’re somewhat startled on the few occasions they get to see their own faces as others see them.

The mirror usually is only a small matter in art-history textbooks, not even warranting mention in the index. Despite David Hockney’s attempts, a few years back, to find in the mirror the key to explaining the rise of accurate naturalism in Western art, there’s been no attempt to study the mirror’s role in Western culture that’s equivalent to Jared M. Diamond’s book, Guns, Germs and Steel, on how great forces — such as those three — are so obvious that we tend to overlook them in historical accounts. Perhaps for us to understand fully the rise of modern self-consciousness, and its concomitantly excessive individualism, requires that we first understand the role of mirrors.

Beyond all this big stuff, will someone kindly explain to me the meaning of the words etched into the side-mirrors on car doors: “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear”? There are no objects “in [the] mirror”; there are only objects behind me which are reflected in the mirror. How about, then, “Objects are closer than they appear in mirror”?

Maybe the Big Three automakers are having enough trouble these days eating their own gas-guzzling SUV’s to reflect upon reflections.

(Image from Photobucket.com)