WE NEVER SEE our faces or our bodies as the artist sees them, suspended and maintaining themselves in free space. The part in our hair seems on the wrong side, we think, looking at the sketch, forgetting that our own impressions of the form of our skull, its crown, the line of the hair- parting are almost always derived more from reversed mirror images than from appearances in videotapes or films. It may be that in decades and centuries to come we will form more accurate impressions of the way we exist in three-dimensional space than at present, because of more frequent access to that sort of visual presentation of ourselves to ourselves. This isn`t very likely. When we see ourselves on videotape or film, the first and most pressing conclusion that we draw is that of the total unfamiliarity of the image as there delivered. Walking through a department store, we may happen to pass in front of the security monitor, then look up by accident at the monstrous surveillance screen perched over us at a revelatory angle. We give a start. It`s me! We have a sudden, quite alarming, perception of ourselves as we appear to others in the 3-D world, moving around according to the laws of physics. But we never finalize this perception, objectifying ourselves for ourselves. The only way we can realize our existence in the world is through the eyes of another person, an artist, a lover, someone who is both. The greatest of portraits don`t give us the familiar mirror image but rather what the portraitist sees. In this case only, what is seen of us excels what we see in the mirror. Rembrandt`s Titus. Rubens`s Suzanne in her pretty straw hat, his Helene in her fur tippet.