In 1970, the artist wrote: 'I would like an art that is a razor slash.' The gaunt skeletal subjects of Crozier’s paintings are worked to an irreducible essence, becoming universal symbolic figures. This early 1960s self portrait is indeed an existentialist self-portrayal, representing perhaps a flayed 'everyman' figure. The self portrait is both reminiscent of European traditions like medieval memento mori pictures and the traumatising, atmospheric modern. Crozier stated ‘The image of man in the twentieth century will not be the cinema stars or the pop idols, but the victims of Belsen.’ The eye, a deep black void, contemplates while the ‘skeleton’ cries out against a blood-soaked landscape. The picture’s visceral immediacy is inseparable from contemporary philosophy.