Exercise: Annotatate a classical sculpture, Part 4, Project 3 - Aphrodite Crouching/Lely's Venus

The sculpture I have chosen for this exercise is one I have come to know well over the last few weeks, as I have attempted to draw it on two separate occasions (below right); both times made  difficult by the volume of tourist traffic in the more popular rooms of the British Museum. It is a beautiful piece, and well worth the interruptions and comments.

My pencil sketch done at British Museum

Lely's Venus, Roman,2nd Century BC

 Praxiteles' Knidian Venus,copy.

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of the naked and semi-naked Aphrodite/Venus as a mainstream subject of sculpture and painting in Western art. There are many variants,  of which the naked crouching Aphrodite is only one, but the attribution of the original subject is without question the Greek sculptor, Praxiteles. Praxiteles, as the first ever to show the Goddess completely naked, created a scandal by going against the social mores of Greek society and the sculptural traditions of the day which only allowed male sculptures to be shown naked. Not only was she naked, but she was doing something that every mortal did - bathing. This act of doing the commonplace brought her down from the Gods to a level where people could relate to her and she became more approachable. Placed in a shrine in her temple at Knidos in south-western Turkey, the Knidian Venus statue was later stolen, ending up in Constantinople where it is thought to have been destroyed in the fire of 476 AD. He defined the ideal which would influence how the female body would be depicted by artists for centuries afterwards, from the Romans to the Renaissance masters. The ancient writers Pliny and Lucian both describe in detail how the statue could evoke lust in her viewers, and the lengths they would go to see her from all directions; particularly admiring her soft flesh, her expression, her pose. 

Lely's Venus, as it is sometimes known, takes its name from the painter Sir Peter Lely (1618-80), who owned the sculpture after acquiring it from the collection of Charles I before the King's execution in 1649. After Lely died, it found its way back into the Royal Collection. The sculpture had previously been in the collection of the Gonzaga family in Mantua (northern Italy) for several hundred years, and was there in 1600 when Peter Paul Rubens first visited Italy. Rubens was so impressed by the artwork he encountered that he defined the style of the voluptuous nude in his paintings for years to come.  It came to England after being purchased from the Gonzagas in 1627 for Charles I, an avid collector of artworks.

It is a sensual sculpture, the sculptor's ideal of what the perfect (human form) female body of the Goddess Aphrodite might look like in the nude, made between the the 2nd and 1st century BC in the Antonine period of the Roman Empire by Doidalsas of Bithynia, after the original by the innovative sculptor Praxiteles. Often, the crouching Venus-type statue was placed around a pool so that her reflection could be seen in the water.  

Ionian Aphrodite

 
Earliest Greek sculptures of Aphrodite are thought to have been based on the Hindu Goddess Laxmi, and were much more modest, celebrating her role as the patroness of natural growth. As shown in a copy of an Ionian sculpture (right), approximately 6th Century BC,Aphrodite was depicted wearing a close-fitting chitton and long robe, holding a dove/fruit or flower - all symbols of mating and fertility (Museum of Lyon).

Nude depictions of Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans) inspired slavish following and were a critical development in Classical sculpture, which reflected the rising social status of women and changing attitudes towards them in Ancient Greek and Roman society. So famous did the Aphrodite of Knidos become, in fact, that she inspired generations of artists across the ancient world to make copies. Statue after statue of Aphrodite was produced, which mimicked or played with the stance and position of the Knidian Aphrodite, and thus her sexual ambiguity.  Sculptors who succeeded Praxiteles created more and more sexual and erotic statues, teasing the viewer and opening debate as to whether she was modestly trying to shield herself or inviting attention. It is the Greeks and the Romans we have to thank for defining beauty in women in a way that would influence artists for centuries.

 

Venus of Rhodes

The crouching Venus pose, already popular with the Greeks, became even more popular with the Romans, with her sexuality emphasized more as time went on. Greek mythology states that Aphrodite was born of the sea, and she was often depicted with wet hair. The variant (left) shows Aphrodite wringing out her wet hair and not attempting to cover herself. This association with water inspired 18th century garden designers to include Venus in many of their most ambitious projects.

Lely's Venus, in particular, has had a direct effect on many artists over the last several hundred years and almost certainly inspired Marcantonio Raimondi in his engraving of Crouching Venus in 1505-6 (below right), Rubens in his Allegory of 1612-13 (below left) and the Irish painter, Adam Buck, in his watercolour landscape (below centre).

Marcantonio Raimondi 1505-6

"Allegory" (1612-13) by Peter Paul Rubens

Adam Buck (1759-1833) Man and Woman Admiring Venus

References:

Beard, M. and Henderson J., 2001. Classical Art: from Greece to Rome, Oxford Uni. Press

Gersht, R., Aquatic Figure Types from Caesarea-Maritima, Department of Art History, Tel 

                    Aviv University (available at: http://www5.tau.ac.il/arts/departments/images

                   /stories/journals/arthistory/Assaph6/03gersht.pdf )

Havelock, C. H., 1995,The Aphrodite of Knidos and Her Successors: A Historical Review of 

                   the Female Nude in Greek Art, Ann Arbor

Honour, H. and Fleming, J., 7th Edition, 2009, A world History of Art, Laurence King, 

                  Publishing Ltd, London

Morford, M.,Lenardson, R., Sham, M., 9th edition, Classical Mythology, Oxford Uni. Press

 

https://www.britishmuseum.org

http://www.fischerarthistory.com/aphroditevenus.html

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/greece/hetairai 

           /aphrodite.html

Research: Review Paintings re. the Accurate Representation of the Human Figure, Part 4, Project 3

Symbolised, abstracted images of the human body have been around since humans first appeared on earth. They can be seen in carved human symbols ( the Venus Figurines of 25,00-23,000BC ) and cave paintings, and give us the first examples of representations of values and ideas that were prevalent at the time. The name, Venus Figurines, implies that they were made as examples of female beauty, but anthropologists have argued that they could have been deity symbols, or hopes of health and survival during an Ice Age.  Societies are always in a state of change, and are affected by various pressures. They need to be analysed within their cultural context to be fully understood. 

The ancient Egyptians certainly had a concept of what they saw as ideal in human beauty (remarkably similar to the long-limbed, small-hipped, wide-eyed symmetrical look of the present day!) and would work hard with their cosmetics and personal hygiene rituals to maintain their attractiveness. They portrayed static images of people, with little variation, and little attempt at anatomical accuracy.

In ancient Greece Aristotle said that, "Art completes what Nature cannot bring to a finish. The artist gives us knowledge of Nature's unrealised ends". This says more about how Aristotle viewed the role of art - i.e. as something to take us into the realm of the ideal, and away from the everyday. The Greeks strove to bring the Gods to the people in a way that emulated the human form, but as it would be in perfection - stronger, more symmetrical, more well-developed, more desirable, but with just enough unblemished exaggeration that ordinary mortals would still be in awe.

Kenneth Clark agreed with him in his classic book on the nude in art, writing,  "The body is not one of those subjects which can be made into art by direct transcription — like a tiger or a snowy landscape. . . . We do not wish to imitate; we wish to perfect. The nude as a conceptual and artistic category always involved the notion of an ideal abstracted from the reality we confront in our everyday lives. As such, we may add, the nude in art plays a role similar to that of the hero in epic: it provides the means and occasion to figure forth what a particular society takes to be greatest excellence".(Clark, 1956)

The Romans and Etruscans developed the art they revered from the Greeks by producing more dynamic, realistic poses that ordinary people could relate to, and the 16th and 17th century "academies" that sprung up in Europe, starting in Italy, set out to educate young artists in this classical tradition in a way that set them apart from mere craftsmen. By stressing the intellectual element of fine art with very fixed ideas of what was aesthetically correct or pleasing, these academies appeared to be enlightened when they first began, carrying on the ground-breaking work by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. At the time, there was no question that art was about intellect, not emotion. But by the 17th Century, an argument had developed over whether the style of Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) with its importance of line was superior to the style of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). Which was more important - disegno (line) or colore (colour)? Underlying this argument was the fundamental question of whether art was about intellect or emotion.

The problem with the academies having these fixed ideas was that they did not account for changing tastes in society and the different techniques (including photography) available by the 19th century, when artists like Gustave Courbet rejected the inflexible approach because it paid more attention to idealism than it did to contemporary social concerns.

Academic art declined throughout the nineteenth century because its approach was totally inflexible. and its image out of date with public taste. Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) represented the ultimate academician with his history paintings and neo-classicist style portraits - in stark contrast to the dramatic style of the Romantic works of Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) with their vigour and energy. The academies could make or break an artist's reputation, by rejecting or accepting works for public display. They held a stranglehold on the hierarchy of genres, which artists objected to because of the lowly position afforded landscapes and still life. Although most of the 19th century artists had trained under the academy conditions, many wanted freedom from academic art so that they could dispense with the idealized imagery and perfect detail demanded by the academic style. One artist who managed to "sit on the fence" and appease both sides of the stylistic argument was Antoine-Jean Gros (1771- 1835). Another debate that raged over time was to do with working methods. Was it better to learn art by looking at nature, or by scrutinizing the works of Old Masters? In other words, what is good art - the ability to interpret and organise what you see in nature or the ability to faithfully copy what the Old Masters produced?
 

These arguments about art had their effect on public taste, of course, and this anecdotal story about one man's perceived idea of perfection shows the impact of trying to impose a fixed ideal of beauty on society by attempting to control how people judge beauty.  In a letter written by Effie Gray to her father about the reason for the unconsummation of her six-year long 1848 marriage to the well-known philanthropist and art critic John Ruskin, Effie wrote,

"He alleged various reasons..................and finally this last year he told me his true reason..........that he had imagined women were quite different from what he saw I was, and that the reason he did not make me his Wife was because he was disgusted with my person the first evening 10th April." Janet Malcolm relates the explanation given by Mary Lutyens for Ruskin's disgust in his wife's appearance as:- ".......he discovered that Effie had pubic hair. Nothing had prepared him for this. He had never been to an art school and none of the pictures or statues on public exhibition at that time depicted female nudes with hair anywhere on their bodies. In his ignorance he believed her to be uniquely disfigured." (Lutyens in Malcolm, J. 2013) Lutyens explanation has been disputed (and a counter argument about to be put forward in Emma Thompson's film, Effie Gray, to be released this year), but the sad public scandal of their marriage did expose the disconnect between idealised images of the female body and reality which still exists today. If the beauty and desirability of all women is to be judged against the perceived perfection of the classical ideal, each of us is going to be found wanting.

It seems to me that the question, "Is there any tension between an art based on the classical ideal and art pursuing anatomical accuracy?" must be answered with a loud, "Yes!". It is really a re-statement of a more fundamental question posed for centuries. What is good painting today? Is it about intellect or emotion? Is there a place of interpretation? 

According to Paul Trachtman of the Smithsonian Institute, we are now witnessing a resurgence in interest in representational or figurative art mixed with elements of abstraction and ambiguous narrative in ways that have not been seen before. If artists stop experimenting, they have ceased to develop their art and have nothing more to say. He states, "As the 20th century progressed, painters such as Wassily Kandinsky and Jackson Pollock abandoned the concept of art as representation altogether, producing canvases that contained no recognisable objects at all. In their "abstract" works, the paint itself became the subject. By the 1960s, conceptual artists—inspired by Marcel Duchamp and other Dadaists of the 1920s—adopted the view that art should aim at the mind, not the eye, turning out paintings in which the idea behind the work was more important than the work itself. With a few obvious exceptions—Pop Art, Photo Realism and artists such as David Hockney—representational or figurative art was largely considered a thing of the past by the end of the 20th century." 
 

Western society is individualistic, expressive and far less religious than ever before. It is far more complex, multi-racial, multi-faith, yet more democratic in structure than the city-states where the classical ideal was born and flourished. Individuals today are encouraged to think and form opinions for themselves, not to slavishly follow dogma, and to be tolerant of differences. They do not risk ostracism if their ideas are not mainstream. Artists reflect the culture and society they live in so we should expect them to interpret, not to reflect ideals that were relevant in societies very different from the ones we live in today. What is more, tension produces debate and debate encourages ideas. We are far from an ideal society yet, so we accept the tension and we celebrate the freedom to debate.

Web-sites:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/back-to-the-figure-164135338/?no-ist

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/academic-art.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10659826/Will-Emma-Thompsons-film-about-Ruskin-now-see-the-light-of-day.html

http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/venus1.pdf

Books:

Malcolm, J., 2013, Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers, Granta Books, London

Clark,K.,1956,The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form,Bollingen Series 35.2. New York: Pantheon Books.
Strickland,C., 'The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern', pages 12-15, 68  

Exercise: Commission a Portrait, Part 4, Project 2

Pastel drawing of my husband for Drawing I

For this exercise, I have to imagine that I am  commissioning a portrait of someone and I have chosen myself. I have already commissioned two professional portraits of my husband and have even attempted to get a good likeness by drawing him myself for the Drawing I course (left), so I'd like to see what an artist would make of me as the subject. Why? Well, doing the research exercise for Project 2 on why artists make self-portraits was a great help in thinking about why I would want a portrait of anyone, (see post dated June 3rd, 2014), and I was particularly struck by Chagall's 1911 painting "I and the Village" (see below right) where the artist incorporated scenes from his early life in Russia with symbols of Christianity and folklore to bring together memories of his childhood, in a Cubist style. Would I want this portrait to bring back memories? 

Chagall: I and the Village, 1911

I was also struck by aspects of Courbet's "The Painter's Studio - A Real Allegory of a Seven Year Phase in my Moral and Artistic Life" (1855) where he includes many of the people who have influenced his artistic life. Do I want my portrait to say something of the people/ideas/events that have influenced my life?

Courbet: The Painter's Studio - A Real Allegory... ,1855

Do I want this portrait to say anything of my inner self, or just to be "the glove" that Dali describes, which concentrates on the recognisable characteristics that define what I look like at this age and stage? Does immortalising myself in canvas and paint come into this? And how about the style? I have so many photographs of myself that I definitely don't want a photo-realist image with every pore visible. Mmmm.....complex, when you get down to it. I want there to be included something of Courbet's idea of the influences in my life with some of Chagall's storytelling but in the style of David Hockney when he was experimenting with photo-montage or that of the Dadaist Hannah Hoch (below) with her combination of newspaper cuttings, photographs and print.

Hannah Hoch: Self-Portrait 1971

Hoch produced a collage towards the end of her life (left, 1971) which included photos of her at various ages. Good idea but very busy. I would want her to include some references to a country I have lived and worked in - the more than twenty five years I spent in India, Turkey, Canada and Holland - and the influences/freedoms I have enjoyed being born in the latter half of the 20th century. I would like this portrait to celebrate life in general and my life in particular, but to be selective - not as busy as the collage on the left - perhaps more like "Roma" below.

Hoch, Roma 1925

   
I definitely want her to understand how much I enjoyed the visual impact enjoyed in countries where life is lived outdoors - the colours, the sounds, the light, the aromas and the flora and fauna of these areas (especially India and Istanbul, but also the winter blue-sky-white-snow- blinding-brightness of Canadian winters) and how they have formed such a rich tapestry of memories for me. But including all of these place is difficult, so I have decided I want my portrait to be a memory of 2005-2012 and to concentrate mainly on my time in India.

My photo images to help Hannah Hoch

To help, I am going to give Hannah a small sheet of images from my photo collection that she can look at and make reference to in her work, but I don't want to dictate the final work - and I definitely don't want her to include everything. I am excited to see what she makes of it. Just creating the contact sheet of images gives me a good idea of the colours I would like to see in the final portrait.
There should be the blues of the sky and the ocean; the purples/pinks/oranges of the sunset; the dark contrasts between indoors and outdoors and the filtered light through elaborate stonework; the greens of the palms and the pinks/oranges of the bougainvillea; the warmth of the skin tones and the contrast of the saris. It should exude calmness - it is the sounds of the early mornings and sunsets that stay with me when I think of my home in India, not the frenetic roads and bustling stations that are part of every city anywhere on the planet.

 

What she chooses to do with the images is the exciting part. I don't want a portrait that is so predictable that there is no mystery, and I would like the result to be one that holds my interest for a long time.
 

David Tierney Self-Portrait 1985

A painting on my wall at home in London (below) is one I bought in Canada from David Tierney. It is a self-portrait, in colour tones that I really enjoy. There are a lot of warm tones, but with lots of blue. I will hope that Hannah picks up on the theme of the pictures I have given her as nature-history-spirituality-health and that they tell her a little about the things which give me pleasure.


Perhaps Hannah will come up with something like this photomontage (below), which I have made using cut and paste technique and Adobe Photoshop, as an example of how she might incorporate various images from my memory bank into a portrait of my time in India. I shall call it "Journey" as it represents many changes I had to go through in order to work and live happily in such a different culture. Many of these are changes of routine, change of workplace, change in diet, change in dress - what I would call "easy" changes, many of which we all make when going on holiday - but the really challenging changes are those that involve changes in attitude and those that involve managing to remain upbeat and optimistic when missing people/things and living with a degree of isolation in a very different culture. I hope Hannah Hoch can allude to the psychological and behavioural "journey" that I have gone through while in my years in India.

The mock-up of "Journey" which I made from my photos, to celebrate the years of living and working and India.

I have really enjoyed this exercise. It made me smile; and it made me ask a lot of questions about what I would want to be included in a portrait, helping me focus on what the important elements are that would give me satisfaction.

I cannot imagine not enjoying whatever my chosen portraitist, Hannah Hoch, comes up with, but if anything would disappoint me it would be if she produced a work that was very small. I would like this to be large, at least 1m x 1.5m and I hope she incorporates a mixture of media.

Exercise: Annotate a Self-Portrait, Part 4, Project 2

Self-Portrait as a Soldier (1915), Ernst Kirchner, 69 x 61 cm

The painting I have chosen for this annotation is Self-Portrait as a Soldier by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, painted in 1915 in oil on canvas, when he was thirty-five. As a driving force of Die Brucke (The Bridge) in 1905, Kirchner is one of the major artists of the 20th century - intense, passionate, neurotic and expressive - and a prolific self-portraitist.  “I paint,” Kirchner said, “with my nerves and my blood.  The heaviest burden of all is the pressure of the War and the increasing superficiality. It gives me incessantly the impression of a bloody carnival. I feel as though the outcome is in the air and everything is topsy-turvy.. All the same, I keep on trying to get some order in my thoughts and to create a picture of the age out of confusion, which is after all my function."

• In this portrait, Kirchner wears the uniform of driver in Field Artillery Regiment No. 75, for which he volunteered to avoid having to face the worst of the fighting in WW1. (He was in hospital at the time, recovering from general weakness and lung problems exacerbated by alcoholism and drug abuse, and would likely be anticipating a return to duty.) In a specific sense, it illustrates his worst fear; that the War would leave him mutilated and unable to paint; but in a general sense, the painting is voicing the angst of his generation - that civilisation would be destroyed and art would cease to exist. This topic was typical of the Expressionists at his time, but Kirchner added his own personal fear to the condemnation of war. It has been compared to Munch's "The Scream" (Springer), as the best example of the expressionists' style, although the evidence of planning in the composition led the painting to be described as "controlled expressionism" (Klaus-Peter Schuster) as the eye is led by careful placement along the horizontal and vertical axes to the focal point - the bloodless stump.

• The two figures in this portrait, artist-soldier and model, display tension in their body language. Both show unseeing eyes, Kirchner's without pupils and the model's without direction. Both also show mask-like faces, Kirchner's drawn and vacant-looking, with eyes reflecting the colour of his uniform; and the model gazing out as if waiting for instruction about a pose. The  artist  is without a brush or palette; both figures are unable to do the job the scene demands. 

  

  Artist and His Model (1910)

  This painting is in contrast to his earlier work, The Artist and his Model (1910), where Kirchner is smoking a pipe while confidently wielding brush and palette with his model seated in a scene that hinted at power and eroticism. In Self-Portrait as Soldier, Kirchner needs to hold on to the cushion/chair back on his left while he holds up his bloodless, gangrenous stump - his painting arm - and his cigarette dangles flaccidly from his mouth as if it symbolises his sexual impotence. It is as if the War has reduced him to a number, stopped his creativity, and left him powerless to engage with the opposite sex.

• Kirchner had studied architecture in Dresden, followed by brief technical studies in Munich, where he was exposed to a wide variety of creative influences, and decided to change course to a study of painting.  Although he denied being influenced by any other artists - he even repainted some works and changed the dates on others to "prove" that they predated Fauvism - his use of colour is reminiscent of Gauguin and his wild brushstrokes of van Gogh. He did openly admire the woodcuts of Durer,  and revived the tradition of woodblock printing. The lack of superfluous detail (typical of expressionism) in his work has its roots in wood-engraving. (For a more detailed look at the techniques and influences of Expressionism, see my earlier post on 16 Dec., 2013)

• 

  Street Scene, 1913

  The vivid pinks and reds which in previous paintings have hinted at excitement are here used to illustrate blood and skinless flesh, while the acidic greens which hint at decadence in his paintings of street scenes (as in Street Scene, 1913, opp.) are used to illustrate decay and putrefaction in Self-Portrait as a Soldier. Both his mental state and his artistic output were severely affected by WW1. His worst fears of injury or death were never to come true, as he never returned to the front; nor did he ever fully recover. Depression was to return in 1926 and he committed suicide in 1938. Although he saw himself as someone who worked in the German tradition, he became a victim of Nazi campaign against degenerate art and was eventually ostracised from mainstream German art.

Selz, Peter. "Kirchner's Self-Portrait as a Soldier in Relation to Earlier Self-Portraits." Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 14, no. 3 (Spring 1957) - See more at: http://www.oberlin.edu/amam/Kirchner_SelfPortrait.htm#sthash.TpY6esB2.dpuf

References:
Springer, P. (2002), Hand and Head: Ernst Ludvig Kirchner's Self-Portrait as Soldier, University of California Press Ltd., London, UK

Laneyrie, N. (2004), How to Read Paintings, Chambers Harrap Publishers, Edinburgh, UK

Selz, P., Kirchner's Self-Portrait as a Soldier in relation to earlier Self-Portraits, in Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 14, no 3, Spring 1957,pp 91-97

Wolf, R.,(2003), Kirschner: On the Edge of the Abyss of Time, Taschen Basic Art, Cologne, Germany

Selz, Peter. "Kirchner's Self-Portrait as a Soldier in Relation to Earlier Self-Portraits." Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 14, no. 3 (Spring 1957) - See more at: http://www.oberlin.edu/amam/Kirchner_SelfPortrait.htm#sthash.TpY6esB2.dpuf

Selz, Peter. "Kirchner's Self-Portrait as a Soldier in Relation to Earlier Self-Portraits." Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 14, no. 3 (Spring 1957) - See more at: http://www.oberlin.edu/amam/Kirchner_SelfPortrait.htm#sthash.TpY6esB2.dpuf

Research - Investigate some artists' self-portraits. UA1, Western Art, Part 4, project 2

Why do you think an artist might choose to paint (or sculpt) a self-portrait?

  

Courbet - An Real Allegory summing up seven years of My Life as an Artist.

Artists have differing personalities and differing motivations. For some of the earliest Egyptian self-portraitists, it was a vehicle into the after-life; for ancient sculptors, a signature that might aid immortality.  Perhaps the fact that the subject is readily available at any time of the day or night motivates some artists to attempt a self-portrait; perhaps it is to satisfy the requirements of the typical art-school course on drawing; or perhaps it is undertaken because it must be the ultimate artistic challenge - when the artist decides what style to adopt and which attributes to include on a subject that s/he knows better than anyone. For Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgois and Tracey Emin, portraying the self is form of cathartic self-analysis. A self-portrait can also be a public proclamation of the artist's definition of art itself; or an intense period of self-examination, examining the inner and/or outer self. For example, is the self-portrait closer to a photographic likeness, an interpretation of the most striking characteristics or a depiction of the inner soul of the artist? Some artists use the self-portrait to tell a story, as in Chagall's "I and the Village" (1911), which tells  the story of his early life in Russia. There has been a change over time in rationale for self-portraiture too. If we look (above) at Courbet's Interior of My Studio, A Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Life as an Artist, (1854-1855), we see the artist in the centre of a stage he has created which tells us much about his mental state and attitudes, and his social status.Courbet used the self-portrait to create a fantasy. The cynic in me also sees some self-exposure in self-portraiture as a way of drawing attention and increasing publicity, leading to increased fame and more saleability, as in Tracey Emin's bed.

How do artists explain themselves? (e.g. portraitists use all sorts of visual clues to "explain" the sitter to the viewer.)

Artimesia Genitileschi, 1638-9, Self-Portrait

In 1638-39, Artimesia Gentileschi, painted her "Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting" (above). This was a bold step at the time, as there were few women artists, yet abstract concepts like painting were traditionally represented as female allegorical figures, so the allegory of painting would need a female figure. Given that Artimesia had been raped as a young woman, she often painted women as strong figures, with power, so this painting might be viewed as her taking control.

Sofonisba Anguissola, 1556

Even earlier, in 1556, this self-portrait by Sofonisba Anguissola (left) showed the artist at work on another portrait. This illustrated not only her own features, but the skills she has developed and the subject matter that she was able to undertake. It can be seen as an advertisement of her work.

Picasso 1906

                                                                      A much later self-portrait of a young Pablo Picasso (1906) shows the artist at work experimenting in his studio, palette in hand, with intensity and concentration. He had just moved to Paris and had quickly became assimilated into the avant-garde of artists, writers and poets. His early style shows his comfort in drawing life-like figures.  

By 1926, his style has changed considerably and his self-portrait reflects his experiments with cubism, and by the 1960's his style has changed again. (see right and below). These paintings show that Picasso is more concerned with what art is than depicting a true likeness of himself and his characteristics to the world.

Picasso 1963

Picasso 1928

Hockney, Self-Portrait,1977 - showing his mastery of technique.

David Hockney, for example, was asked why he didn't do more self-portraits, and expressed some reluctance to look at himself too closely, although he did say he was sure he would return to them later in life. He did just that - in 1983, in his mid-forties, he embarked on a period of intense self-examination, possibly in response to his increasing isolation due to deafness, or to approaching middle-age and loss of his "attractiveness" or the untimely deaths of several friends to AIDS-related illnesses. 

1983

1986

1999

David Hockney 2009

These three drawings (above) show a vulnerability not evident in earlier work, and were very different from the self-portraits completed in his youth.

By 2009, David Hockney was experimenting again with the latest technology, showing his mastery of the quick sketch on an i-phone and i-pad (right).

Can you find any in which the artist portrays herself/himself in another role altogether?

Egon Schiele, Self-Portrait as St Sebastian, 1915

In this self-portrait poster design by Egon Schiele (1915), for an exhibition at the Arnot Gallery, the artist's sorrowful state of mind is evident in the way he has portrayed himself as St Sebastian offered up to the arrows of the critics. At the time, Schiele wanted to revive the social role of painting and was devising large allegorical canvases as he developed his career as a painter, but his idea did not succeed.

Caravaggio, Sick Bacchus, 1593

Much earlier, in 1593-94, Caravaggio had painted his self-portrait as a sick Bacchus, most likely to show his skill at painting figures from the ancient myths to appeal to his patrons.

Salvador Dali, Soft Self-portrait, 1941

Salvador Dali, on the other hand, chose to portray himself as a melting mask in this surrealist self-portrait with a strip of bacon lying underneath (above). It is reminiscent of his melting watches and clocks, and has the characteristic props keeping his face up. Dali was quoted as saying, “Instead of painting the soul, the inside, I wanted to paint solely the outside, the envelope, the glove of myself.”   

Torso/Self-Portrait

Louise Bourgeois, on the other hand,  has the opposite approach to Dali in this sculptural piece  (right). Like much of her work, it involves deep searching and self-analysis. Describing it, she said, “The spiral is important to me. It is a twist. As a child, after washing the tapestries in the river, I would turn and twist and ring them with three others or more to ring the water out. Later I would dream of getting rid of my father’s mistress. I would do it in my dreams by ringing her neck. The spiral—I love the spiral—it represents control and freedom.”

 

Try to find some artists' comments on their own self-portrait.

David Hockney "The reason you start painting yourself is that you are a cheap model — you’ve always got yourself".

Pablo Picasso “Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it?” 

Henri Matisse “Fit the parts together, one into the other, and build your figure like a carpenter builds a house. Everything must be constructed, composed of parts that make a whole....”

Frida Kahlo  "Because I am so often alone....because I am the subject I know best." 

Vincent Van Gogh “I purposely bought a mirror good enough to enable me to work from my image in default of a model, because if I can manage to paint the colouring of my own head, which is not to be done without some difficulty, I shall likewise be able to paint the heads of other good souls, men and women.”

"In Rembrandt's portraits...it is more than nature, it is a kind of revelation." (Writing to brother Theo about Rembrandt)

Rembrandt "...and I came, it may be, to look for myself and recognize myself. What have I found? Death painted I see..."(this was said about his final self-portraits.)

Salvador Dali  “Instead of painting the soul, the inside, I wanted to paint solely the outside, the envelope, the glove of myself.”  

Have you ever attempted a self-portrait?

Yes, I have attempted some self-portrait drawings for the OCA Drawing 1 course, where I tried to find a likeness of myself; but for this exercise, I thought I'd try the inner self option, and produced this effort at describing how I feel pulled in several directions at the moment. 

I want the viewer to see that I feel my face/head is being pulled in several directions, but I am not miserable about this - in fact there is an excitement that I have tried to convey with the bright eyes and the wide smile/grimace. 

References:

http://userpages.umbc.edu/~ivy/selfportrait/back.html

Kelly, Sean., The Self-Portrait: A Modern View. London: Sarema Press, 1987

Barr,Alfred H. Jr., "Cubism and Abstract Art", Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1936, pp. 100/101

Hall,J., The Self-Portrait: A Cultural History. London: Thames and Hudson, 2014