The Self-Portrait: Beyond the Mirror's Image

I want to talk about the self-portraits of ten different artists. I'm going to discuss them in terms of six groupings: (1) the self-portrait as identification (2) the self-portrait as presentation of self (3) the self-portrait as self-scrutiny (4) the imaginative self-portrait (5) the anecdotal self-portrait (6) the figurative self portrait.

The self-portrait as identification

The self-portrait as identification, although first seen in ancient Egypt, was prevalent in the Middle Ages and Renaissance period. I want to talk about Jan van Eyck’s Wedding Portrait from 1434. Here, Jan van Eyck really employs an exceptional use of the self-portrait. The painting shows a couple standing facing the viewer while saying their wedding vows. There is a mirror behind them on the bedroom wall, and in the mirror you can see a reflection of Jan van Eyck, which confirms that he is in the room. There’s an inscription above the mirror that means, “Jan van Eyck was here.”

The self-portrait as presentation of self

The German artist, Albrecht Dürer is said to be the first artist to make self-portraits a large part of his work throughout his career. Through the years, he records his changing physical appearance and social status. Dürer’s, Self-portrait from 1500 shows the artist in a direct, frontal pose with a grave expression. In this portrait, there is a real resemblance between himself and the most widely-accepted image of Christ. He is probably trying to affirm his power and influence. This seems pretty bold to me, and definitely moves away from other more ordinary portraits. He uses his artistic abilities to uphold an authoritative image and, in a sense, immortalize himself. This immortalization is something that portrait painters of the time were appointed by employers to do. Even though Dürer’s portraits overtime show a slight emotional evolution, they seem be less concerned with exploring his psyche, and more concerned with conveying his progressing social status.

The self-portrait as self-scrutiny

Rembrandt is, arguably, the first artist to deeply examine himself through his art. He has left 60 self-portraits behind that capture his turbulent life. Through his wives and lovers, from poor to wealthy, and from young to old, we experience this transition through his self-portraiture. My belief is that he modeled for himself so many times not solely because it didn't cost him anything, but because Rembrandt rendered himself in a style that was not possible in his portraits of wealthy clients. By this I mean that he has repeatedly painted himself with a sort of frown on his face, which at times was placed in dim light or shadow. Janson summarizes Rembrandts self-portraits by saying, “…his view of himself reflects every stage of his inner development—experimental in the Leyden years; theatrically disguised in the 1630’s; frank and self-analytical toward the end of his life,…yet full of simple dignity.” In Rembrandt’s final set of self-portraits, done between 1660 and 1669, he looks aged, wrinkled, and weary. Rembrandt said this about this last set of self-portraits: “…and I came, it may be, to look for myself and recognize myself. What have I found? Death painted I see…”

In this category, I also want to discuss one of my favorite artists who is equally famous for his self-portraits, Vincent van Gogh. Unlike Rembrandt who produced his self-portraits progressively throughout his lifetime, Van Gogh painted 22 of them during two turbulent years. During that period (1886-1888) as well as the two years before his 1890 suicide he shows us a man that struggles with loneliness and seems to be almost at odds with life. I think that painting was the driving force in Van Gogh’s life; I think that in painting he found a reason to live for most of his life. He says, “As a suffering creature, I cannot do without something greater than I—something that is my life—the power to create.” I believe that through the creation of his self-portraits, he hoped to find the answers in respect to his failed friendships and the frustrating inconsistency of his emotions. Each of his self-portraits captures a range of detailed emotions like, astonishment, serenity, disturbance, or bewilderment. In his 1889, Self-portrait with Bandaged Head, he renders himself after his well-known mutilation of his ear. In this painting he seems troubled and bemused. It’s as if he is lost within himself, within his world and mind.

Frida Kahlo is another artist who can be understood through her self-portraits. A third of her work is comprised of self-portraits, and she created 55 altogether. She really devoted herself to studying herself in that sense—both physically and mentally. For Kahlo, who had many dismal experiences throughout her life (like her legs crippling from polio, permanent injuries from a bus accident, botched surgeries, and abortions,) representing herself in paintings was therapeutic. “I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best,” she said. In person, Kahlo harbored her afflictions beneath a caustic and unrelenting personality. It was in painting that she unveiled her troubles. In that sense, her self-portraits are both heartbreaking and triumphant. Much the same way that Rembrandt looked himself in the mirror toward the end of his life and accepted his aging appearance, Kahlo accepted and felt comfortable divulging her hardships through her art. But in contrast to Van Gogh who searched for meaning and answers in his self-portraits, Frida Kahlo knew her answers. She used art as a catalyst for the release of unfavorable emotion.

The imaginative self-portrait

Between the lifetimes of Rembrandt and Van Gogh, most artists produced self-portraits in a similar way, focusing on their face and expression without much else in the frame. Then there was Gustave Courbet, who enhanced his self-portrait with fictitious additions, converting the portraits into a sort of mirage. Although Courbet continued the tradition of painting his own likeness, he added to that by staging a scene, or adding people/artifacts to visually communicate his social status or a particular condition of mind. The artist’s face was not the central image. In Courbet’s 1855, Interior of My Studio, A Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Life as an Artist, the painting becomes a stage. Although a nude model stands posing for Courbet, he paints a beautiful landscape instead. To his left are people that may be symbolic of his home town (hunters, peasants, priests, etc.) On the right, he shows his friends and patrons. The people represent the right and left wing, and so if they were in the same studio together they would not get along. Courbet may have put these people in the painting to suggest conflict among them. Perhaps Courbet is between the two groups painting a landscape to emphasize harmony by promoting a harmonious scene. This painting truly is an allegory, which Courbet said he didn’t paint. I guess the unpredictable aspect of Courbet is part of why we love him. His paintings were the first to deviate from the neck-up self-portrait. Instead, he shows himself to us through his surroundings.

The anecdotal self-portrait

The emergence of Abstractionism in the early 1900’s led to an even further digression from the realistic face than Courbet’s self-portraits. Artists like Picasso and Chagall allowed shapes, patterns and colors to represent their deeper selves. They intentionally strayed from the preceding artistic movements by refusing to attach any importance to accurately representing their physical features. The “father of Abstraction,” Pablo Picasso, created so many different interpretations of himself in various media. His early self-portraits (from 1900 to 1901) are in much the same style as those of Rembrandt and Van Gogh. By 1938, he diverted to abstracting his self-image to such an extent that in one self-portrait, both of his eyes were placed on one side of his face. He uses the anecdotal self-portrait in a series of prints in the 1960’s. In No. 319 of the series, he shows himself as a voyeur wearing a jester’s hat, who looks resentfully at the passionate sex between a young artist and his model. This staging may allude to Picasso’s apparent distress over having aged.

Another great anecdotal self-portrait from the same time period is Marc Chagall’s I and the Village, from 1911. In this painting, Chagall creates a sort of collage of memories from his childhood in Russia. In the center there’s a man and woman (maybe Chagall’s wife.) There are also abstracted figures walking on a hillside. However, the person does not look anything like Chagall, and this can probably be attributed to the fact that he did not refer to a mirror for inspiration. Instead, he depicts a fairytale-like narrative extant in the archives of his own mind.

The figurative self-portrait

Up until this point, everything I’ve talked about has been congruent in that they have all contained human-like figures. When artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko took Abstraction to a new height, human figures were no longer in the composition. The Abstract Expressionists’ works are kind of hard to call portraiture. But aren’t they also deeply emotional and revealing? They are autobiographical effusions. Jackson Pollock says, “every good painter paints what he is.” Pollock’s paintings are swayed by emotional and involuntary impulses. Some see his art as being more in tune with his feelings than the work of the artists I talked about earlier. Janson describes Pollock’s use paint as a “storehouse of pent-up forces for him to release.”

Mark Rothko’s canvases are inundated with bands of color of the highest intensity of hue. This style seems even farther removed from self-portraiture than that of Pollock. But through the striking usage of color, there is an emotion that comes forth in Rothko’s paintings. “The people who weep before my pictures,” Rothko said, “are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.”

For all artists, the self-portrait is an investigation, an opportunity to see beyond their reflection in the mirror and ask deeper questions that awaken their souls.

I would love to hear your comments about this entry! I hope you enjoyed it.