Research point on artists`s self portraits.

This is will be my second post about artists`s self portraits during my OCA`  s program BA in Fine Arts; The first post covering this topic I did on May 8th, 2018 within Drawing 1 course programme. That time I did a research of self portraits of Pablo Picasso, Lucian Freud, Yayoi Kusama. For this Painting 1  course I picked up the following artists: Albrecht Durer and  Frida Kahlo.

Albrecht Durer (1471-1528).

Albrecht Durer is one of the founders of the Self-Portraiture as a genre along with his  elder contemporary  Leonardo Da Vinci. His first self-portrait  he made at age 13 on a silverpoint, which is below right.  At age 22 he did another one ( below left), probably in Strasbourg where he studied the artworks of various artists and printmakers. This portrait was painted with oil on vellum. Another one he did at age 26 when he entered his period of mature artist. This portrait was made during or shortly after his studies in Italy where he studied art and mathematics.

 

At his age of 28 he did a self-portrait which was very different to the previous three in terms of his posture. At his earlier self-portraits he is sitting in angled pose and on the last work he has a “faced squarely toward the viewer” what is considered as a pose usually reserved for images of Jesus Christ.

Albrecht Durer, Self- Portrait , 1500, image via artsy.net; below left;

Albrecht Durer, Self-Portrait, 1493, image via artsy.net; below right; both images are from openculture.com;

I have found a very extensive research about Albrecht Durer` s self-portraits on the web site employees.oneonta.edu. Unfortunately   I could find the name of the author but it seems to be written by an art student as part of his/her studies.  The author brings more of Durer `  s artworks which can be considered as his self-portraits. Like the one below  he painted In 1522 and called “The Man of Sorrows”. The other artwork which is also a self-representation was done in 1514, “Melancolia”. This is a very interesting “female personification of melancholy. This temperament became associated during this period with an artist. This can thus be seen as a spiritual self portrait of Durer”.

From my side I can say that, actually his portrait  in Christ pose is his first  truly spiritual portrait. Observing his 4 above mentioned  portraits it  becomes   clear that Durer as any other artist had captured a certain  psychological and emotional moment of his life. The self-portraits he made at age 22 and 26 both reflect his condition and a life style of a learning artist who just came out of his family’s nest – a goldsmith  master and a merchant shop, busy with a forthcoming marriage and  anticipating  the life ahead. His appearance on these two portraits can be described as a fashionable, well dressed and groomed man wearing fancy hats. The last portrait is very different in this sense. There is a very noticeable resemblance with  images  of Jesus Christ. It is unclear why he represented himself in this way but in any way it is obvious he felt different at that age and  that particular moment comparing to his earlier portraits. There is an opinion  that Durer  closely depicted Jesus ` s look from the “eye-witness account”, a Roman official Lentulus who gave  a physical and personal description of Jesus. Lentulus ` s letter had been printed in Germany in Nuremberg in 1491 and Durer was living  in Nuremberg when he made that self-portrait in 1500.

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954).

It was very interesting for me to analyse Frida Kahlo`s self -portraits before I did the assignment for my own self- portrait because I wanted to understand how a worldly recognised famous  woman-artist  would bring her face onto the canvas. The face for any woman IS A CANVAS which we paint everyday with a make up and a hair style, even with the colour of our cloth. I can say that  in a very broad  sense  women do self portraits every day. I believe men have a very different sensation and sentiments  of their appearance and a face: they change much  less and  their change is much less deliberate comparing to us, women. Women always tend to communicate their emotional state through their appearance either deliberately either subconsciously and we do it every day.

I just must put Frida` s statement about her painting self- portraits:

“I paint self portraits because I am the person I know best. I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to paint whatever passes through my head without any consideration”.

Over her life Frida Kahlo  made dozens of her self portraits and I tried to find many  of them. Actually, different articles about her mention different numbers, from her 143 paintings, 55 or 70 are self portraits.  In Frida` s self portraits I can see that  she was a confident with her beauty, fully embracing it. Her complexion is always bright and her skin looks healthy and attractive, she was very aware of her own unique style and brought it all the time to  viewers- her unibrow and even some upper lip hair. Her hair style is always very detailed, she often painted rich flowers and decoration   noticeably placed in her hair,   what makes  me think she  loved her hair and  was fond of styling them in  different ways. Flowers and her strong facial features on her self portraits are a good evidence of her proud femininity. Definitely, she was NOT a shy woman,  even though she suffered from deformed foot after polio and later in life was confined to a wheel chair – this is just so obvious from her self portraits.  As Tamara Best puts in her article in New York  Times About Frida` s self portraits: “….in her clothing was an embrace of cultural identity, her signature unibrow and her wispy moustache were in some ways w rebuke to conventional beauty”. Studying her numerous self-portraits brings to the light the striking emotional charge behind every portrait. She did self portraits in most of her difficult  and  emotionally turbulent periods of life, incorporating symbols such as thorn necklace, black panther, butterflies and dragon flies, sun and moon, the conch and scallop which had to communicate her inner conflict, strong and complex emotions, her physical and psychological condition  to a viewer. As Archana Mehta says in her article for people.vcu.edu “Her artwork is a biography of her life, encompassing her emotions, her feelings, her pain, her hatred, her love, her guilt, her political beliefs, her family and much more….. When looking at her work one can be lost in a sea of emotions”.

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait, 1942; Image via artsy.net;

Frida Kahlo, “Self-Portrait in a velvet dress”, Oil on canvas,  1926; Image via artsy.net;

”The Two Fridas”, oil painting, 1939; image via nytimes.com

“Frida Kahlo and Diego Riviera”, 1931, image via people.vcu.edu;

 

“Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird”, 1940, oil on canvas; image via artyfactory.com;

 

”Sin Esperanza”; oil on canvas on board, 1945; image via artyfactory.com;

“Self -Portrait with the Portrait of Doctor Farill”, 1951, oil on board; image via artyfactory.net;

”Self Portrait dedicated to Leon Trotsky”, 1937; image via artsandculture.google.com; below left

 

”My Nurse and I”, 1937, image via artsandculture.google.com; above right

Frida Kahlo, “Self Portrait with cropped hair”, 1940, image via moma.org; below

 

”The Broken Column”, 1944, image via people.vcu.edu; above

Reference list:

1) “10 Masters of the Self -Portrait from Frida Kahlo to Cindy Sherman”; artsy editorial by Kim Hart, April 27th, 2018 on artsy.net;

2) “Iconic Artists Who Have Immortalized Themselves Through Famous Self-Portraits” by Kelly Richman-Abdou on May 1, 2017 on mymodernmet.com;

3) “Frida Kahlo, Whose Self Portraits Spoke to the Soul” by Tamara Best, July 13, 2016; The New  York Times; nytimes.com; 

4) “The Hidden Meanings in Frida Kahlo`s Paitings”, editorial feature, by Rebecca Fulleylove, on artsandculture.google.com;

5) “Frida Kahlo” by Archana Mehta on people.vcu.edu;

6) “The Genius of Albrecht Durer Revealed in Four Self Portraits” in Art, July 4th, 2013  by Mike Springer on open.culture.com; 

7) “The Self Portraits of Albrecht Durer”, author unknown, on employees.oneonta.edu;

8) “How to read paintings: Albrecht Durer   `s Self -Portraits” by Christopher P Jones, March 20, 2020 on medium.com;