Self-portraits, apart from showing us what
an artist looks like, give us an insight into the artist’s character and how
he/she wishes themselves to be portrayed to the world.
I have chosen a number of self-portraits which,
apart from covering a large time span, also cover a range of motives and
techniques. As a (very generalised)
rule, art history tells us that earlier self-portraits were more about
observation, technique and showing your own skill as an artist, while later
portraits can be seen as more expressive, and a route to self exploration and/or
emotional context rather than a realistic depiction of the artist. I am not necessarily sure that that
generalisation holds true after researching a number of self-portraits.
The quote below, although from an author
rather than an artist, seems to me to sum up how many artists approach the
inquisitive nature of self-portraiture.
“I
give my soul now one face, now another, according to which direction I turn
it. If I speak of myself in different
ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways. All contradictions may be found in me. Whoever studies himself really attentively
finds in himself, yes, even in his judgement, this gyration and discord. I have nothing to say about myself
absolutely, simply or socially, without confusion and without mixture, or in
one word.” – Michael de Montaigne
Rembrandt
(17th Century) - Self Portrait 1665
Referring back to the Montaigne quote
above, Rembrandt was the master of appearing differently in each self-portrait
he completed. Even though his face is
instantly recognisable, his features frequently appear differently in the
portraits, especially his eyes and nose, and there appears to be no general
consensus about which are an “accurate portrayal”. With Rembrandt’s skills of draughtsmanship, I
don’t think you can come to the conclusion that his self-portraits were just
studies or practice. Even though the perceived
wisdom in art history is that artist’s of this time didn’t complete self-portraits
as an investigation of the self, I don’t feel that the numerous
self-examinations over so many years in so many different costumes can be
anything else.
When you look at his self-portraits “en
masse” (when searching via the internet) – you are at once struck with both how
similar all the paintings are (in terms of colour and general composition) with
how differently he has portrayed his face.
His paintings are a study in light and tone
– virtually all the paintings are earth or sombre tones, as were many Dutch
paintings of that era. However,
Rembrandt uses soft light (probably candle-light) to shine on and illuminate
the face in a way which sets him apart from other artists.
In the painting above (Self-Portrait
c1665), Rembrandt depicts himself as an artist, with brush and palette in hand,
but shows no other signs of being in a
studio, or currently working on a painting, just concentrating on himself.
He draws the viewer to his face by
concentrating the light in the top part of the painting; the area below the
palette and brushes dissolves into the shadow and darkness. The white turban-like hat and undershirt
serve to frame the face, with the soft texture of the fur collar creating a
strong vertical leading to the face. The
composition here is a classic triangular shape frequently found in portrait
paintings, with the addition of two strong circular forms in the background to
act as a counterpoint (not sure what they are?). The palette and brushes being held in his
hand also lead the eye up from the side of the painting towards the artist’s
face. The clothing is painted very
loosely and it appears the artist has painted the fur with loose glazes to
allow the paler colour underneath (canvas or underpainting) to show through.
The face looks tired and sad – even though
this is a painting of himself in his older years, it does have a melancholy
feel about it; the eyes are very dark with no highlights showing. The jowls around the jaw have been given prominence
by the heavy shadow under the chin. You
can see the thickness of the paint on the face – especially around the
features. There is very little colour in
the face, only a highlight of pink around the creases of the nose, the tip of
the nose and under the eyes. The hair
has been loosely painted – dark wisps on the right hand side in shadow, on the
other side you can see more dilute paint has been used, with strong white strokes
to create the lightest highlight on the same level as the eyes. The turban is again very loosely applied – you
can see the zigzag of brush strokes used to create the very top, lightest
layers of cloth.
Vincent
Van Gogh (19th Century)
Van Gogh was a prolific self-portraitist –
he produced over 30 in a space of just 5 years, many of which were documented
in his letters to his brother Theo.
Self Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin, 1888 (oil on canvas) – was painted as a gift for
Paul Gauguin. The artists had agreed to
swap self-portraits and received Gauguin’s before sending his off, allowing Van
Gogh to compare the portraits. He sent a
letter to Gauguin saying “if I might be allowed to stress my own personality in
a portrait, I had done so in trying to convey in my portrait not only myself
but an impressionist in general, but conceived it as the portrait of a bronze, a
simple worshipper of the eternal Buddha”.
He goes on to say “Someday you will also
see my self-portrait … It is all ashen grey against pale Veronese (no
yellow). The clothes are this brown coat
with a blue border, but I have exaggerated the brown into purple, and the width
of the blue borders. The head is modelled
in light colours painted in a thick impasto against the light background with
hardly any shadows. Only I have made the
eyes slightly slanting like the Japanese.”
This portrait is very stark – not just
because of the colours, but also because he has portrayed himself with very
short hair and exaggerated his features.
The nose has a line of complementary red to emphasise its length and
contrast the green cheek, as well as red nostrils, as does the sharp contour of
his cheek against the blue-green of the solid background colour. The top lip has been similarly defined in the
complementary red. The eyes have been
defined by a light blue around the “whites” of the eyes (here a very pale
blue-green). The background colour has
been painted after the head – you can see the contour lines where he has
followed the shape of the head, the colour being palest next to the face and
then darkening slightly towards the edge of the canvas.
The brown of the coat has both red and
green tones to exaggerate the complementary colour effect, and the blue edging
(which he himself states he has widened and changed the hue to more purple) is
a further complementary to the yellow used on the face.
As with the majority of Van Gogh’s work,
the painting is a thick impasto, with brush strokes following the contour lines
to give added emphasis to the planes and structure of the face.
Obviously Van Gogh has used the influence
of Japanese prints here (he says so himself) – the background is flat, as are
the clothes covering his torso. However,
the face itself is full of contour and depth, even though the artist has not
used strong tonal contrast to achieve this.
There is also very little shadow in this portrait.
I find this portrait quite disconcerting; the
sharpness of his features make his head appear more like a skull than a face,
and the acid nature of the greens and yellows do not bear any resemblance to
the natural colours of a human being. He
refers to it as “a portrait in bronze” but I feel it makes him look ill (which
he obviously was) and very melancholy.
I found the above portrait of Van Gogh painting Sunflowers 1888 by
Paul Gaugin on the same year. In fact,
Van Gogh is wearing the same coat as he has portrayed himself wearing in the
self portrait above. I am not sure which
one was painted first, but the colours of the coat (basically brown but with
red tones and green shadows) is virtually identical to Van Gogh’s self
portrait. Gaugin has painted Van Gogh
painting his sunflowers, but his technique is very different to Van Gogh’s; the
only similarity is the influence of Japanese prints with the flattening of
perspective and using blocks of solid colour.
Van Gogh’s face is not very clear here – Gaugin has painted him from
above, but you can how much healthier he looks in this painting! Gone is the close cropped hair, the beard is
fuller; the face is much less gaunt and he has healthy colour in his nose and
cheeks.
Frida
Kahlo (20th Century)
Kahlo was a Mexican artist born in 1907
who, through illness and injury, spent a large part of her life either
bedridden, disabled or in pain. She
actually took up painting while in hospital after an accident in her teenage
years, instead of taking up a career in medicine. In terms of her work output, she probably has
the largest proportion of her work as self-portraits of all artists – more than
1/3 of her total body of work. The unusual
thing about Kahlo’s self-portraits is that she normally paints her face with
the same, almost blank, expression, staring boldly out of the canvas. She explores her feelings, emotions and
physical condition through her paintings through the colours, clothing and
imagery around her.
As with Van Gogh, she ascribes emotions and
meanings to colours: yellow was madness, sickness, fear; cobalt blue electricity
and purity, love; magenta was Aztec, the brightest and oldest.
In “Self-Portrait Along the Border LineBetween Mexico and the United States” (painted in 1932), Kahlo depicts herself
in a sugary pink dress standing slightly off-centre with her homeland Mexico on
one side (the larger side of the painting), and the USA (which she termed
Gringolandia). She had been living in
the USA for three years with her husband (the painter Diego Rivera) while he
was working on a project and wanted to go home.
She is standing on a pedestal, holding a Mexican flag in her hand, as if
showing where she really wanted to be.
The colours are different on each side: the
American is industrial factories and pipes, with the stars and stripes
enveloped in factory chimney smoke (the letters FORD are on the chimneys),
surrounded by high-rise towers without windows, metal and machinery, painted
flatly in dark blues and beiges.
The Mexican side is more earth colours,
with exotic plants in the foreground, surrounded by ancient Amerindian
artifacts and an ancient Aztec pyramid.
The sun and moon are above Mexico, as is lightening and rain clouds.
The imagery is very clear – Mexico is rich
in natural life and history while the USA is buried in concrete and
machinery. The only link in the painting
between the two is a generator, plugged into the pedestal on which she is
standing, its wires creeping beneath the earth to draw the power from the
fertility of Mexico.
In terms of paintings of Kahlo, although it
is not described as her, I found a painting on Bridgeman by her husband, the
artist Diego Rivera, as part of a mural: 'Dream of a Sunday Afternoon onAlameda central', 1947
This is very clearly Frida Kahlo –
Rivera’s painting of her is almost identical to her paintings of herself which
reinforces the view that she uses colours and the imagery around her to express
herself.
Francis
Bacon (mid to late 20thC)
Francis Bacon said to David Sylvester in
1975, “I loathe my own face. . . . I’ve done a lot of self-portraits, really
because people have been dying around me like flies and I’ve nobody else left
to paint but myself.”
Francis Bacon is one of those artists that
people seem to either love or hate.
Personally, I am not a fan of his work – I find it too dark and
depressing. His work is semi-abstract,
quite surreal in nature, featuring distorted faces and bodies, frequently with
mouths open in a silent scream.
Three Studies for a Self Portrait 1979 form a
triptych of views of his face, almost as if he captured himself turning his
head in one of those distorting mirrors you see at fairgrounds. The solid black background has similarities
to much earlier works where figures appear in a strong light, looming out of
the shadows. There is also ambiguity,
especially in the two works on either side; has the artist deliberately
distorted the side of the face to the point where it has disappeared, or is it
merely a strong shadow removing the colour from the face?
The white collar also adds to the
distortion – it appears too narrow to actually be his neck, making me think of
those cartoon characters with heads much too large for their bodies.
The colours in these portraits are fairly
naturalistic, if enhanced for effect – using pinks, greys, blues and
whites. The individual portraits have
different parts of the face distorted: the first is mainly the cheek enlarged,
the second focuses on the nose and the third the nose, lips and jawline.
Each portrait has been painted in a
slightly different style.
- The central portrait, when viewed in close up, looks almost like a soft pastel painting. The paint has been applied very dryly to allow the texture of the canvas to be visible with chalky highlights applied to emphasise the jawline, nose, chin and eyes.
- The left portrait has been applied with the same chalky, dry paint but the white has been applied more evenly, as if the image is veiled. There are also white “streak” strokes applied over the mouth and on the forehead.
- The right portrait, to me, appears the most menacing. The figure is clearly frowning (by the downturn of the eyebrow which is highlight be a smudge (fingermark?) of white paint. The “streak” marks of white are much more visible in this portrait, against the darker red of the mouth especially, but also across the eyes and nose.
Even though these portraits are highly
distorted and expressive, it is still clear who this is. Even though I recognised the style
immediately as Bacon, it is clear from other artist’s portraits of him (of
which there are many) that you can still see the likeness of the artist in
these portraits. I have chosen to look
at two: one in the NPG by Ruskin Spear (which I studied last time I visited)
and a work by Lucien Freud "Francis Bacon 1956-7".
Jenny
Saville (late 20th/early 21st C)
From the Saatchi Gallery Website: “I have
to really work at the tension between getting the paint to have the sensory
quality that I want and be constructive in terms of building the form of a
stomach, for example, or creating the inner crevice of a thigh. The more I do
it, the more the space between abstraction and figuration becomes interesting.
I want a painting realism. I try to consider the pace of a painting, of active
and quiet areas. Listening to music helps a lot, especially music where there’s
a hard sound and then soft breathable passages. In my earlier work my marks
were less varied. I think of each mark or area as having the possibility of
carrying a sensation.” (Extract from ‘Interview with Jenny Saville by Simon
Schama)
Sadly, there aren’t many works by Jenny
Saville on Bridgeman, so I have also included a link to her page at the Saatchi
Gallery. http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/aipe/jenny_saville.htm
Saville’s self portraits, unlike most of
the ones previously studied, are not just of her face, but are of her face upon
very large, fleshy bodies. Her works are
enormous in size to emphasise the flesh, usually painted in cool tones of grey,
blue and green, as if the flesh is decaying or decomposing. To add to this morgue-like effect, she
squeezes the flesh to fit the whole canvas, giving the impression of a slab of
meat ready to be cut up. Her backgrounds
are also very cool, either pale whites and greys, or darker greys which set off
the pinks and reds of the skin.
In one of her paintings on the Saatchi
website (Plan – 1993) she has used extreme foreshortening with a view up the
body from the thighs upwards, with contour lines marked on the fleshing areas
of the skin (thighs and stomach) as if she is on a slab in preparation for a
cosmetic procedure such as liposuction.
In this painting, one arm is wrapped forcefully around her breasts,
squashing them, with her fingers digging into the flesh of the opposite arm, as
if to protect herself. The face appears
crushed into very top of the painting, at a sharp angle, with one eye and the
top of her head cropped, staring down at us.
It is only this addition of the face lifted from “the slab” that stops
the painting from being an anonymous “lump of meat”.
Apart from her large-scale nudes, Saville
also paints meat itself from an abattoir, such as “Torso” using similar tones
as her nudes which serves to reinforce her link between the human body as
another form of meat.
Saville uses very loose and visible
brushstrokes which must be very large considering the scale of her work. In "Self-Portrait 1992", she has used
paper collage in addition to paint and pastels.
I think the areas she has used paper are on the thighs, there are areas
which appear very textured, suggestive of peeling plaster on an old wall.
Saville’s paintings are not pretty in any
traditional view of the nude – she challenges perceptions of the female body;
fleshy and rotund with lumps, bumps and mottled skin, as opposed to the toned,
slim, bronzed bodies in the media . I
have never actually seen any of her work up close but I imagine the sheer scale
of these works (most 2-3m in height) must be pretty overwhelming.
