Myself: a Work in Progress
“Know thyself.”
-- inscription on the ancient Temple of Apollo at Delphi “ Every portrait is a suspension of Time.” – Pascal Bonafoux, Rembrandt: Self-Portrait |
By the time Rembrandt van Rijn was my age – sixty as I write this – he had completed twenty-three self-portraits – and that’s just the paintings. By the time he died in 1669 at age 63, his self-portraits in various media – forty to fifty paintings, about thirty-two etchings, and seven drawings – numbered close to a hundred. “It is an output unique in history; most artists produce only a handful of self-portraits, if that,” writes art historian Susan Fegley Osmond. “And why Rembrandt did this is one of the great mysteries of art history.” In attempting to plumb the mystery, Osmond quotes Ernst van de Wetering’s assertion that not only was there no term, “self-portrait,” back then, there wasn’t even an idea of a “self” who “lives and creates solely from within” until the 19th century. Thus, concludes van de Wetering, Rembrandt was clearly market-driven, creating “tronies” – sample exercises – to meet potential buyers’ demand. (1)
I am not enough of a Rembrandt expert to say I agree or disagree, and I’m likely projecting from my own motivations here, but l’d put forth a much less cynical theory: that maybe Rembrandt started off making a salesman’s sample case of goods, but then saw he had a series going, and that it was interesting – how the face changes over the years! – so he kept at it till his series was complete.
That is what I also intend to do.
This project – in completion of a Hartford Art School independent study in art history (ART494) – marks the official start of what I intend to be an ongoing visual-art chronicle of my advancing age, for as long as I am alive or can continue to wield a paintbrush. It features my creative response to self-portraits by twelve other artists.
“There is everything and nothing at stake in a self-portrait,” write Joe Fig and Robert Cozzolino, in Narcissus in the Studio: Artist Portraits and Self-Portraits.
I am not enough of a Rembrandt expert to say I agree or disagree, and I’m likely projecting from my own motivations here, but l’d put forth a much less cynical theory: that maybe Rembrandt started off making a salesman’s sample case of goods, but then saw he had a series going, and that it was interesting – how the face changes over the years! – so he kept at it till his series was complete.
That is what I also intend to do.
This project – in completion of a Hartford Art School independent study in art history (ART494) – marks the official start of what I intend to be an ongoing visual-art chronicle of my advancing age, for as long as I am alive or can continue to wield a paintbrush. It features my creative response to self-portraits by twelve other artists.
“There is everything and nothing at stake in a self-portrait,” write Joe Fig and Robert Cozzolino, in Narcissus in the Studio: Artist Portraits and Self-Portraits.
It is an intensely private yet knowingly public declaration of identity. Although numerous artists have reassured us that they make self-portraits because of convenience – they are their own perpetually available model – self-images are never straightforward transcriptions of what the mirror reflected back. Unconscious or deliberate choices about style, pose, props, symbols, and the suppression or revelation of character traits affect the resulting image. … Self-portraiture is always a partial view of the sitter at a particular moment – emotional, intellectual, physical, political, and psychological – a trace of evidence left about identity. (2)
|
Indeed, I feel a combination of risk and safety as I embark. I’m risking exposing myself to misunderstanding. At the same time, there’s something so cozily familiar about the subject matter that I think, this’ll be easy, since who’s more of an expert on me than me? Plus, there’s the oh-what-the-heckness of being sixty.
Maybe, as happened with Joan Miró, representation will give way to abstraction. Miró’s 1917 “Self-Portrait” shows him looking perfectly human, in red pajamas, with combed hair and a sweet expression, but by just 1919, in “Self-Portrait II,” as John Updike puts it, “a large stylistic distance has been traversed” and Miró depicts himself as red, yellow, and blue fishes, suns, stars, moons, and crossed lines topped with horns – a bull? – as he takes “his flying leap into Surrealism.” (3)
So here I go!
Maybe, as happened with Joan Miró, representation will give way to abstraction. Miró’s 1917 “Self-Portrait” shows him looking perfectly human, in red pajamas, with combed hair and a sweet expression, but by just 1919, in “Self-Portrait II,” as John Updike puts it, “a large stylistic distance has been traversed” and Miró depicts himself as red, yellow, and blue fishes, suns, stars, moons, and crossed lines topped with horns – a bull? – as he takes “his flying leap into Surrealism.” (3)
So here I go!
Aging
Back to Rembrandt. Manuel Gasser, in Self-Portraits from the 15th Century to the Present Day, posits that the early works “could be described as ‘wish-fulfilments’: to compensate for the drabness of his life, the young Rembrandt would dress up as a nobleman or an oriental prince,” but says “towards the end they turned into a sort of private duologue, in which one cast-off old man passed the time in talk with another.”(4) Fig and Cozzolino, in Narcissus in the Studio, say the last portraits have been read as meditations on mortality; they quote the Austrian Expressionist Oskar Kokoschka:
I looked at Rembrandt’s last self-portrait: ugly and broken, frightful and despairing, and so wonderfully painted. And suddenly I understood: to be able to observe oneself vanishing in the mirror – to see nothing more – and to paint oneself as “nothingness,” the negation of man. What a miracle, and what a symbol. (5)
|
There’s a tradition, according to Omar Calabrese and Marguerite Shore’s Artists’ Self-Portraits, that Rembrandt himself commented thusly on his last self-portraits: “Perhaps I have finally succeeded in seeing myself and in recognizing myself. What have I found? I see death painted.” (6)
Adding his voice to many others about the unflinching honesty of Rembrandt’s last self-portraits, Pascal Bonofoux infers that “[h]e wanted to be uncompromising, unyielding, even cruel.” (7)
In the 1655 example I’ve selected – when he has fourteen years left to live – he looks concerned; his brow is furrowed, his eyes almost pleading. But he looks like he still can muster the energy to deal with what life is throwing at him.
Similarly, Anna Dorothea Therbusch was in her 50s when she painted a self-portrait which Frances Borzello, in Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits, calls “[a] brave exception to the tyranny of beauty at this time” [the 18th century], nothing the “single eyeglass contraption suspended from under her headcovering.” She continues:
Adding his voice to many others about the unflinching honesty of Rembrandt’s last self-portraits, Pascal Bonofoux infers that “[h]e wanted to be uncompromising, unyielding, even cruel.” (7)
In the 1655 example I’ve selected – when he has fourteen years left to live – he looks concerned; his brow is furrowed, his eyes almost pleading. But he looks like he still can muster the energy to deal with what life is throwing at him.
Similarly, Anna Dorothea Therbusch was in her 50s when she painted a self-portrait which Frances Borzello, in Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits, calls “[a] brave exception to the tyranny of beauty at this time” [the 18th century], nothing the “single eyeglass contraption suspended from under her headcovering.” She continues:
In 1765, when she was approaching fifty, Therbusch spent two years in Paris where she was accepted into the French Academy. It was impossible for a distinguished female painter’s presence to go unnoticed, and the Correspondance Litteraire carried the immortal sentence: “One thing I know, is that on receiving Mme Therbusch, the Academy cannot be suspected of having submitted to the rule of beauty, so powerful in France, for the new academician is neither very young nor very pretty.” (8)
|
As famously difficult as Rembrandt’s life got, he did not have to deal with the pressures that women artists have faced down the ages. As much as Therbusch’s era, the second half of the 18th century, was “a richly inventive period,” writes Borzello, “it was also the age of the bluestocking, an age where women who paraded their learning were mocked. Women artists walked “a tightrope between being good enough to deserve praise but not so pompous as to elicit mockery.” Clearly, Therbusch, with her eyewear on full display, didn’t mind leading with her chin as she presented herself, failing midlife eyesight and all.
As for me, since whole vats of face moisturizer would do nothing to lessen the deep lines that run up from between my brows and travel south from the corners of my mouth, and since my husband warns that Botox injections will likely make me look “like a balloon,” there’s nothing to do but paint them in. And while it’s true that the approach of my sixtieth birthday was rough, my fierce expression has less to do with fear of impending death than with trying to paint accurately. The dinosaur earrings are meant to be funny.
As for me, since whole vats of face moisturizer would do nothing to lessen the deep lines that run up from between my brows and travel south from the corners of my mouth, and since my husband warns that Botox injections will likely make me look “like a balloon,” there’s nothing to do but paint them in. And while it’s true that the approach of my sixtieth birthday was rough, my fierce expression has less to do with fear of impending death than with trying to paint accurately. The dinosaur earrings are meant to be funny.
My hero Michelangelo
I took an intensive Italian language course in Rome once, and toward the end of the week, the instructor asked us to name our favorite location in the Eternal City. I told him it was “anywhere Michelangelo put his fingerprints.” The young man smirked as if to say, “Tourists.” But really, what is better about Rome than that Michelangelo lived and breathed and had his being there?
In pursuit of Michelangelo, I have traveled to Rome and Florence multiple times, have watched a 36-lecture DVD series about him, have listened to audiobooks (fiction and non-), have interviewed more than one expert for my Wesleyan radio show, and have wept at the sight of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica when the landlady threw open the shutters to suddenly reveal it. I have considered officially proposing his canonization as a saint.
What is it about him? In a sentence, he did everything. And though he suffered, he kept going.
Unfortunately for us fans,Il Divino wasn’t much into self-portraiture. There is a pen and ink drawing in the Louvre “attributed to” him, but otherwise, he’s depicted in disguise: painted as the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew in “The Last Judgment” and sculpted as (it is believed) Nicodemus in “The Deposition.” (9)
Jacopino del Conte painted the portrait that I took as my model for the egg tempera diptych included here. I painted myself in kind. Both works were done in Tuscany, Michelangelo’s home region, as an homage to one of the greatest artists of all time.
In pursuit of Michelangelo, I have traveled to Rome and Florence multiple times, have watched a 36-lecture DVD series about him, have listened to audiobooks (fiction and non-), have interviewed more than one expert for my Wesleyan radio show, and have wept at the sight of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica when the landlady threw open the shutters to suddenly reveal it. I have considered officially proposing his canonization as a saint.
What is it about him? In a sentence, he did everything. And though he suffered, he kept going.
Unfortunately for us fans,Il Divino wasn’t much into self-portraiture. There is a pen and ink drawing in the Louvre “attributed to” him, but otherwise, he’s depicted in disguise: painted as the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew in “The Last Judgment” and sculpted as (it is believed) Nicodemus in “The Deposition.” (9)
Jacopino del Conte painted the portrait that I took as my model for the egg tempera diptych included here. I painted myself in kind. Both works were done in Tuscany, Michelangelo’s home region, as an homage to one of the greatest artists of all time.
The Artist as Object
I ask you, what kind of English major would I be if I lacked an appreciation of metaphor?
In Artists’ Self-Portraits, Joe Fig and Robert Cozzolino note that “in contemporary art the self-portrait is rarely a portrait; it is above all a sign that is representative of the work, style, ideas, sentiments, and theories of its author. It is the author, in turn, who is reflected or mirrored in the work, not because the work has a concretely specular surface, but because the object representing the artist automatically manifests that artist’s identity. (10)
Ceramicist Robert Arneson’s cast himself as a brick. As the exhibition label from the National Portrait Gallery explains, the object’s “physical association with the artist is … a key component of its function as a self-portrait.” (11) In what other ways Arneson might be bricklike – stubborn, say, or “thick as a brick” – I was unable to learn.
When I think of an object that might represent me, I think of containers, such as bins and tote bags, each devoted to one or another of my many interests. In a RISD documentary filmmaking course I took once, I fulfilled the assignment to produce an autobiography by showing myself loading up the car with tote bags.
Relatedly, I am a shopper – specifically a trawler of the internet – for bargains, especially those appealing to my peculiar pre-teen-like psyche. Also, IRL, as they say, I visit secondhand stores – to the extreme that I feel compelled each Lent to give it up secondhand shopping.
“Do I need therapy?” I asked a fellow shopper at Goodwill one day, as we stood in line with our overloaded carts.
“This is therapy,” she replied.
In an effort to redeem this habit, I created a construction out of cigar boxes, with doors that open to reveal actual receipts. “Does etsy shopping make me a patron of the arts?”
Please say yes.
In Artists’ Self-Portraits, Joe Fig and Robert Cozzolino note that “in contemporary art the self-portrait is rarely a portrait; it is above all a sign that is representative of the work, style, ideas, sentiments, and theories of its author. It is the author, in turn, who is reflected or mirrored in the work, not because the work has a concretely specular surface, but because the object representing the artist automatically manifests that artist’s identity. (10)
Ceramicist Robert Arneson’s cast himself as a brick. As the exhibition label from the National Portrait Gallery explains, the object’s “physical association with the artist is … a key component of its function as a self-portrait.” (11) In what other ways Arneson might be bricklike – stubborn, say, or “thick as a brick” – I was unable to learn.
When I think of an object that might represent me, I think of containers, such as bins and tote bags, each devoted to one or another of my many interests. In a RISD documentary filmmaking course I took once, I fulfilled the assignment to produce an autobiography by showing myself loading up the car with tote bags.
Relatedly, I am a shopper – specifically a trawler of the internet – for bargains, especially those appealing to my peculiar pre-teen-like psyche. Also, IRL, as they say, I visit secondhand stores – to the extreme that I feel compelled each Lent to give it up secondhand shopping.
“Do I need therapy?” I asked a fellow shopper at Goodwill one day, as we stood in line with our overloaded carts.
“This is therapy,” she replied.
In an effort to redeem this habit, I created a construction out of cigar boxes, with doors that open to reveal actual receipts. “Does etsy shopping make me a patron of the arts?”
Please say yes.
Kim and Kitty
Of course, it was only a matter of time before the selfie became a subject of academic inquiry. Alicia Eler, in her thoroughly researched recent book The Selfie Generation: Exploring Our Notions of Privacy, Sex, Consent, and Culture. Though I personally have never shared a selfie except by holding up my phone to someone’s face, I learned from Eler that “[t]he very nature of the selfie is that it’s shot with an awareness of potential publicness even if it is saved to a phone and never shared or leaked. The selfie distorts ideas of ‘public’ and ‘private,’ merging the two to create a reality of online existence. This messes with ideas that the private is a privileged space, and that the self offline is the only ‘real’ self. (12)
Kim Kardashian has been called “the embodiment of the selfie”:
Kim Kardashian has been called “the embodiment of the selfie”:
Selfish is literally a collection of Kim’s selfies over a period of eight years, documenting her public ascension to celebrity that coincided with the rise of social media. Not only did Kardashian solidify the importance of the selfie, she also defined it, using it as a way to both create and commodify her own image. (13)
|
Kardashian exemplifies Eler’s observation that “the selfie is largely both an adolescent and celebrity social phenomena, because both categories of people are intensely focused on how they are perceived by others. Celebs and teenagers both want to be adored; being liked is the ultimate reward.” (14)
Indeed, as stated in Facing the World: Self-portraits from Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei, “selfies are demotically altering our ideas of what it is to be alive; self-portraiture is now effortlessly available to all.” (15)
I can’t resist listing the many variations on selfies: “belfies (pictures of buttocks), cellfies (taken by prisoners on banned mobile phones), gelfies (taken in gyms), helfies (hairdos), lelfies (legs) , nelfies (nude pictures), relfies (people with their partners), velfies (video selfies) and suglies (selfies with deliberately ugly expressions), to name but a few.” (16)
One of the only things Kim Kardashian and I have in common is that we both love our cat. There is not much to say about my own selfie except that it features my sweet boy William, who eschews social media.
Indeed, as stated in Facing the World: Self-portraits from Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei, “selfies are demotically altering our ideas of what it is to be alive; self-portraiture is now effortlessly available to all.” (15)
I can’t resist listing the many variations on selfies: “belfies (pictures of buttocks), cellfies (taken by prisoners on banned mobile phones), gelfies (taken in gyms), helfies (hairdos), lelfies (legs) , nelfies (nude pictures), relfies (people with their partners), velfies (video selfies) and suglies (selfies with deliberately ugly expressions), to name but a few.” (16)
One of the only things Kim Kardashian and I have in common is that we both love our cat. There is not much to say about my own selfie except that it features my sweet boy William, who eschews social media.
A Dean in Development
Hartford Art School Dean Nancy Stuart shot the black and white self-portrait seen here – it’s one of many – after dropping out of Michigan State her freshman year, as it did not have a photography program yet. She was sitting on the front porch floor of her first-ever apartment in Lansing, Michigan. She was 20 years old, living on her own, teaching photography part-time at Lansing Community College and working at Don DeKonick’s Portrait Studio – “feeling full of myself, I’m sure!”
She was a fan of Richard Avedon and dreamed of one day being famous like him. The photo in her lap is Avedon’s portrait of the artist Louise Nevelson “(though I may not have been that familiar with her work at that time!). She seems to be reproaching me not to waste any time or make any excuses. The sunshine & shadows, my empty glass of iced tea, shaven legs, painted toe nails – I was trying to figure out what being female in 1974/5 was all about!”
My take on the dean’s photo – a phone selfie shot on the back deck of my house – is about being long out of my 20s, with dreams of fame long-faded, with bunions and need of a pedicure.
She was a fan of Richard Avedon and dreamed of one day being famous like him. The photo in her lap is Avedon’s portrait of the artist Louise Nevelson “(though I may not have been that familiar with her work at that time!). She seems to be reproaching me not to waste any time or make any excuses. The sunshine & shadows, my empty glass of iced tea, shaven legs, painted toe nails – I was trying to figure out what being female in 1974/5 was all about!”
My take on the dean’s photo – a phone selfie shot on the back deck of my house – is about being long out of my 20s, with dreams of fame long-faded, with bunions and need of a pedicure.
The Artist as Show-off?
“The Man with a Turban,” also known as “Man with a Red Turban,” “Portrait of a Man” and “Self-portrait” may or may not depict Jan van Eyck. (17)And that turban? It’s really a “chaperon,” complicated wrapping headgear that provided the artist the perfect opportunity to strut his or her stuff. Andrew Webster, writing in Fine Art Connoisseur, notes, among other convincing evidence of its being a portrait of van Eyck himself, that the inscription on the frame reads, “I do as I can”:
which can perhaps be interpreted as a kind of self-promotion. Indeed, many scholars also believe a self-portrait would explain the chaperon. The folds, lines, light, shading, and texture of the headgear would have been a vivid display of the artist’s talents, undoubtedly impressing potential patrons. (18)
|
The National Gallery likewise writes:
Van Eyck uses light and shade in a subtle and dramatic way: the sitter seems to emerge from darkness, his face and headdress modeled by the light that falls from the left. The viewer is drawn towards the image by the penetrating gaze of the sitter. The painting, so carefully inscribed, was presumably one of particular significance to the painter, suggesting further a possible self-portrait. (19)
|
By contrast, my ceramic depiction of myself rocking a towel on my head, created in ceramics class, is a vivid display of my lack of talent for ceramics. It hangs in a bathroom that only I use.
Hiding in Plain Sight
In the 12th century, a nun named Guda tucked a drawing of herself inside an ornate letter D with a banner pronouncing, “GUDA, woman and sinner, wrote and painted this book.” (20)
In the 21st century, a writer (and okay, a sinner) named Maria wrote the story of her mother’s life, changed the names, and called it a novel.
In the 21st century, a writer (and okay, a sinner) named Maria wrote the story of her mother’s life, changed the names, and called it a novel.
The Artist as Show-off? II
Parmigianino (aka Francesco Mazzola, 1503-1540) wanted to impress Pope Clement VII so he gazed at himself in a convex mirror and painted the image onto a wooden half-ball that he’d had made at a turner’s shop – and mission accomplished! It “gained him access to the papal court and was immediately admired by his contemporaries.” (21)
As the Renaissance artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari writes, the resulting likeness was
As the Renaissance artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari writes, the resulting likeness was
so natural that one could scarcely believe it was feigned…he painted a hand in the act of drawing, a bit large, as it appeared in the mirror, so beautiful it looked extremely real. And because Francesco was very beautiful of countenance, and had an extremely agreeable face and appearance, more like an angel than a man, his likeness on that ball seemed like something divine, indeed the entire work turned out so well, that painting and reality were indistinguishable the work had all the luster of glass, every mark of reflection, every light and shadow so true that one could not hope for more from the human intellect.” (22)
|
Not only did this little portrait gain fame for Parmigianino, it “belongs to the start of a revolution that was one of the most far-reaching in the history of art. For it ushered in the movement that was later given the name of Mannerist – the underminer of the Renaissance style that had just reached its peak of development.” (23) Mannerism, says Manual Gasser, was to the late 16th century what non-representational art is to culture today. (24)
My own attempt at showing off involved the purchase of a $10 convex mirror from an auto supply store. As I got to work, I quickly realized Parmigianino was posing as if he might have an iPhone in his hand, ready to shoot a selfie! I painted myself accordingly. Appropriately, my face falls out of the composition, just like when I try to take a selfie in real life!
My own attempt at showing off involved the purchase of a $10 convex mirror from an auto supply store. As I got to work, I quickly realized Parmigianino was posing as if he might have an iPhone in his hand, ready to shoot a selfie! I painted myself accordingly. Appropriately, my face falls out of the composition, just like when I try to take a selfie in real life!
Caricature
Caricaturist Ralph Barton once remarked, “It is not the caricaturist’s business to be penetrating; it is his job to put down the figure a man cuts before his fellows in his attempt to conceal the writhings of his soul.” (25)
In the case of this self-portrait by George Grosz, the writhings of the soul were apparently his own. As much as this work seems to have been executed on the fly, it and many of Grosz’s others apparently were born of deep psychological scars resulting from a stint in the German army in 1914. War, he said, “meant horror, mutilation, annihilation.”:
In the case of this self-portrait by George Grosz, the writhings of the soul were apparently his own. As much as this work seems to have been executed on the fly, it and many of Grosz’s others apparently were born of deep psychological scars resulting from a stint in the German army in 1914. War, he said, “meant horror, mutilation, annihilation.”:
Grosz channeled his disgust into political satire and apocalyptic imager, extrapolating from his wartime sketchbooks hideously maimed soldiers, hardened prostitutes, bloated profiteers, grotesque generals, and debauched officials. His reputation grew as his trenchant drawings were published in portfolios. (26)
|
He was a leading Dadaist in Berlin before moving to the United States in 1933. He became a citizen, taught, won a Guggenheim fellowship, accepted commissions, and won prizes for his art. Still, “he never felt appreciated by the art establishment.” (27) The caricature shown here, with its “introspective expression and delicacy … reveal a painful vulnerability that one friend felt explained his ferocity rather than contradicted it.” (28)
I was drawn to the washy expressiveness of the Grosz self-portrait and attempted my version of it in a Cortona, Italy, hotel this summer. My cranky look is not mimicry but the result of trying to set up – on a pile of books and magazines lying nearby – a small mirror, adjusted to reflect my face in a wall mirror that was hanging above the dresser on which I would paint. It was a disaster. I can’t even remember how I accomplished the painting here. I wish I could say it’s a statement against war.
A postscript: The Grosz caricature is so accurate that when I ran across a more complete painting of him in an art book, I immediately recognized him. (29)
I was drawn to the washy expressiveness of the Grosz self-portrait and attempted my version of it in a Cortona, Italy, hotel this summer. My cranky look is not mimicry but the result of trying to set up – on a pile of books and magazines lying nearby – a small mirror, adjusted to reflect my face in a wall mirror that was hanging above the dresser on which I would paint. It was a disaster. I can’t even remember how I accomplished the painting here. I wish I could say it’s a statement against war.
A postscript: The Grosz caricature is so accurate that when I ran across a more complete painting of him in an art book, I immediately recognized him. (29)
"The Cats Make the Painting"
A sign of progress: a painting by German-born Swedish artist Lotte Laserstein, shown painting a female nude in her studio in 1928, “expresses how normal a subject the woman artist and her model had become” by then. “[E]ven the ambiguous nature of Laserstein’s appearance could be due to the fashionable androgyny of the day.” (30).
Likewise, in Laserstein’s “Self-Portrait with a Cat,” also completed in 1928, she is completely focused on her work – but so confident in her ability that she can simultaneously paint and cradle a cat. As my art professor Cat Balco commented on my full-length self-portrait crawling with felines, “The cats make the painting.”
Cats are normal. Painting is normal. The normality of painting can lead to doing more of it. Doing more painting can lead to getting better at it.
Cats make the painting.
Likewise, in Laserstein’s “Self-Portrait with a Cat,” also completed in 1928, she is completely focused on her work – but so confident in her ability that she can simultaneously paint and cradle a cat. As my art professor Cat Balco commented on my full-length self-portrait crawling with felines, “The cats make the painting.”
Cats are normal. Painting is normal. The normality of painting can lead to doing more of it. Doing more painting can lead to getting better at it.
Cats make the painting.
“Draw, Antonio, Draw, and Don’t Waste Time”
That was Michelangelo’s advice to an art student, and I’ve got it displayed it on the wall across from my drafting table. Not that it isn’t seared into my brain to make good use of time. A breast cancer diagnosis – and now turning sixty! – will do that.
I was inspired by Ana Smulian’s mixed media work “Seven Out of Eight Don’t,” which she created to help her deal with the rage she felt upon reading a newspaper story about a local doctor/researcher who stated that “since seven out of eight women don’t get breast cancer, it’s a rare disease!” (31)
I gathered together some of the works that feel related: a plaster cast I’m glad I made of myself back in the ‘90s, before my diagnosis; photos of my radiated skin during treatment, and the art bra I made for a survivors’ event because, just as Ana found, making things helps.
I’m grateful to be a work in progress.
To be continued...
Notes
,1 Susan Fegley Osmond, "Rembrandt van Rijn: Selected Self-Portraits," http://www.rembrandtpainting.net/rembrandt_self_portraits.htm.
2 Joe Fig and Robert Cozzolino, Narcissus in the Studio: Artist Portraits and Self-Portraits; Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2010.16
3 John Updike, Always Looking, London: Penguin, 2012., 138 and 142
4 Manuel Gasser, Self-Portraits: from the fifteenth century to the present day. New York:Appleton Century, 1961, 88-91
5 Fig and Cozzolino, Narcissus in the Studio: Artist Portraits and Self-Portraits, 25
6 Omar Calabrese and Marguerite Shore, Artists Self-Portraits. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 2006, 320
7. Pascal Bonofoux, Rembrandt: Self-Portrait. New York: Rizzoli, 1985, 8
8. Frances Borzello, Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits. London: Thames & Hudson, 2018.,2
9 Calabrese and Shore, Artists Self-Portraits,. 136
10 Fig and Cozzolino, Narcissus in the Studio: Artist Portraits and Self-Portraits, 376
11 Robert Arneson, “Brick: Robert Arneson Self-Portrait.” National Portrait Gallery. Accessed August 27, 2019. https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.2002.
12 Alicia Eler,The Selfie Generation: Exploring Our Notions of Privacy, Sex, Consent, and Culture. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2019, xi
13 Eler, The Selfie Generation, xvi
14 Eler, The Selfie Generation, 5
15 Facing the World: Self-portraits from Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei. Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Edinburgh. 2016, 20
16. Facing the World, 32
17 Calabrese and Shore, Artists Self-Portraits, 164
18 Andrew Webster, “Portrait of the Week: Jan Van Eyck, ‘Portrait of a Man.’” Fine Art Today. Fine Art Connoisseur, July 27, 2017.
19 Webster, “Portrait of the Week: Jan Van Eyck, ‘Portrait of a Man.’
20 Borzello, Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits., 38
21 Calabrese and Shore, Artists Self-Portraits, 176
22 Calabrese and Shore, Artists Self-Portraits, 176
23 Gasser, Self-Portraits: from the fifteenth century to the present day, 63
24 Gasser, Self-Portraits: from the fifteenth century to the present day, 63
25 John Updike, Just Looking, New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1989, 148
26 Wendy Wick Reaves and Anne Collins Goodyear. Reflections, Refractions Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2009, 43
27 Reaves and Goodyear, Reflections, Refractions Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century, 43
28 Robyn Asleson, Rhys Conlon, and Sarah McGavran, Eye to I: Self-Portraits from the National Portrait Gallery. Washington: National Portrait Gallery, 2019, 51
29 Calabrese and Shore,Artists Self-Portraits, 153
30 Borzello, Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits, 131, 133
31 Art, Rage, Us, Art and Writing by Women with Breast Cancer. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1998, 40
2 Joe Fig and Robert Cozzolino, Narcissus in the Studio: Artist Portraits and Self-Portraits; Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2010.16
3 John Updike, Always Looking, London: Penguin, 2012., 138 and 142
4 Manuel Gasser, Self-Portraits: from the fifteenth century to the present day. New York:Appleton Century, 1961, 88-91
5 Fig and Cozzolino, Narcissus in the Studio: Artist Portraits and Self-Portraits, 25
6 Omar Calabrese and Marguerite Shore, Artists Self-Portraits. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 2006, 320
7. Pascal Bonofoux, Rembrandt: Self-Portrait. New York: Rizzoli, 1985, 8
8. Frances Borzello, Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits. London: Thames & Hudson, 2018.,2
9 Calabrese and Shore, Artists Self-Portraits,. 136
10 Fig and Cozzolino, Narcissus in the Studio: Artist Portraits and Self-Portraits, 376
11 Robert Arneson, “Brick: Robert Arneson Self-Portrait.” National Portrait Gallery. Accessed August 27, 2019. https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.2002.
12 Alicia Eler,The Selfie Generation: Exploring Our Notions of Privacy, Sex, Consent, and Culture. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2019, xi
13 Eler, The Selfie Generation, xvi
14 Eler, The Selfie Generation, 5
15 Facing the World: Self-portraits from Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei. Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Edinburgh. 2016, 20
16. Facing the World, 32
17 Calabrese and Shore, Artists Self-Portraits, 164
18 Andrew Webster, “Portrait of the Week: Jan Van Eyck, ‘Portrait of a Man.’” Fine Art Today. Fine Art Connoisseur, July 27, 2017.
19 Webster, “Portrait of the Week: Jan Van Eyck, ‘Portrait of a Man.’
20 Borzello, Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits., 38
21 Calabrese and Shore, Artists Self-Portraits, 176
22 Calabrese and Shore, Artists Self-Portraits, 176
23 Gasser, Self-Portraits: from the fifteenth century to the present day, 63
24 Gasser, Self-Portraits: from the fifteenth century to the present day, 63
25 John Updike, Just Looking, New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1989, 148
26 Wendy Wick Reaves and Anne Collins Goodyear. Reflections, Refractions Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2009, 43
27 Reaves and Goodyear, Reflections, Refractions Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century, 43
28 Robyn Asleson, Rhys Conlon, and Sarah McGavran, Eye to I: Self-Portraits from the National Portrait Gallery. Washington: National Portrait Gallery, 2019, 51
29 Calabrese and Shore,Artists Self-Portraits, 153
30 Borzello, Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits, 131, 133
31 Art, Rage, Us, Art and Writing by Women with Breast Cancer. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1998, 40
Bibliography
|
Arneson, Robert. “Brick: Robert Arneson Self-Portrait.” National Portrait Gallery. Accessed August 27, 2019. https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.2002.191.
Art, Rage, Us: Art and Writing by Women with Breast Cancer. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1998.
Asleson, Robyn, Rhys Conlon, and Sarah McGavran. Eye to I: Self-Portraits from the National Portrait Gallery. Washington: National Portrait Gallery, 2019.
Beckett, Wendy. Sister Wendy’s Odyssey: a Journey of Artistic Discovery. New York: Stewart,Tabori & Chang, 1998.
Bonafoux, Pascal. Rembrandt: Self-Portrait. New York: Rizzoli, 1985.
Borzello, Frances. Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits. London: Thames & Hudson, 2018.
Brooker, Suzanne. Portrait Painting Atelier: Old Master Techniques and Contemporary Applications. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2010.
Calabrese, Omar, and Marguerite Shore. Artists Self-Portraits. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 2006.
Conklin, Andrew S. “Self Portrait with Reflections.” Artists Magazine. March 2019.
Cuthbert, Rosalind. An Introduction to Painting Portraits: Anatomy, Proportion, Likeness, Light, Composition. London: Quantum Books, 2012.
Eler, Alicia. The Selfie Generation: Exploring Our Notions of Privacy, Sex, Consent, and Culture. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2019.
Facing the World: Self-portraits from Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei. Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Edinburgh. 2016.
Fig, Joe, and Robert Cozzolino. Narcissus in the Studio: Artist Portraits and Self-Portraits; Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2010.
Galardi, Giovanna Giusti, and Maria Sframeli. Artists Self-Portraits from the Uffizi. Milano: Skira, 2007.
Gasser, Manuel. Self-Portraits: from the fifteenth century to the present day. New York:Appleton Century, 1961.
James, Hall, Valsse Pierre, and Ullrich Wolfgang. Facing the World: Self-Portraits from Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2016.
Jordan, Courtney. “The Artist in the Mirror: Tips for the Artist-Turned-Model.” Artists Magazine, March 2019.
Kent, C.J. “Asserting Her Selfie: Carla Gannis Extends the Concept of Self-Portraiture by Raising Selfies to an Art Form.” Artists Magazine, March 2019.
Miles, Louella. “Distorted Reflections; Christos Tsimaris takes a personal look at his roundabout art journey through a year of self-portraits.” Artists Magazine. March 2019.
Osmond, Susan Fegley. “Rembrandt Van Rijn: Selected Self-Portraits.” Rembrandt, 2018. http://www.rembrandtpainting.net/rembrandt_self_portraits.htm.
Parks, John A. “Eye to I: The National Portrait Gallery Presents a Century of American
‘Selfies.’ ” Artists Magazine, March 2019.
Rideal, Liz. Mirror Mirror: Self-Portraits by Women Artists. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2002.
Reaves, Wendy Wick, and Anne Collins Goodyear. Reflections, Refractions Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2009.
Schmid, Richard. Richard Schmid Paints the Figure: Advanced Techniques in Oil. New York:Watson-Guptill, 1977.
“Self Portrait with a Cat.” Leicester's German Expressionist Collection. Accessed August 27,2019.
http://www.germanexpressionismleicester.org/leicesters-collection/artists-and-artworks/lotte-laserstein/self-portrait-with-a-cat/.
Updike, John, and Christopher Carduff. Always Looking Essays on Art. London: Penguin, 2012.
Updike, John. Just Looking. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1989.
Updike, John. Still Looking: Essays on American Art. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.
Watwood, Patricia. “Face Time.” Artists Magazine, September 2018.
Webster, Andrew. “Portrait of the Week: Jan Van Eyck, ‘Portrait of a Man.’” Fine Art Today. Fine Art Connoisseur, July 27, 2017. https://fineartconnoisseur.com/2017/07/portrait-of-the-week-jan-van-eyck-portrait-of-a-man/.
Weiss, Jerry N. “In Love with Passion: Eugene Delacroix Takes a Cool Measure of His Own Romantic Personality.” Artists Magazine, March 2019.
West, Kim Kardashian. Selfish. Universe Publishing, 2016.
Wilson, Edie. “The Florentine Pietà, Michelangelo, c. 1547-1553.” Art and Identity in Florence 12001600, June 28, 2018.
https://art-id-florence.cias.rit.edu/wordpress/2018/06/11/the-florentine-pieta-michelangelo-c-1547-1553/
Woodall, Joanna. Portraiture: Facing the Subject. Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 2008.
Woods-Marsden, Joanna. Renaissance Self-Portraiture: the Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Art, Rage, Us: Art and Writing by Women with Breast Cancer. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1998.
Asleson, Robyn, Rhys Conlon, and Sarah McGavran. Eye to I: Self-Portraits from the National Portrait Gallery. Washington: National Portrait Gallery, 2019.
Beckett, Wendy. Sister Wendy’s Odyssey: a Journey of Artistic Discovery. New York: Stewart,Tabori & Chang, 1998.
Bonafoux, Pascal. Rembrandt: Self-Portrait. New York: Rizzoli, 1985.
Borzello, Frances. Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits. London: Thames & Hudson, 2018.
Brooker, Suzanne. Portrait Painting Atelier: Old Master Techniques and Contemporary Applications. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2010.
Calabrese, Omar, and Marguerite Shore. Artists Self-Portraits. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 2006.
Conklin, Andrew S. “Self Portrait with Reflections.” Artists Magazine. March 2019.
Cuthbert, Rosalind. An Introduction to Painting Portraits: Anatomy, Proportion, Likeness, Light, Composition. London: Quantum Books, 2012.
Eler, Alicia. The Selfie Generation: Exploring Our Notions of Privacy, Sex, Consent, and Culture. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2019.
Facing the World: Self-portraits from Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei. Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Edinburgh. 2016.
Fig, Joe, and Robert Cozzolino. Narcissus in the Studio: Artist Portraits and Self-Portraits; Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2010.
Galardi, Giovanna Giusti, and Maria Sframeli. Artists Self-Portraits from the Uffizi. Milano: Skira, 2007.
Gasser, Manuel. Self-Portraits: from the fifteenth century to the present day. New York:Appleton Century, 1961.
James, Hall, Valsse Pierre, and Ullrich Wolfgang. Facing the World: Self-Portraits from Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2016.
Jordan, Courtney. “The Artist in the Mirror: Tips for the Artist-Turned-Model.” Artists Magazine, March 2019.
Kent, C.J. “Asserting Her Selfie: Carla Gannis Extends the Concept of Self-Portraiture by Raising Selfies to an Art Form.” Artists Magazine, March 2019.
Miles, Louella. “Distorted Reflections; Christos Tsimaris takes a personal look at his roundabout art journey through a year of self-portraits.” Artists Magazine. March 2019.
Osmond, Susan Fegley. “Rembrandt Van Rijn: Selected Self-Portraits.” Rembrandt, 2018. http://www.rembrandtpainting.net/rembrandt_self_portraits.htm.
Parks, John A. “Eye to I: The National Portrait Gallery Presents a Century of American
‘Selfies.’ ” Artists Magazine, March 2019.
Rideal, Liz. Mirror Mirror: Self-Portraits by Women Artists. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2002.
Reaves, Wendy Wick, and Anne Collins Goodyear. Reflections, Refractions Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2009.
Schmid, Richard. Richard Schmid Paints the Figure: Advanced Techniques in Oil. New York:Watson-Guptill, 1977.
“Self Portrait with a Cat.” Leicester's German Expressionist Collection. Accessed August 27,2019.
http://www.germanexpressionismleicester.org/leicesters-collection/artists-and-artworks/lotte-laserstein/self-portrait-with-a-cat/.
Updike, John, and Christopher Carduff. Always Looking Essays on Art. London: Penguin, 2012.
Updike, John. Just Looking. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1989.
Updike, John. Still Looking: Essays on American Art. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.
Watwood, Patricia. “Face Time.” Artists Magazine, September 2018.
Webster, Andrew. “Portrait of the Week: Jan Van Eyck, ‘Portrait of a Man.’” Fine Art Today. Fine Art Connoisseur, July 27, 2017. https://fineartconnoisseur.com/2017/07/portrait-of-the-week-jan-van-eyck-portrait-of-a-man/.
Weiss, Jerry N. “In Love with Passion: Eugene Delacroix Takes a Cool Measure of His Own Romantic Personality.” Artists Magazine, March 2019.
West, Kim Kardashian. Selfish. Universe Publishing, 2016.
Wilson, Edie. “The Florentine Pietà, Michelangelo, c. 1547-1553.” Art and Identity in Florence 12001600, June 28, 2018.
https://art-id-florence.cias.rit.edu/wordpress/2018/06/11/the-florentine-pieta-michelangelo-c-1547-1553/
Woodall, Joanna. Portraiture: Facing the Subject. Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 2008.
Woods-Marsden, Joanna. Renaissance Self-Portraiture: the Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.