Since the Renaissance, artists have used the self-portrait to study themselves, and when we look at a self-portrait we are given a window into a fascinating world: a spy-hole not only into an artist’s individual ambitions and doubts, but also the world, times and society in which they worked.
Fine self-portraiture is not necessarily a test of greatness, but many great artists have been virtuosos of the art, from Dürer, Rembrandt and Hogarth to Van Gogh, Schiele and Dalí. Self-portraits chart the journeys of the mind as well as the changes of the body; rarely painted on commission, they also provide an arena for experimentation, giving the artist freedom to consider what they might become from the standpoint of what they are. Self-portraiture is also a genre where women artists have been as active as men: from Artemisia Gentileschi to Frida Kahlo and on into our own day, self portraits have provided a means of exploring the difficulties and restrictions placed on women artists by the expectations of a patriarchal culture.
Self-portraiture may be formal or intimate, public or private, real or imagined, but it always deals in truths, even when those truths are subjective and personal rather than strictly objective facts. This one-day course explores the phenomenon of the self-portrait through the works of artists, more and less well-known, who have been inspired by this unique genre to challenge convention and themselves.