Painting Self-Portraits E-Book

Paul James

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Self-portraiture is a remarkably rich and varied genre, acting for centuries as a means for artists to explore their inner and outer selves. This book looks deeper into the motives and thoughts that lie behind the creative process, and it also balances the goals of technical profiency and emotional authenticity so the artist is better equipped to make a compelling self-portrait. Written by identical twins, it offers a personalized, practical and theoretical guide to this most powerful of art forms. The text looks at the whole creative process involved in making a self-portrait, and extended step-by-step demonstrations follow three differing approaches to self-portraiture. It emphasizes the use of good observational skills, expressive paint use and a highly practical and critical self-analysis, and offers a thorough cultural and theoretical review of the history and categorization of the self-portrait, as well as an analysis of two master self-portraits. Aimed at all artists and designers, animators and portrait painters and illustrated with 87 colour images.

Leseprobe

PAINTING SELF-PORTRAITS

Andrew and Paul James

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2015 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2015

© Andrew and Paul James 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 050 8

Dedication

To Derly, Paula, Mum and Dad, for all your loving support.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Self-Portraiture: A Brief History

2. Self-Portrait: An Evolving Depiction of Identity

3. The Self-Portrait from Life

4. The Expressive Self-Portrait

5. The Self-Portrait from Photographs

6. An Analysis of Two Master Self-Portraits

7. A Self-Portrait Head and Hands

8. Eighteen Questions and Eighteen Answers

References

Bibliography

Index

INTRODUCTION

We are all romantics looking for unity and meaning in a unified world.

Johan Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)

Laying in some colour in the early stages of a self-portrait.

Introduction by Andrew James

How apt the above quote seems when understood in the modern context of the self and the self-portrait. As is so often stated these days and quite possibly very fairly, any remaining claims made to a notion of the unified self are erroneous, and we are, to all intents and purposes, a bundle of nerve endings and multiple narratives: we are disbelievers in the reality of self. Unity eludes us.

Whether this notion of our real self is true or not, Goethe is surely on to something very important. The evidence of our true interests and passions appears to lie contrarily beyond the scientific notion of the fragmented self. Our human condition compels us to seek a coherent and meaningful description of ourselves, none more so than in the art of self-portraiture. Throughout the ages and up to the present day, artists have passionately undertaken this form of visual analysis to rigorously experience and describe, amongst other things, who they are, all the while looking to gain a deeper understanding of our collective condition, and, who knows, ultimately a meaningful sense of unity itself.

From the artist’s viewpoint, self-portraiture can be considered as the greatest of utilities, a readymade subject, ever-present and usually willing, rich in limitless complexity if the artist wishes to exploit it thus. Alternatively, the artist may wish to view self-portraiture as a value-free object, denuded of its putative psychological meaning. Once free of its cloak of subjectivity, it allows the artist free rein to practise techniques and aesthetic approaches, no matter how strange or initially unpromising, bestowing, much as a mannequin might to the tailor, an artistic freedom to clothe his or her subject in any style or treatment. It is a luxury that is rare indeed for the painter of portraits, so often constrained by the formalities demanded by that difficult discipline.

Although rarely discussed, the subject of the self-portraiture itself can be seen as a questionable category, and not as obviously separate from full blown portraiture as it might at first appear. Once the subject becomes object – as it often does – the whole notion of self-portraiture can dissolve away, resembling, because of an untapped use of the unique material of self-analysis, just another portrait. Whether just a notional category or minor sub-division to its grander relation portraiture, the merit of self-portraiture remains undiminished, and it is apparent to practitioners and enthusiasts alike that it displays many powerful qualities, unique to its own aims and outcomes.

My aim for this book is for it to be a personalized practical and theoretical guide to multiple aspects of self-portraiture, both for the practitioner as well as the enthusiastic observer. What this publication is not is a simplistic journey through a slightly superficial, technical, step-by-step painting process that overlooks many of the subtleties of this large and complex practice. By taking highly personalized and hopefully rich subjective journeys through this subject I seek to bring to it a broader understanding. I endeavour to explain my way through this field of enquiry with my own form of linear step-by-step process, even though I am relatively ‘step-less’ in my approach and without a definable or fixed technique, my work being assembled by an improvised blending and constant reworking of the entire image. I hope that the processes performed here reveal work which retains a truthful representation of this challenging intellectual and artistic practice.

I also go some way to lay out my thought processes, explaining the occurrence of problems, their resolution, and multiple reflections upon the job at hand, trying always to give form to these slightly nebulous preoccupations. The lack of very specific ‘how to’ instructions may frustrate the more prescriptively minded artist, but their inclusion would certainly confirm my lack of understanding of what a proper creative process entails. Once a reasonable level of technical proficiency is met by a practitioner, questions of a very different nature need to be asked in order that meaningful progress be made. I endeavour to make sure that my commentary about my experience of painting different self-portraits and the creative act remain as close to my authentic thoughts at the time as is possible.

Tackled head on, this challenge of a much wider enquiry into the nature of self-portraiture brings with it the prospect of enormous and lasting rewards.

Introduction by Paul James

The opportunity to be the other contributor to this book on self-portraiture was from the start a thrilling prospect. Any chance to work alongside Andrew has always brought me not only lasting enjoyment, but also growth and insight into my own work. The results of this venture have proven no different.

The seven texts I have written for the book are intended to be small, supporting essays which balance the formal and technical work produced by Andrew. As a whole they need to be varied, yet cohesive enough to be able to provide sufficient analysis for the diverse historical and evolving processes found in self-portraiture.

One solution has been to produce a brief history of self-portraiture, and define a link between artists and the period in which they worked. I have also devised a classification of self-portraiture which looks into the underpinning of why some self-portraits are made, and how they relate to one another.

The masterworks essay naturally gave me an opportunity to choose, fairly randomly, two artists and discover not only some account for their painting of their own self-portraits, but also to capture some aspect of their creative decision-making.

Finally, writing this book has proved to be something of an education for me, but by far its most enlightening experience has been the chance to read Andrew’s texts. It is a body of work that is honest, and hewn out of deep thought and feeling. I know that, carefully reflected upon, Andrew’s ideas on art and painting are able to bring into focus much that, for many artists, may seem to have been out of reach. With his clarity of thought and his singular desire to share all his knowledge, Andrew has provided a valuable and unique insight into self-portraiture.

Co-Authorship: Observation by Andrew James

Apart from our individual artistic abilities, which may go some way to qualify us to write this book, I shall no doubt be asked by various readers as to why it was undertaken by two authors rather than one. In response to this question I can attempt to justify it on three grounds.

Firstly, Paul and I had longed greatly for an opportunity to work together on a significant art project, and it eventually arrived in November 2013 in the form of a commission to write this book. I was aware our opportunity had come. Where I would be free to apply my practical experience and insights at length, Paul could balance the project with the full expression of his excellent critical and analytical faculties; so the chance was seized with great enthusiasm by us both.

Secondly, growing up together Paul and I had, and still continue to have, an all-consuming fascination and love for the world of painting. Although our living in different continents for twenty-five years has limited the time we can spend in making art together, it has done little or nothing to diminish our mutual appreciation of this joyful and limitless world of discovery. If anything it has brought a greater focus upon the ideas around the nature and production of art. Our abilities to discuss and to attempt to disentangle these complexities have improved as the years have gone on, and in many ways we are much better equipped now to co-author this book than would formerly have been the case.

On a personal note, Paul understands, far better than anyone else ever could, my artistic outlook and is therefore the perfect colleague in this venture. His support throughout my career has been nothing less than profound, and his unconditional and unwavering belief in my abilities has been extraordinary, especially at times early on when voices of support were virtually non-existent. The total faith that he has shown in me has been to a large extent the framework upon which I have built my artistic development, and he remains in many ways the intellectual and spiritual guide to my artistic future.

Lastly, justification for the co-authorship of this book is based upon the fact that Paul and I are identical twins. This fact alone doesn’t give us any privileges, but when combined with the fact that we are lifelong artists, it suggests that an interesting form of alchemy might well exist between us and the subject of self-portraiture. As identical twins our lifelong memories of each other have to some extent bestowed an extra level of awareness of ourselves via the other, and countless reminders of this truth have been inescapable to us as long as we have cared to look and listen to them. A gift unavailable to most, we have been handed by the other this privilege of an insight into ourselves, and it is with this heightened experience in mind that we attempt to bring it to bear upon our project. In a strangely parallel sense, self-portraiture frames and reflects many of the persistent ideas of what it is to be an identical twin – looking upon our own reflection or double, seeking a unified image of our individual identity and the inevitable elusiveness of the pursuit, and revealing a fascinating and multi-layered array of shared relationships and qualities.

Whether, in the end, our personal experiences can help illuminate this area of enquiry or not, we can be very sure, thankfully, that we will never be able to mine out the truth of what it is to fully comprehend oneself in the form of self-portraiture.

CHAPTER 1

SELF-PORTRAITURE: A BRIEF HISTORY

by Paul James

Self-portraiture is something one should never get involved in, since it is wrong to lie even though one endeavours to tell the truth.

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007)

Self-portrait, 2002. (Charcoal on paper, 51 × 36)

When and where does the genre of self-portraiture really begin? We can certainly trace it back a long way, and even though it is recognized largely in its most developed sense as a decidedly European venture, its existence can be located earlier throughout traditional Asian and Near Eastern art. Perhaps the most renowned painter from Antiquity was Apelles (c. 352–308). He is now largely recognized for the original painted version of the mosaic floor depicting the first century BCEBattle of Alexander and the Persians. He is also credited with having painted the first known self-portrait in the world. We are not fortunate enough to have inherited it, but this work and other self-portraits are known through brief descriptions in the literature of the Plutarch (CE 46–120), Pausanias (CE 110–180) and Pliny the Elder (CE 23–79). However, documentation from ancient times is sparse. Existent works are rare, and we can assume that the genre we know as self-portraiture simply did not exist. The genesis of this type of artistic genre requires a number of significantly more intense, focused and sustained factors to establish and maintain its existence.

We need to move forwards over a thousand years to witness its genesis/creation. In a small but essential part of its evolution the invention of the mirror, in the late Gothic period, helped set in motion the practical conditions for self-portraiture to develop. Mirrors of the period had previously consisted of, at best, highly polished steel surfaces. These were the only instruments available which afforded a reflective surface capable of producing an image. From them, one was forced to meet the challenges of combing hair, applying make-up and, of course, admiring oneself.

For artists, these steel surfaces lacked the subtle reflective clarity that mirrors would soon provide. By 1400 the newest glass mirrors from Venice were backed with an inventive tin and silver alloy, which made them, in essence, like the ones we know today. These costly items allowed artists to produce self-portraits with the same level of success they had achieved in their other figurative work.

Self-Portraits in the Fifteenth Century

Jan van Eyck, Portrait of a Man (Self-Portrait?) © The National Gallery, London.

Of this time period, and establishing a distinct benchmark for early self-portraits, is the famous Man in Red Turban, 1433, by Jan van Eyck (1385–1441). It is often described as being the first self-portrait on panel, thus making it the precursor to all modern-day easel self-representations. We don’t know for certain, but it seems more than likely that it was painted using the newly designed glass mirror.

We must wonder just how difficult it would have been to have painted this work using anything other than the newly developed Venetian mirrors of the time. Would it have been possible to achieve such an exacting analysis in any other way? The answer is probably not. Therefore in Flanders, in the late fifteenth century, there exists a suitable birthplace for self-portraits.

What were the other conditions that prompted this and other, such subsequently self aware and finely executed works of self-portraiture? The Man in Red Turban, 1433, is undoubtedly a fully realized technical success, yet this was not simply due to van Eyck’s mastery as an artist in paint alone: it is a work that succeeded because it was invested with an enormous amount of his time and effort, and intense labour is a costly affair. In an age when a painter was not perceived socially or financially as an artist might be today, this was no small accomplishment. Now, like then, producing such a work requires a sizeable measure of someone’s personal income to undertake, and it was a work that would have taken months to finish. We know that self-portraits such as these were seen in their own right as status symbols. They served as tangible affirmation, élite markers in the small circles of courtly society, of an artist’s skill, powerful position and sizeable resources in that he could invest the time to make ‘a piece for himself’.

Van Eyck worked for sixteen years in Bruges as a court painter for Philip, Duke of Burgundy. Importantly, the Duke valued his court painter very highly and compensated him handsomely, enabling him to undertake, amongst other works, Man in Red Turban1. We can recognize the Duke as a patron separate from that of the church. He and others like him across Europe were beginning to elevate through their support the station of the artist from that of mere craftsperson. Up until the fifteenth century the Catholic Church had previously exerted a collective stranglehold on knowledge, ideas and images. It largely controlled what, when and how cultural material was disseminated into a wider public, and more to the point, it governed the art world. The new patrons of art, however, brought with their increasing economic capital an avid interest in displaying their wealth and taste in the acquisition of new art. In particular, they were supporting new forms of art, such as self-portraits.

A new art market had therefore emerged, driven by secular money, and was directly influencing the evolution of all the arts. A number of artists and intellectuals benefited enormously by these increased opportunities, Jan van Eyck and his equally talented brother Herbert being clearly two such artists.

Another factor that played an influential role in the development of self-portraiture was the invention of the Gutenberg printing press in 1450. Its creation not only helped new forms of literature and proto-science to evolve, it also sparked an enormous interest throughout art in new translations of ancient classical texts. The Renaissance humanist Marsilio Ficino (1433–99) helped inspire thinkers and artists alike with his extant trans-lations of Plato into Latin, while also reviving a school of Neo-Platonism from the works of Plotinus. Ficino’s work exerted a dynamic influence throughout all Renaissance intellectual life. Writing in 1492, he acknowledged its effect: ‘This century, like a golden age, has restored to light the liberal arts, which were almost extinct: grammar, poetry, rhetoric, painting, sculpture, architecture, music...This century appears to have perfect astrology’2.

Into the Sixteenth Century

Most importantly, Neo-Platonism offered an intellectual framework that gave structure to a new-found awe in the creator and the creative act alike. The artist’s self-image was changing, in that artists could perceive and elevate their creations to mirror the works of God himself; we can look to the late fifteenth century as when the archetype of the ‘artist’ emerges. At this time, too, the old guilds began to fall away, leaving the most successful artists to become fully autonomous subjects: Leonardo da Vinci (1453–1525) and Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) were artists celebrated across Europe, while Tiziano Vecellio (Titian) (1485–1576) was seen as ‘the equal of princes’3.

But even with these developments, the concept of self-portrait, in literal and conceptual fullness, was not actualized in these three masters. We know of Leonardo’s cherished drawing from 1512, which has long been ascribed to him as a self-portrait. Yet unfortunately, the paucity of other images of Leonardo by either himself or others leaves us unsure as to its documentary accuracy.

Likewise, Michelangelo provided us with little in terms of authenticated self-portraits. His most famous reference to himself is through the inserting of his likeness on to the flayed skin of St Bartholomew in his titanic fresco Last Judgment (1536–41). It was said that he had done so in dark-humoured reference to his own powerlessness in having to remain tied, while in his sixties, to a project for which he felt little affection.

Titian produced only a handful of self-portraits. They all date from his later years, and capture the increasingly mellow and reflective mood found in his more mature works. An austere work is his painting from 1567: a three-quarter-length piece that captures the distinguished and forceful features of this most energetic of artists. With paintbrush in hand, this eighty-year-old artist displays an authority acquired from a life’s service to the most powerful individuals of his age.

I loathe my own face, and I’ve done self-portraits because I’ve had nobody else to do.

Francis Bacon (1909–1992)

Upon reflection and sadly noted, no artist of the southern Renaissance left us with self-portraits that even begin to compare with the rest of its vast and incredible legacy. It took an artist from the north of Europe to push forwards the idea of what a self-portrait could become: Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). His Self-Portrait as Saviour of the World, 1500 or 1506, embodies this new, brazen creativity and self-belief as an artistic reformer, perhaps in the mould of Martin Luther. Self-portraits had been a part of Dürer’s production throughout his life. His first known work is a silver-point self-portrait at the age of thirteen. Later in 1493 he depicted himself as a handsome youth at his physical peak. In cumulative fashion his self-portraits, in a sense, lead to the work of 1506. Its iconic Christ-like features, coupled with a rich hyperrealism aesthetic, lent it a near divine creativity.

This is a point not lost in Dürer’s own belief that he ‘created just as God did’4. This is surely a perspective which could not have occurred without the recent influence of Neo-Platonic ideas. Such works by Dürer, and others such as Francesco Mazzola (Parmigianino) (1503–40), were indeed creative solutions to the self-portrait. However, these works fore-shadowed only part of the success that was to follow in the Baroque era.

Into the Seventeenth Century

The intellectual and political forces set in motion by the Renaissance and Reformation of the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries intensified into the seventeenth century. The arts, self-portraits included, that were produced alongside these events, registered a similar increase in overall artistic saturation. Nowhere were they better encapsulated than in three master painters who appeared during the short span of the time approximately between the years 1590 and 1670: Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), Caravaggio (1570–1610) and Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669). These three brought exciting, unpredictable and deeply reflective interpretations to the idea of the self-portrait.

They appeared in an era that saw a highly developed interest in the roots of human personality itself. A level of intellectual scepticism was born from influential writers, such as Michel de Montaigne, René Descartes and Francis Bacon. These thinkers challenged many to question where personal truth and definitive self-knowledge could come from. As men of science and philosophy, they knew it was only through unbiased and honest self-reflection, along with a scrupulous objectivity, that a satisfying testing ground could be provided from which such insight was born. Artists met the challenge and applied these principles in their own visual terms, and the results were indeed striking. Few developed a more profoundly idiosyncratic approach to self-portraiture than Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610), better known as Caravaggio.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

This northern Italian artist produced no conventional self-portraits. Each painting that included his own likeness was achieved through its introduction into one of a variety of classical narratives. An early example is his self-portrait as the face of Medusa of 1596–98; he also depicted himself in 1594 as Bacchus, the god of wine and ecstasy. Such early work typifies an atmosphere of sensual indulgence which it is likely surrounded him and the people he knew.

Pimp and lover to numerous men and women, and later on intimate to an inner circle of hedonistic bishops and cardinals of Rome, Caravaggio was not retiring in introducing his own features into sensuously provocative art works. David with the Head of Goliath, c. 1609–10, was painted by Caravaggio during his stay in Naples, and portrays one of the most ghastly uses of self-portraiture anywhere in the western tradition. In damning and realistic fashion, his features are put to powerful effect, much as Michelangelo Buonarroti did in his Last Judgment as a flayed St Bartholomew. The artist’s head is the horrific decapitated head of Goliath. It was a trick utilized later by Christofano Allori (1577–1621) in his Judith with the Head of Holofernes, 1613, but it comes nowhere close to Caravaggio’s piece. The stark lighting and forceful, yet sympathetic gaze of David (enter Caravaggio’s lover as model) draws the strongest attention to what seems to be a most recently severed head. It was likely that Caravaggio in his turbulent, and at times violent life, would have been no stranger to witnessing traumatic events, and such life experiences would have helped inform him directly in the portrayal of such a graphic work of art.

This artwork has also been ascribed a theological message – St Augustine gives us the words of the intended meaning: ‘As David overcame Goliath, this is Christ who overcame the devil.’ In this blackest of self-portraits Caravaggio condemns his very soul to Hades. Although this likely conclusion to Caravaggio’s piece is drenched with religious introspection, the self-aware framework in which it is couched is born from this era’s more liberated delineation of self. Remove the Catholic content and we feel aware of a man with a ‘contemporary spirit’, who is acutely aware of his place in the world.

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640)

The antithesis to the work of this fiery Italian artist was the oeuvre of Flanders’ greatest painter: the sublimely skilled Rubens (see classification essay) lived a life as full and rewarding as any artist, either before or after him. Born in Antwerp in 1587, he worked as a pupil under a series of now forgotten masters, and soon established his own studio there in 1612. It was a vast practice employing many pupils, some of whom became significant artists in their own right; Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678) and Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641) are pre-eminent amongst these.

Sir Anthony van Dyck, Self-portrait, circa 1626–1632 Etching/ Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Fund.