The Female Self-Portrait Across the Ages ไทย

Forget the stereotypical art collector

In 1548 in Antwerp, a 20-year-old artist painted a self-portrait. Despite its modesty and scale, Catharina van Hemessen’s painting of herself at the easel is significant: it’s the first known self-portrait of an artist at work. It also highlights the fact that, at a time when women had no political agency and were barred from academies, apprenticeships and the life room, they persisted in their artistic endeavours and turned to themselves as subjects. The Italian Renaissance artist Sofonisba Anguissola is another case in point: famous in her lifetime, she was the most prolific self-portraitist between Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt.

Leap forward to the 20th century and the genre bloomed. In 1906, Paula Modersohn-Becker painted one of the first naked self-portraits by a woman; decades later, Frida Kahlo explored her pain and resilience, using her own body as a conduit. In post-war Poland, Alina Szapocznikow cast parts of her body to exorcise her traumatic experiences as a Jew in the Second World War; and in the 1970s, Cindy Sherman began staging the shape-shifting photographic self-portraits that she is still creating. These are just a few of many possible examples. ไทย

Louise Bourgeois’ major preoccupation was herself. From 1951, depressed by the death of her father, the French-American artist began what was to become a four-day-a-week, 30-year commitment to psychoanalysis. She believed in the therapeutic aspects of creativity, explaining in a conversation with Christiane Meyer-Thoss: “To make art is to wake up in a state of craving. It’s not a linear progression; it goes like a clock; when you reach a certain spot on the clock, it recurs. It’s a certain rhythm occurring each day. And the making of art has a curative effect.”

This year, three major artists across three generations – Louise Bourgeois, Carrie Mae Weems and Avery Singer – have museum exhibitions devoted to their work. Each of them has, in various media and to myriad ends, used self-portraiture to explore a complex range of issues and ideas.

Louise Bourgeois’ major preoccupation was herself. From 1951, depressed by the death of her father, the French-American artist began what was to become a four-day-a-week, 30-year commitment to psychoanalysis. She believed in the therapeutic aspects of creativity, explaining in a conversation with Christiane Meyer-Thoss: “To make art is to wake up in a state of craving. It’s not a linear progression; it goes like a clock; when you reach a certain spot on the clock, it recurs. It’s a certain rhythm occurring each day. And the making of art has a curative effect.”

Leap forward to the 20th century and the genre bloomed. In 1906, Paula Modersohn-Becker painted one of the first naked self-portraits by a woman; decades later, Frida Kahlo explored her pain and resilience, using her own body as a conduit. In post-war Poland, Alina Szapocznikow cast parts of her body to exorcise her traumatic experiences as a Jew in the Second World War; and in the 1970s, Cindy Sherman began staging the shape-shifting photographic self-portraits that she is still creating. These are just a few of many possible examples.

Although Bourgeois’ work was fired by autobiography, only a few of her works are titled as self-portraits. She used the genre to explore not how she looked, but how she felt, what she dreamed, what she had experienced. A great believer in free association, she variously visualised herself as a five-legged beast; a tiny red figure dangling from a balloon-like breast; a head that contains two other heads and a naked baby; a woman with five eyes and a large necklace.

In 1963–64, the artist created Torso, Self-Portrait: it began life as a wall-hanging plaster-and-burlap sculpture before evolving into a free-standing work in bronze, which she recast in marble in the 1980s.

Someone said that ไทย

Leap forward to the 20th century and the genre bloomed. In 1906, Paula Modersohn-Becker painted one of the first naked self-portraits by a woman; decades later, Frida Kahlo explored her pain and resilience, using her own body as a conduit. In post-war Poland, Alina Szapocznikow cast parts of her body to exorcise her traumatic experiences as a Jew in the Second World War; and in the 1970s, Cindy Sherman began staging the shape-shifting photographic self-portraits that she is still creating. These are just a few of many possible examples. ไทย