Following on from the sculptured heads by Franz Messerschmidt, for which he used his own face as a template, I thought I'd run a little series on self-portraits.
Having been to see the big Gauguin exhibition at Tate Modern last month (which incidentally convinced me that Van Gogh was the superior painter) I'll begin with Gauguin's. I'm sure that we're all familiar with his more famous Polynesian works so I think a look at his self-portraits would be a good place to start.
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was born in Paris 7 June 1848 and is considered one of the leading painters of the Post-Impressionist period. He died of syphilis at the age of 54 on 8 May 1903 at Atuona, Hiva ‘Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia. The last portrait shown here was the last one he painted, in 1903.
He painted over 30 self-portraits between the years 1886 and 1889. His collection of self-portraits places him among the most prolific self-portraitists of all time. Van Gogh used portrait painting as a method of introspection, a method to make money and a method of developing his skills as an artist.
As Van Gogh struggled to make a living as an artist he became reliant on his brother Theo and the charity of others such as Julien "Père" Tanguy, who ran the paint store that Van Gogh frequented in Paris. With their generosity of money and supplies, Van Gogh continued working as an artist and thought of portrait painting as a practical application of his talent. In a letter to his brother Theo in July of 1888 he wrote:
“Besides, I think I have spoken the truth, but if I should succeed in replacing in goods the money spent, I should only be doing my duty. And then, something practical I can do is portrait painting.”
In a letter to his brother Theo dated September 16, 1888, Van Gogh writes about a self-portrait he painted and dedicated to his friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin:
“The third picture this week is a portrait of myself, almost colourless, in ashen tones against a background of pale veronese green. I purposely bought a mirror good enough to enable me to work from my image in default of a model, because if I can manage to paint the colouring of my own head, which is not to be done without some difficulty, I shall likewise be able to paint the heads of other good souls, men and women.” (below)
In addition to Gauguin, Van Gogh also exchanged self-portraits with artist Émile Bernard. After receiving a letter from Bernard and Gauguin with their self-portraits enclosed, Van Gogh responded to Bernard encouraging portrait painting believing that portraits would always be in demand writing the following to Bernard:
“I strongly urge you to study portrait painting, do as many portraits as you can and don't flag. We must win the public over later on by means of the portrait; in my opinion it is the thing of the future.”
In 1908, Edvard Munch had an anxiety attack and was hospitalized. He had a nervous breakdown. That was said to have been brought on by heavy drinking and depression. He did recover after he had an electroshock treatment. That is when his art went under and extreme change.
To the end of his life, Munch continued to paint unsparing self-portraits, adding to his self-searching cycle of his life and his unflinching series of snapshots of his emotional and physical states.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis labelled Munch's work "degenerate art” (along with Picasso, Paul Klee, Matisse, Gauguin, and many other modern artists) and removed his 82 works from German museums.
Before Munch died in January 1944, he had willed his large collection of pictures and un-catalogued biographical and literary notes to the City of Oslo. Consequently, the Munch Museum, dedicated in 1963, has a unique collection of Munch’s art and other material which illuminates all phases of his artistic process.
Picasso's father, Jose Ruíz, was also an artist from whom the young Picasso received his first art training. Pablo attended the carpenter schools at which his father taught and as an early teen passed the entrance exam to the School of Fine Arts with ease. Though he studied at Academia de San Fernando in Madrid, he did not finish – leaving before completing even one year. He was a rebellious youth and moved back and forth between Barcelona and Paris several times between the years 1899 and 1904.
These years also represent his first “period”, the Blue Period, and a time when the young Picasso ceased to sign his full name choosing instead to sign his work only “Picasso”. The Blue Period (1901 – 1904) is characterized by images containing shades of blue and a feeling of melancholy and despair presumably caused by the recent death of a friend.
The Blue Period gave way to the Rose Period with its more cheerful subject matter and soon Picasso was experimenting with what would become cubism along with fellow artist and creator Georges Braque, a French painter and sculptor. Cubism, an important abstract art movement in the early 1900s, attempts to show the subject matter from many viewpoints using an abstracted form and random angles. His works “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon”, one of his earliest cubist pieces and arguably one of the best, is a fantastic example of the artistic genre.
Throughout his long career, Picasso often used self-portraits to depict himself in the many different guises, disguises and incarnations of his autobiographical artistic persona.
The range of styles of these self-portraits over a lifetime is astonishing, and his influence and impact on contemporary art can never be underestimated.
And here’s something maybe you didn’t know – Pablo Picasso was actually christened Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso!
1896
1896
1901
1901
1901 (blue period)
1906
1907
1917
1938
1972
1972
1972 "Facing Death"
