Selfie vs. self-portrait
.jpg?w=728)
By Kate Lim
Summer is assailing us in her ripe presence.Scorching heat and sticky air,it brews desire for a cool shady spot; and above all, a longing for doing nothing without feeling guilty.There is an imperative call for a break and it is truly unthinkable to spend a summer holiday without indulging in those camera clicking moments anywhere and everywhere for one’s own irresistible image, created by selfies.
We see people pose for their own self-image with such a confident flair that even to look at them posing for aselfie is an interesting scene on its own, making it worth watching. It is the scene of the contemporary Narcissus focusing on their own familiar features and aiming for their best possible charming effects. After the simple‘click’, most selfies are bound to go through shameless editing by means of digital technology: changing the color, enlargingcertain features, or reducing them.
The image changes to what can best convey the self’s desire to look great, sexy, graceful, chic ― you name it ― and becomes a fleeting celebration of the self par excellence. Who said photography is a soulless competitor against painting? It is quite the contrary that through the gazing at the self-image by the selfie we are compelled to understand something about the self; it hovers between mimesis and desire.
Technology, much as it is being suspected of its ruthless encroachment on human artistry and generating an anti-human aura,thrusts‘the all-too-human’under our noses and pushes the question into our hearts: Isn’t this exactly what all great artists did with their self-portraits? Projecting this convergence of visual imitation and unseen desire in their self-images?
Indeed, many famous painters of the past left their self-portraits and they are unmistakable modern-day selfie images of themselves. The painters, instead of using software and applicationsto edit their desired image, employed their own manual technique comprising brush strokes, color mixtures,variation of tones and the like.
Their artistic technique is the visual idiom that is obtained through a prodigious amount of talent and manual work. In other words, the artists in the past created their own tools manipulated by individual arrangements of painting elements, whereas the contemporaries make all-out use of the tools given en masse by technology.It seems that the charm of these personally and manually made visual vestiges on the canvas is easily overlooked in the widely-disseminated digital versions of the self-portrait; for digital images have limitations in conveying a real sense of the painted surface.
For example, a well-known self-portrait like that of Vincent van Gogh might have a poignant appeal to viewers because of the image of his mutilated right earin the painting.
The public imagination that is excited by the story of a tortured genius artist certainly makes a contribution to thefame of Van Gogh’s self-portrait.But what substantially distinguishes his ‘Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear’ (1889) is the marvelous colors captured through Southern French sunlight, the short parallel strokes in thick paint of the bristly fur edging of his blue hat, or striking variety of colors (brilliant yellow, bright red, green) of his face applied in strong, directional brush strokes, a brightly colored and abstracted Japanese print at the back.
Although it was painted just before his death, at a closer look at the painting, the narrative of his life in misery and abject poverty seems to be ultimately secondary to Van Gogh’s visual idiom.It looks as if the painter was driven to execute ― in a kind of frenzy ― his discovery of live color and luminous light above all other truths in hisreality, such as his sorrow, utter isolation, and the pain of mental illness. Many artists, in fact, call this artistic discovery ‘artistic truth’, and through it came into existence a great deal of self-portraits and other paintings as well. Van Gogh left about forty self-portraits,and his vigorous brush strokes married to various color contrasts create a different mood in each self-portrait,just as the contemporary selfie tries to produce a different ambience of every self-image.
It has become habit to look at images cursorily, and the selfie is personally curated to fully accommodate whatever impact is given in that cursory glance. Our digital access to renowned self-portraits is also affected by this habit of glancing and thus its greatly vivid painterly realm is restricted.
The world behind self-portraits can open up so much more if viewers do not forget to pause and imagine the actual brush strokes of the painter that make up the surface of the painting. Many digital images look flat at first glance only revealing whether the artist had a beard, or had pinched cheeks, or wore a cap and the like.
Careful observation will make viewers detect that they actually preserve the slab-like forms, a highly modulated brush strokes, dabs of varied colors, or blurry treatment of boundaries― all fascinating manual touches.
The successful self-portrait should include this individual execution of his/her own artistic truth, and simultaneously should not fail to evoke an approximation of the physical features of the artist. We can imagine how often and severely the artist turned self-critical whilst working on this painting, repeatedly stepping back to take in its entirety and then stepping close again to revise a detail.
Hence the finally delivered self-image rests on the equilibrium between two forces ―‘I do not see the world and myself as others see them’ and ‘The world and myself, nonetheless, are subject to ‘your’ way of seeing them’.
The painter’s manual method speaks of this idea harvested from the negotiation of personal visual arrangements and the solid external reality, and it awakens what we take for granted byhabitual actions of clicking away.
Perhaps, it might be something novel to ponder during this summer break on one of your selfies that you regardis most satisfactory to your mind: to reflect on how that synthesized and ephemeral likelihood of the self-image speaks of your own way of seeing the world and just yourself, not about the places you visited, or the food you ate, or the clothes you wore.Then, the image will grow with yourself.
Kate Lim is director of Art Platform Asia, an
independent curator and art writer. Contact
her at kate.yk.lim@gmail.com.