Self-portrait via a Mirror
Just as there are particular words or phrases (such as decadence) which seem to express the very essence of an entire era, of a certain society’s wishes and desires, aims and preoccupations and guiding principles, so too there are key images in every artist’s work that reveal his character and the wellspring of his creative impulses most clearly of all. There may, of course, be reasons, of a conscious or unconscious nature, why an artist returns time and again to a specific motif, why it preoccupies the artist’s imagination.
In the history of art there are a huge number of self-portraits. It is really interesting to investigate portraits, as in fact they are not only the reflection of the inner world of an artist, but also have a very strong psychological meaning.
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Albrecht Durer. Self-Portrait at the Age of Thirteen. Drawing, 1484 |
Egon Schiele (an outstanding Austrian painter) was one of those who observed himself most closely. He painted a huge number of self-portraits. This also suggests a trait in the artist that we might consider narcissistic. It is true that Schiele certainly did devote a manic scrutiny to his own appearance and poses. But this preoccupation has a long and respected tradition in art, and we are right to hesitate before hastening to judge. A brief look at the self-portrait tradition is advisable if we are not to jump to dilettantish conclusions.
One essential component in the process of portraying the self is the mirror. Albrecht Durer and Rembrant, to name just two painters of self-portraits, used the mirror in order to record their own appearance and so establish an autobiographical account. In Durer’s case, indeed, the artist availed himself of an aspect of the mirror which marked the beginning of a central development in the art of the modern era: the mirror was an instrument in the discovery of personal identity, making the self experientially accessible and in the process highlighting the personal self-confidence of Renaissance visual artists. At the age of 13 he painted a self-portrait to which he was later to add the words “likeness done from a mirror”. At length, around 1500, Durer painted a self-portrait in which the hieratic frontal view and the compositional similarity to images of Christ strike the modern eye as verging on blasphemy. But one feature, above all, indicates that Durer was in fact engaged in securing his own personal identity. His body, far from being allegorized or cosmetically idealized, is shown as it is. In a word, what ever the poses or facial expressions adopted in self-portraits by Durer (or, similarly, Rembrant, Ferdomamd Hodler or van Gogh), he still remains identifiably Durer, because his cardinal belief is in the identity of the individual.
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Albrecht Durer. Self-Portrait. 1498 |
There are experimental portraits in which painters try to explore their self through the roles of others (Christ, a clone, a hero, a victim) does not, in so doing, abandon the principle that the “individual” is by definition and etymology one “indivisible” self.
Schiele’s self-portraits no longer fit very well into either the category of autobiographical reportage or that of autobiographical reportage or that of hero-worship of self. Some of the self-portraits may recall Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), in which the painted self grows older while the beauty of the real self remains unchanged. The novel makes so powerful an impact because it reverses the normal relation of a sitter to a painted image: the image becomes the true image of the mirror of the soul, revealing what the living original does not.
Some can suppose that the mirror helps in developing narcissism. But instead, let us take a look at mirror images in relation to the visual arts – a context in which the mythical figure of Narcissus appears as the prototypical hero of the art of painting. In Leon Battista Albertiis “Trottato della Pittura” (1436/35) one of the basic texts in modern art theory, painting is lauded as an art of veritably divine power. Alberti claims that in copying or imitating things, painting makes them nobler, more valuable. For Alberti, painting is dominant in all arts, and whatever beauty exists has its own origin in painting. He continues: “Thus, with a statement the poets made in mind, I would tell my friends that Narcissus, who was transformed into a flower, was the true inventor of painting. For, just as painting is the flowering glory of all art, so too the tale of Narcissus applies in another sense. For can you well say that painting is anything other than seeking by artistic means for likeness, like that likeness which gazed back from the mirror surface of the pool?”
Alberti identified the mirror image as the prototype of painting, and so opened up the option of seeing art as the artist’s self-portrait. This made it possible to transfer the importance and power of mirror (as the means of experiencing the Self) to the visual art – a transfer which was indeed made.
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Albrecht Durer. Self-Portrait. 1500 |
Art has a specific power to make even common things unique and the mirror played a great role not only in developing the visual sight of art, but also it reflected the philological portraits of painters: the way they look (clothes they wear, poses they take), express their inner world, their thoughts and character. And this is what we call real art. In order to understand the painter – what he was like indeed it’s necessary not only to be informed of his biography and famous paintings. But first we have to look into his character that is reflected in self portraits and the reflection of the auto portrait is of course a simple mirror.
And in conclusion I’d like to remember the words of John Keats, who devoted his life to looking for harmony and never-dying beauty, always found it in works of art and in the glory of nature, and his poetical credo was clearly expressed in his “Endymion”: “A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.”
Compiled by Teona Yamanidze
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