Before the Selfie: Six Hundred Years of Self-Portraiture

In 1433, the Flemish master Jan van Eyck painted what has long been considered the earliest self-portrait in the Western tradition. Four centuries later, in 1839, Robert Cornelius, an early photography enthusiast from Philadelphia, took the world’s first photographic self-portrait on record. Today, the internet is inundated with “selfies” by virtually everyone. This course is dedicated to the history and evolution of self-portraiture and will highlight some of its most extraordinary examples, including Albrecht Dürer’s “Self-Portrait at Age 13” (1484); Catharina van Hemessen’s “Self-Portrait” (1548), the first self-portrait of an artist at work at an easel; Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting” (1638); Alice Neel’s first nude self-portrait which she made at age 80 (1980); and Robert Mapplethorpe’s last self-portrait before his untimely death at age 42 (1988). Studying further outstanding self-portraits by the likes of Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol and Lucien Freud, we will examine the challenges that all self-portraitists must face in their attempt to balance truth and representation, concealment and disclosure, vanity and honesty, self-assertion and self-examination. Special attention will be given to a handful of examples that poked fun at the entire genre by using elements of self-mockery, grandiosity, and travesty. Readings will include Laura Cumming’s “A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits,” and James Hall’s “The Self-Portrait: A Cultural History.”
Continuing Education Units (CEU) : 0

You'll walk away with

• An understanding of the evolution of self-portraiture
• A familiarity with the most important self-portraits from the 15th century to the present

Ideal for

• Art enthusiasts
• Aspiring and practicing arts professional