SELF PORTRAIT - Renaissance to Contemporary: National Portrait Gallery, Wolfson and Ground Floor Galleries, London, 20 October 2005 - 29 January 2006 (AR)

 

"We are all fascinated by how artists have scrutinised themselves. By showing the different ways in which artists have chosen to paint their own image in the exhibition opens up questions of consciousness, process and identity. A number of collections have been very generous in offering some extremely important works."

Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery

SELF PORTRAIT- Renaissance to Contemporary is of international importance in bringing together oil paintings by 56 artists - including 14 by women - from 1433 to the present.

What was most revealing were the self-portraits by relatively unknown women artists rarely seen in public before. Juxtaposed with their male counter parts, the female artists represented prove more than a match and indeed often out shine them. Here, the self-image of women comes across as ego-free and deconstructs the role of what an 'artist' really is, often parodying this illusory role with wit, cynicism and humour. Another revealing aspect of this imaginatively curated exhibition is that there is no such thing as 'the male gaze' or 'the female gaze': a gaze is a gaze is a gaze.

Space does not permit me to do justice to all the paintings on display so I focus on the following mesmerising images that caught my eye.

Judith Lyster's laughing Self-Portrait circa 1630 becomes a parody of Franz Hals' The Merry Luteplayer and his more bucolic paintings. Here she is playing at being an artist in drag whilst being an artist in her own right as she paints a jolly fiddler. It is as if she is saying to you: "You didn't expect me to be sitting here painting before you." Lyster was once thought to have painted most of Hals' paintings and was reputed to have been Hals' mistress. During the late 1930s, at the height of the 'forgeritis' mania, Hals' painting of The Merry Luteplayer was offered for sale by a famous art dealer as a painting by Judith Lyster. She seems to be having the last laugh on us all as if she has some strange secret. Could it be that she did not paint this 'self-portrait' - but it was, in fact, painted by Franz Hals depicting his pupil-mistress?

 

Artemisia Gentileschi's unusual Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting 1630 is arresting for the sheer audacity of with which she chooses to paint herself at a strange angle. How did she achieve this strange effect? She paints as if viewed from a surveillance camera positioned above and to her left. The element of movement gives the image a musical sensation whilst the pale skin tones of her face and arms shine out against the sombre neutral background and the shimmering emerald green sleeve. The enigma of the painting is where is she looking? In the mirror, at an angle above her? Is she pretending to paint herself? We are suspended above yet also looking up at her: a paradox on the play of spaces; how did she achieve this magical image?

Diego Velázquez' stunning Self Portrait 1645 looks like the severed head of a saint on a white platter. Here he gives us a stern, devilish, handsome look proudly showing off his official status symbolized by his gleaming keys of office. The elegant yet severe hair-style is reminiscent of the widely dressed hair of the infantas, whose portraits he painted so often. All is aloof and formal: the artist as courtier as a cut above all others. Velázquez' cold ghostly gaze pierces right though us as if always already ahead of time itself and looking back on us as if we are his past and he is our future.

Rembrandt's Self Portrait 1640 stands out in a class of its own: it is not just a self portrait per se but a synthesis of being and silence; as well as a constellation of painting, architecture, music, space, time, science, philosophy, etc. yet language utterly fails to fathom Rembrandt's face. The hyper sensitively applied paint has a smazey shimmering effect which gives the image a free floating sensation akin to the Velázquez' Self Portrait 1645 on display - and both paintings do not have 'back grounds' but are bathed in an air-scape of being, thus acting as an aura illuminating the artists. As non-illustrational painters both Rembrandt and Velázquez record the sensation of time that photography cannot capture.

Rembrandt paints his portrait as a work in process never fixed in time even when being a record of a particular passage of time. Rembrandt paints the paradox of time as being out of time beyond being clock-time: we become trapped in a paradoxical time warp of being in time and out of time at the same time. Here the artist is constantly enquiring into and questing his evolving appearance and the work is never really finished. As an artist of being-as-time Rembrandt 'presents' himself rather than 'represents' himself as a being-in-process: the artist presents his aging face as a work-in-process with an unflinching and deeply moving honesty where art is truth.

Joshua Reynold's self searching Self Portrait 1747-49 is the 24 year old artist off duty and nothing could be further removed from his sleek, glossy formal portraits of later years. The artist has a searching look, with his left hand shielding his eyes from a bright light whilst his right hand is holding a hand mirror and what appears to be a marl stick. This is an extraordinary image of an artist in the act of painting and learning how to look objectively at his model - in this case, himself. The dramatic play of light and shade recall the Caravaggesque tenebrosi which dominated the first half of the seventeenth century.

Elizabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun, favourite portrait painter of Marie Antoinette, has left us dozens of sublime self-portraits. Her scintillating Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat 1782 radiates light and has an uncanny hypnotic effect on the viewer with her glowing gaze piercing through us. Her luminous eyes - although shaded by the brim of her daintily trimmed straw hat - nevertheless compel our gaze. She holds brushes and palette in her left hand at the ready with her colours moist and glistening ready for work - whilst her glowing white hand makes an elegant arabesque gesture. This image tells us that an artist is no mere artisan but a beautiful lady of style, class, taste and distinction - and thus profoundly politically incorrect in comparison with Saatchi's 'Sensation' slob sub-standards.

Lovis Corinth's striking sculptural Self Portrait with Model 1903 is unusual in depicting the model as spectator with her back to the viewer: the artist sees us seeing her back. Corinth paints his head (rather than his face) as a sculptural solid block where features become secondary shadows. As opposed to being a mere object the model is touching the artist whilst he is in the process of painting his self-portrait, thereby emphasising Corinth's overt sensuality and the delight in depicting female flesh. This must surely be unique among self-portraits that it shows an artist actually intimately embracing his model while he paints both himself and her. This powerful image sums up the joyous hedonism we associate with Corinth's voluptuous flesh fuelled work.

Francis Bacon's sickly serene Self Portrait 1971 is a refracted faceted face akin to some of Paul Cézanne's self-portraits which are reminiscent of cut precious gem stones reflecting light. Bacon painted with a very dry brush giving the sensation of a granular, grainy effect. The melancholia mood is of a man melting before you: a disturbing image of a disturbed man in a disturbed century. This is one of the last great self-portraits Bacon painted before he went off the rails and went back into to the lazy worn grooves of inane illustration.

This compelling and revelatory exhibition is not to be missed. It is jointly organised by the National Portrait Gallery, London and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, and sponsored by Channel 4. It is curated by Anthony Bond, Head Curator at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Dr Joanna Woodall of the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Tickets can be booked online, by calling 0870 0130703 (transaction fee applies) or in person at the Gallery. Groups of 10 or more should book through the Learning and Access Department on 020 7312 2483.

Alex Russell

Publications & Gifts

A fully illustrated book accompanies this international exhibition by curators Anthony Bond and Joanna Woodall, with further essays by T.J. Clark, Ludmilla Jordanova and Joseph Leo Koerner, Exhibition price £30 (hardback) and £22.50 (paperback).

A concise introduction to the Gallery's collection of self-portraits is also available, price £9.99.