Is there art in the selfie?
Is there art in the selfie? Chris Hilton LRPS
Sheet: 9 - File: body.pdf
Chris Hilton LRPS travels the world, continually on the lookout for visual absurdities to add to his collection. He also likes hats.
It all started with the Venetian glass blowers in those hot, sweaty, secretive workshops where men toiled to turn sand into glass...in acts that must have seemed more akin to conjurers than to craftsmen they eventually managed to turn that glass into mirrors. And the artists loved them! During the Italian renaissance there was an explosion of artists using this new fangled technology to look at themselves, and some would say, to look into their own souls. DIGIT Magazine 2022 Issue 2
DIGIT 93 x.indd 11
Rembrandt was one of the most prolific with almost ten per cent of his work being self-portraits. But does that mean he was obsessed with his own vanity? Only if we look at that body of work through the Instagram-tinged eyes of the twenty-first century. Rembrandt was, indeed, looking into his own soul. It was part of an artist’s training. Great artists could reflect not just a face, but emotion, they could look at what was going on ‘behind’ the eyes. And the
self-portrait was a good way to practice...and an even better way to advertise what you could do. Think of it as a calling card writ large. Of course, that’s not the whole story. You should never underestimate an artist, the use of self-promotion in these ‘practise pieces’ was de rigueur. By making sure the cut of his jib was similar to Titian or that his pose was reminiscent of Raphael he was, not so subtlety aligning himself with the greats that had come before. 11
10/06/2022 14:55:00
mixam - Assets Server on 2022-06-10, 15:00 order: 845253 [210.0mm X 297.0mm]
