500 Self-Portraits - Hardcover

Bell, Julian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0714839590 ISBN 13: 9780714839592

Publisher: Phaidon Press, 2000

Synopsis

Taking its inspiration from the classic Phaidon volume published in 1937 with the same title, this book presents an uninterrupted sequence of 500 self-portraits, in chronological order from ancient Egypt to the late twentieth century. Presented without commentary. Artists include Durer, Rembrandt, Picasso, Andy Warhol, and others. 548p. Measures 5x7.75 inches.

About this title

Review:

Pensive, haughty, scruffy, scowling, clowning, vamping--artists have always reveled in the inventive freedom of portraying themselves. Younger painters lacking paying sitters often made good use of a mirror and a talent for making faces. Older painters--most famously, Rembrandt--searched beneath their own sagging flesh for the essence of a survivor.

Beginning with its reflective book jacket, which playfully inducts the reader into the ranks of self-portraitists, Five Hundred Self-Portraits is a delight for browsers. Works by famous and obscure artists from the Middle Ages to our own times are organized chronologically, one per page, in this compact volume. The early images demonstrate how self-portraiture evolved from walk-ons (the artist as a bystander in a Nativity scene, say) and occasional co-starring roles (the artist as St. Luke, drawing the Virgin Mary) to full-fledged personal appearances by the likes of Dürer and Leonardo.

More than half of the images in the book were painted (or drawn or etched or photographed) during the 19th and 20th centuries. The stiff decorum of earlier periods gave way to a romantic introspection that evolved into neurotic self-absorption and frank exhibitionism. From Gustave Courbet, posing languorously with eyes closed and blood-spotted collar as The Wounded Man, to Jenny Saville, gripping a thick roll of fat on her graffiti-scrawled nude body, artists of the past 150 years have developed a repertory of dramatic strategies for self-display. But few are as quietly effective as 18th-century painter Joshua Reynolds. He peers out at us, one hand shading his eyes, as if dazzled by the blaze of his own genius. --Cathy Curtis

About the Author:

Julian Bell, grandson of the British artist Vanessa Bell, is a painter and writer. He is the author of Bonnard (1994) in Phaidon's colour library series and What is Painting? Representation and Modern Art (1999), and a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, Modern Painters and the Guardian.

About this edition

• Publisher: Phaidon Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0714839590
• ISBN 13: 9780714839592
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 548