Self-portrait

To be able to prepare yourself in your education, you have to learn the process of reasoning first. “Excerpt from a Self-Portrait” by Barbara Jordan was written to inform her reader the experience she had to adjusting to a new world. In order to lean and live up to ones potential, he has to be familiar with the process of thinking. Adjusting to new changes where there’s sexism & racism doesn’t make it easy for who isn’t familiar to this new world. Therefore, I am able to connect to Jordan’s…

“Portraiture” in his Painting and Photography, he uses portraits as a measure of the effectiveness of the mediums. In 1936, two artists decided to capture two separate portraits with completely different subjects. During the oppression of the Depression and the beginning of a world war, Mark Rothko and Walker Evans decided to create two vastly different pieces united by a simple subject, a single person. While Rothko painted his Self-Portrait, Walker Evans was sent to Alabama to…

nobility, but also of notable personalities in the arts and letters of her time.” (May, 1) Accomplishing an early start in her career, Vigée-LeBrun, at the age of fifteen was already supporting her recently widowed mother and younger brother through her portrait paintings. (NMWA, web) According…

Portrait painting thrived in the Netherlands with the increase in production driven by interest in the idea of personhood and the definition of the individual self. Portraits help document the development of a personal identity as it connects factors like marital status, class, and profession. A common portrait genre produced during the seventeenth century portrays their subjects with an impassive demeanor with little vigor. At first, the paintings may be evaluated as lacking “personality” or…

reputation while still a child in the eastern Pennsylvania since he was a child prodigy. He was a self-taught artist who began his career in Pennsylvania painting portraits from the year 1746 to 1759. In 1760, he met William Allen a wealth merchant, a chief justice and mayor of Pennsylvania…

This photo was taken by Frances Benjamin Johnston as a Full Self-Portrait, “New Woman”, in 1896. She received her first camera from George Eastman, the inventor of the Eastman Kodak and a family friend. She became a noted advocate for women’s photography as well as a documenter of key historic events. When she opened her own studio in New York in 1894, She was the only woman photographer in the city. Johnston also photographed many famous photographs in Paris, but perhaps her most famous work,…

A picture can say a thousand words. Frida Kahlo’s 1932 painting Self Portrait Between the Borderline of Mexico and the United States is thought provoking and captivating in the stark contrast between how two cultures are seen from varying perspectives. Kahlo is a renowned painter whose art is a significant part of Mexican culture and is powerful enough to remain relevant for over 80 years, her legacy influencing 2nd wave feminism and current political movements. Appropriate to the title of this…

beauty, comprising the portrait of one young and misguided individual. Driven by his desire to fulfill his lustful temptations, he evolves, the man in the frame, into an individual so vile one cannot stand near without inhaling his moral corruption. Physically, the man of the portrait, Dorian Gray, as having sold his soul to retain his current health and beauty, remains ageless and pristine as he continues in the pursuit of all his wants. However, as time passes, the portrait ages and fades,…

Untitled (Francesca in High School, With Bonnet) and Sofonisba Anguissola’s Self-portrait at the Easel. Anguissola’s oil painting is dated back to 1556 while Woodman’s photograph is dated between 1972 and 1975. While these two pieces are separated by four hundred years, they both hold the power of self-portraits. If an artist never takes the time to depict oneself, how can the history books? Sofonisba Anguissola’s Self-portrait at the Easel depicts herself dressed in all black with a…

Rembrandt van Rijin’s Portrait of a Man With Arms Akimbo reflects his personal technique as well as the Dutch Baroque style, which lasted throughout the 17th Century. This piece features an unidentified man depicted in a position of strength and superiority. This is established through Rembrandt’s use of composition and light, using effects common to the Baroque era such as tenebrism. To better understand the identity of the man pictured, physical qualities such as style of dress can be used to…