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A portrait, according to Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language, is “a painting, photograph, drawing etc. of a person, esp. of his face, usually made from life.” Going by the dictionary definition of a portrait, a self portrait can simply be defined as a painting of the artist’s own face, but are they simply images of a human’s face be it the artist’s own or another’s, or do they hold other more significant functions? What purposes do portraits and self portraits serve, and are there any differences between them? To answer these questions, we shall examine the artworks of Vincent Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Frida Kahlo and some other artists.
Van Gogh's self portraits reveal a range of ideas and states of feelings, such as the "Self-portrait", done in 1889, which showed a pale, craggy face and brings about feelings of anxiety and loneliness, while another “Self Portrait”, also done in 1889, had a firm and focused face which generates a feeling of uneasiness and tension . It is also interesting to note that Van Gogh did not paint any self portraits when
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Now, let us look at Rembrandt’s self portraits. he was staying in Nuenen as he had just had a major dental treatment, and at that point of time, he saw himself as a person too unpresentable to be placed in a self portrait . Do it often, you will be amazed at what you discover about yourself. This self portrait best showed the pain she was suffering from, with the column representing her spine which was fractured and one source of her pain, the nails in her skin showing the physical pain she had to endure, the tears streaming out of her eyes indicate that the pain was excruciating, and her nudity symbolizes her inability to do anything about the situation, while her face had an expression of courage and resignation. ” His “Portrait of Milliet” was also painted solely because of pressure from Gauguin , which he had to paint from memory. In Van Gogh’s two infamous self portraits depicting his mutilated ear, which he drew after a quarrel with Gauguin, it can be seen that the second version was not a copy of the first, but instead was Van Gogh’s second interpretation of his fluctuating mental condition . What have I found? Death painted I see. One of them, “Henry Ford Hospital”, was painted in 1932 when she found out she was pregnant but couldn’t have the baby due to the injuries she sustained in the earlier bus accident. She suffered massive injuries, including a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a fractured and crushed right foot, eleven separate fractures of the right leg, and a dislocated shoulder.
Many of Van Gogh’s portraits were painted for the sake of practicing or experimenting with techniques, such as his “Head of a Woman with her Hair Loose”, where he threw out everything that would define the woman as an individual and instead concentrated on the techniques used to paint her .
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