Portrait is an image of a person created in any media( painting, photography). It's a record of the people been painted who they are and how they look like. Self portrait is the artist painting or photograph their selves. Portrait could be document the people who is important such as kings or aristocrat. Then a question just pop out, what self portrait for? Why it exist? Artists like to draw self portrait as well, such as Picasso, Van Gogh and Egon Schiele. Even myself. I feel draw a self portrait is self examination, it's a way that artists express their emotions.
Egon Schiele 1890- 1918
Schiele was an important expressionist artist at early twenty century. His paintings have strong expressiveness, distorted characters and bodies, people in his paintings are mostly in pain, struggling and confused.
As you can see, this is one of his self portrait. He looks up and with a contemptuous eyes. Feels like he disdains everything, the life, the war.
The background is white that make contrast with the black top. The leaves and flowers at the left make the whole image has strong visual impact. I really like the blue high light he added on his face and hair. It makes the self portrait so fresh. The way how he painted the face is amazing and interesting. I also like the way how he used the paint marks to represent the skin, especially the cheekbone, makes the face more stereoscopic. The painting has a free and easy style( the way how Schiele painted). However, I think he was welled planed how to draw. He used different paint marks to represent different things. Hair, the background wall and the jumper all have different marks. He had excellent painting skills.
I love his painting not only about his skills, but also about the attitude. I can his attitude through his painting. I guess Schiele also wanted to see himself by self portraits.
Chen DanQing (1953-) American Chinese Artist
As you can see, Chen painted his self portrait in a scene which is a art studio. So when artist gives self portrait context that helps audience to investigate who this person is, what does she/ he do or what the artist wants audience to read from the painting. I guess Chan wants every body knows that he is an artist.
By Chen's aboard study and life experiences, I think his art works influenced by western art. I like his this self portrait because it has a Lucian Freud's style. However, Chen's paintings are not as strong as Lucian Freud's either by brush marks or colour or facial expressions.
Anyway, back to Chen's painting. He stands in the a art studio front of a large size of canvas. Painting brushes arranged in a row and paints in the baskets. Back corner has a blue chair, a blanket laying on the floor. His pose and his eyes make me feel he is a confidence, determined and ambitious artist. Maybe that's what he wants to say by his self portrait. Over the whole painting, you can see actually Chens is very skilled by painting. I do like the way how he painted the wrinkles on all the different materials, the bag, the blanket, his trousers, vest coat even his shoes. The wrinkles make everything looks real. I think the context in self portrait means to lead the audience to finding things. For Chen's this painting, I also can feel he is an arrogant man. The context also make me thinking and questioning, such as why the blanket it's on the floor? What's in the yellow bag? Or what he was looking at?
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