SELFIES come in for a lot of stick. But it’s not just the astonishing levels of narcissism and worrying spread of duckface that is causing concern. Some zoos have banned selfies because turning your back on large carnivores to get a snap is apparently a really bad idea. Even more seriously, a couple from Portugal reportedly died falling off a cliff while in the midst of taking their picture.
The selfie as we know it could be said to date back to the 15th century
Tragedy aside though, have the smartphone self-portraits become so prevalent that even luminaries such as President Obama and the Pope are regularly taking candids of themselves, is selfie-snobbery out of date?
We tend to think of selfies as a recent phenomenon. But it seems that the first photographic self-portrait was taken as long ago as 1839 by Robert Cornelius (an American pioneer in photography) when he produced a daguerreotype of himself.
Arguably selfies are even older - as old as art itself (some even say that cave painting embodies the same spirit, in the form of handprints which ‘sign’ works) if we think of them as the product of the urge to say ‘look at me, I was here’. The selfie as we know it could be said to date back to the 15th century, when artists across Europe started creating works in which they themselves were the subject.
And Manchester, perhaps to it’s shame, is the selfie capital of Europe. So it seems appropriate that Manchester Art Gallery’s newest exhibition is a collection of self-portraits entitled Artists in the Frame, a collection of work that sees the artist fall prey to that same desire to present themselves to the world, even create themselves through the act of creating art.
Anthony van Dyck, Self-Portrait (1640-41)
The show centres around Anthony van Dyck’s final self-portrait, a work of inestimable international importance and one of just three self-portraits he is known to have painted in Britain. The portrait - a work of mesmerising depth and acuity - was at the centre of a £10 million effort to save it for the country, after Petra Ecclestone threatened to buy it and ship it off to her LA McMansion. The portrait was saved and is now touring the country, flanked by other examples of the self-portrait genre.
Sarah Lucas, Self-Portrait with Mug of Tea (1993)
Most selfies trade in certain recurring themes - pouting lips, blown kisses, eyes gazing out from under lashes, cleavage (for both sexes) proudly on display. But self-portraits also have their motifs. Van Dyck turns his head over his shoulder as if caught in the act of painting, the large sunflower in the frame representing his commitment to the monarchy. It suggests a whole new approach to instagramming - Kim Kardashian pouting with a skull to remind us of the brevity of life, Justin Beiber with a pomegranate down his pants to symbolise fecundity.
Of course the self is not necessarily the same thing as the face or body. Grayson Perry’s self-portrait is in the form of a map. Perry told the Art Fund, “I wanted to make it more of a musing on the nature of identity and the self. I thought the walled city was a good metaphor – the wall, I suppose, can roughly be interpreted as your skin. But like any city, it's dependent on the landscape it sits in as well. That is the nature of the self – our identity only works in company. It’s co-created by other people as much as ourselves, so that was the idea behind it.”
Grayson Perry, Map of Days (2012-2013)
The female self-portraits in the show are among the most captivating. Louise Jopling, a Victorian artist who was often featured in society magazines, painted her Self-Portrait (1877), positioning herself directly to the viewer with a frank and open gaze. The exhibition notes suggest that the picture was intended for someone she knew, perhaps even romantically. Well it is definitely more alluring than snap-chatting a nude pic of yourself to a loved one.
It’s interesting to note that while selfie-sticks are banned at both City and United’s grounds, the Manchester Museums have decided not to exclude the stick. So theoretically you could go and get a selfie with a self-portrait (and if you do, you can add it to this collection of museum selfies).
Just take care. As that poor Portuguese couple can attest, a little self(ie)-knowledge is a dangerous thing.
