TRANSCRIPT:
This summer, I studied abroad in Venice, Italy. Among the vast swaths of tourists from different states, countries, and continents, there was usually one commonality: selfie sticks. For those of you who don’t know, selfie sticks are extendable metal rods that hold your smartphone so you can get the best picture of yourself possible when your arms just aren’t long enough to get the whole scene into one shot. Venice is filled with selfie sticks. Peddlers stand on almost every corner, hawking selfie sticks to passersby, preying on their vanity so they can make some sort of living wage. My fellow students and I were very, very annoyed by these selfie sticks. They poked out at random in crowds, threatening to poke your eye out if you got too close. They were the cause of much of the tourist traffic, since people seemed to think that the middle of a thin bridge over a canal was the best place to come to a complete stop, whip out a selfie stick, and take a photo. While these selfie-sticks were annoying, they got me thinking. Selfies, especially selfies of women, have caused a lot of controversy in the last few years. What relation do modern selfies have to the more “classic” self-portraits I passed in the Venice museums? In a way I think that art, especially photography, has been democratized. Everyone with a cell phone has access to a camera. Anyone can snap a self-portrait with the tap of a touch-screen button. Because of this, I want to use this episode to delve into the history of women’s self-portraits and how it relates to women’s modern selfies.
If it was historically subversive for a woman to become an artist, a woman artist painting a self-portrait was doubly so. From the Renaissance on, women usually had one static role in art – object. Women were models, women were representations of ideas, and women were there to be pretty. Women also usually had one narrow role in society – the traditionally feminine, quiet, meek woman. This meant that when a woman artist created a self-portrait, it turned into an “ongoing struggle to reconcile cultural constrictions of femininity with what it meant to be an artist and a woman at specific historical moments” as art historian Whitney Chadwick has noted (10). For example, take a look at Sofonisba Anguissola’s 1556 painting, Self-Portrait Painting the Virgin and Child. Here, Anguissola seems to be occupied with painting, but is looking at the viewer instead of her work. She is finely dressed in clothes she probably would not have worn for the messy task of painting, her hair is plaited in a tidy up-do, and her skin has a youthful glow. She looks, by all accounts, traditionally feminine. She is the object of the work. Yet, she asserts that she belongs in the male-dominated art world by painting a religious image on the easel in front of her. Because it did not involve learning anatomy, portraiture was seen as acceptable for women in Anguissola’s time. Religious paintings enjoyed higher status than portraits, and Anguissola makes a public statement about her skill by including this image in her self-portrait (Borzello 46). She and later women artists, such as Judith Leyster and Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, boldly broke into the male territory of art and self-portraits and “renegotiated the relationship between subject and object” through their struggle to depict themselves as both feminine and powerful artists (Chadwick 21).
As women’s presence in the art world grew, their self-portraits expanded from a battle between artist-hood and femininity to a more explorative, experimental space. My favorite example of this experimentation is Frida Kahlo who, in the 1920s, “began to turn her whole life into a visual diary” (Borzello, “Behind the Image” 28). Kahlo’s self-portraits are bizarre in a good way. She rejects the pressure to express respectable femininity, instead painting her emotions and her life. In 1946, Kahlo painted The Wounded Deer, one of my favorite paintings. This self-portrait rejects traditional notions of femininity and artistry, and is centered instead around a visual representation of Kahlo’s own wounded emotions. In fact, her depiction of herself as the deer is overtly un-feminine – the deer is a buck. In a subversion of both gender and traditional self-portraiture, Kahlo shows us the inner workings of a female mind instead of the more conventional and superficial search for female validation.
There is no better place to start talking about modern female validation than with the selfie. Unlike many self-portraits, selfies have garnered a bad reputation, especially for young girls. They are judged, as Jessica Bennett has observed, as “narcissistic, humble-braggy, slutty, too sexy, a `cry for help,` or yet another way for girls’ to judge each other (or seek validation for their looks)” (Bennett). But selfies have much more positive power than this. Just as Kahlo expanded ideas of what was possible for women’s self-portraits, so women’s selfies today are pushing back against mainstream media’s idea of beauty and femininity. In a manner similar to earlier women artists whose self-fashioning in self-portraiture gave them control of how they were seen, selfies allow modern women to project the version of themselves that they choose, regardless of societal norms. Selfies also let women celebrate their flaws, emphasize actions over appearance, and even make a feminist statement (Bennett).
In conclusion, I see selfies as the inevitable evolution of the female self-portrait. Women’s selfies are judged today just as women’s self-portraits were judged in the Renaissance: Is she feminine enough? Is she talented enough? Is she beautiful enough? By taking the representation of themselves into their own hands, women in history and women today seize control and transform their objectivity into subjectivity. The self-portrait and the selfie are both ways of forcing the world around you to see you as you see yourself – as a beautiful, talented, woman of action. To end this episode, I will quote art historian Whitney Chadwick’s essay, How Do I Look?:
I like to think that in taking up brush or pen, chisel or camera, women assert a claim to the representation of women (as opposed to Woman) that Western culture long ago ceded to male genius and patriarchal perspectives, and that in turning to the image in the mirror they take another step towards the elaboration of a sexualized subjective female identity (Chadwick, 9).
Works Cited
Bennett, Jessica. "Our Bodies, Our Selfies: The Feminist Photo Revolution." Time. Time, 11 Aug. 2014. Web. 06 July 2016. <http://time.com/3099103/feminist-selfies-uglyfeminists-iwokeuplikedis/>.
Borzello, Frances. “Behind the Image.” Rideal, Liz, Whitney Chadwick, and Frances Borzello. Mirror, Mirror: Self-portraits by Women Artists. New York, NY: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2002. Print.
Borzello, Frances. Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self-Portraits. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1998. Print.
Chadwick, Whitney. “How Do I Look?” Rideal, Liz, Whitney Chadwick, and Frances Borzello. Mirror, Mirror: Self-portraits by Women Artists. New York, NY: Watson- Guptill Publications, 2002. Print.
Further Reading
Farmer, Ashley. "The Selfie as a Feminist Act." The Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Stanford University, 15 May 2014. Web. 06 July 2016. <http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2014/selfie-feminist-act>.
This summer, I studied abroad in Venice, Italy. Among the vast swaths of tourists from different states, countries, and continents, there was usually one commonality: selfie sticks. For those of you who don’t know, selfie sticks are extendable metal rods that hold your smartphone so you can get the best picture of yourself possible when your arms just aren’t long enough to get the whole scene into one shot. Venice is filled with selfie sticks. Peddlers stand on almost every corner, hawking selfie sticks to passersby, preying on their vanity so they can make some sort of living wage. My fellow students and I were very, very annoyed by these selfie sticks. They poked out at random in crowds, threatening to poke your eye out if you got too close. They were the cause of much of the tourist traffic, since people seemed to think that the middle of a thin bridge over a canal was the best place to come to a complete stop, whip out a selfie stick, and take a photo. While these selfie-sticks were annoying, they got me thinking. Selfies, especially selfies of women, have caused a lot of controversy in the last few years. What relation do modern selfies have to the more “classic” self-portraits I passed in the Venice museums? In a way I think that art, especially photography, has been democratized. Everyone with a cell phone has access to a camera. Anyone can snap a self-portrait with the tap of a touch-screen button. Because of this, I want to use this episode to delve into the history of women’s self-portraits and how it relates to women’s modern selfies.
If it was historically subversive for a woman to become an artist, a woman artist painting a self-portrait was doubly so. From the Renaissance on, women usually had one static role in art – object. Women were models, women were representations of ideas, and women were there to be pretty. Women also usually had one narrow role in society – the traditionally feminine, quiet, meek woman. This meant that when a woman artist created a self-portrait, it turned into an “ongoing struggle to reconcile cultural constrictions of femininity with what it meant to be an artist and a woman at specific historical moments” as art historian Whitney Chadwick has noted (10). For example, take a look at Sofonisba Anguissola’s 1556 painting, Self-Portrait Painting the Virgin and Child. Here, Anguissola seems to be occupied with painting, but is looking at the viewer instead of her work. She is finely dressed in clothes she probably would not have worn for the messy task of painting, her hair is plaited in a tidy up-do, and her skin has a youthful glow. She looks, by all accounts, traditionally feminine. She is the object of the work. Yet, she asserts that she belongs in the male-dominated art world by painting a religious image on the easel in front of her. Because it did not involve learning anatomy, portraiture was seen as acceptable for women in Anguissola’s time. Religious paintings enjoyed higher status than portraits, and Anguissola makes a public statement about her skill by including this image in her self-portrait (Borzello 46). She and later women artists, such as Judith Leyster and Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, boldly broke into the male territory of art and self-portraits and “renegotiated the relationship between subject and object” through their struggle to depict themselves as both feminine and powerful artists (Chadwick 21).
As women’s presence in the art world grew, their self-portraits expanded from a battle between artist-hood and femininity to a more explorative, experimental space. My favorite example of this experimentation is Frida Kahlo who, in the 1920s, “began to turn her whole life into a visual diary” (Borzello, “Behind the Image” 28). Kahlo’s self-portraits are bizarre in a good way. She rejects the pressure to express respectable femininity, instead painting her emotions and her life. In 1946, Kahlo painted The Wounded Deer, one of my favorite paintings. This self-portrait rejects traditional notions of femininity and artistry, and is centered instead around a visual representation of Kahlo’s own wounded emotions. In fact, her depiction of herself as the deer is overtly un-feminine – the deer is a buck. In a subversion of both gender and traditional self-portraiture, Kahlo shows us the inner workings of a female mind instead of the more conventional and superficial search for female validation.
There is no better place to start talking about modern female validation than with the selfie. Unlike many self-portraits, selfies have garnered a bad reputation, especially for young girls. They are judged, as Jessica Bennett has observed, as “narcissistic, humble-braggy, slutty, too sexy, a `cry for help,` or yet another way for girls’ to judge each other (or seek validation for their looks)” (Bennett). But selfies have much more positive power than this. Just as Kahlo expanded ideas of what was possible for women’s self-portraits, so women’s selfies today are pushing back against mainstream media’s idea of beauty and femininity. In a manner similar to earlier women artists whose self-fashioning in self-portraiture gave them control of how they were seen, selfies allow modern women to project the version of themselves that they choose, regardless of societal norms. Selfies also let women celebrate their flaws, emphasize actions over appearance, and even make a feminist statement (Bennett).
In conclusion, I see selfies as the inevitable evolution of the female self-portrait. Women’s selfies are judged today just as women’s self-portraits were judged in the Renaissance: Is she feminine enough? Is she talented enough? Is she beautiful enough? By taking the representation of themselves into their own hands, women in history and women today seize control and transform their objectivity into subjectivity. The self-portrait and the selfie are both ways of forcing the world around you to see you as you see yourself – as a beautiful, talented, woman of action. To end this episode, I will quote art historian Whitney Chadwick’s essay, How Do I Look?:
I like to think that in taking up brush or pen, chisel or camera, women assert a claim to the representation of women (as opposed to Woman) that Western culture long ago ceded to male genius and patriarchal perspectives, and that in turning to the image in the mirror they take another step towards the elaboration of a sexualized subjective female identity (Chadwick, 9).
Works Cited
Bennett, Jessica. "Our Bodies, Our Selfies: The Feminist Photo Revolution." Time. Time, 11 Aug. 2014. Web. 06 July 2016. <http://time.com/3099103/feminist-selfies-uglyfeminists-iwokeuplikedis/>.
Borzello, Frances. “Behind the Image.” Rideal, Liz, Whitney Chadwick, and Frances Borzello. Mirror, Mirror: Self-portraits by Women Artists. New York, NY: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2002. Print.
Borzello, Frances. Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self-Portraits. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1998. Print.
Chadwick, Whitney. “How Do I Look?” Rideal, Liz, Whitney Chadwick, and Frances Borzello. Mirror, Mirror: Self-portraits by Women Artists. New York, NY: Watson- Guptill Publications, 2002. Print.
Further Reading
Farmer, Ashley. "The Selfie as a Feminist Act." The Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Stanford University, 15 May 2014. Web. 06 July 2016. <http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2014/selfie-feminist-act>.