This book demonstrates how artists have radically revisited the genre of the self-portrait by using a range of technologies and media that mark different phases in what can be described as a history of self- or selves-production.
Gabriella Giannachi shows how artists constructed their presence, subjectivity, and personhood, by using a range of technologies and media including mirrors, photography, sculpture, video, virtual reality and social media, to produce an increasingly fluid, multiple, and social representation of their ‘self’.
This interdisciplinary book draws from art history, performance studies, visual culture, new media theory, philosophy, computer science, and neuroscience to offer a radical new reading of the genre.
Author(s): Gabriella Giannachi
Series: Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 163
City: New York
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of
Contents
List of figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Introducing the self
The self-determining individual
Social selves
Producing the self
Relational selves
Post-human selves
Mapping the self
Presencing
The order of things
1. The invention of the self-portrait
The origin of the self-portrait
Performing presence: the self-portrait during the Renaissance
The independent self-portrait: the case of Dürer
The act of painting
Collecting self-portraits
Self-portraits as theatres: the case of Rembrandt
Beyond representation: the case of Velázquez
From self-fashioning to immersion
Enter the viewer: the case of Pistoletto
2. The photographic self-portrait
The origin of the photographic self-portrait
The production of the subject in the work of Claude Cahun
The intermedial self-portrait in the work of Ana Mendieta
The act of becoming in the work of Francesca Woodman
The multiplication of the subject in the work of Lynn Hershman Leeson
Identity transfer in the work of VALIE EXPORT
Constructing the self as an other: the case of Cindy Sherman
Self-portrait in a mask: the case of Gillian Wearing
Self-portrait as power: Zanele Muholi
3. Sculpting the self
The origin of the sculptural self-portrait
The medical self-portrait
Sculpted action: Arte Povera’s Giuseppe Penone and Gilberto Zorio
Entering the body: the case of Antony Gormley
Sculpting the body: the case of Orlan
Stelarc’s cybernetic body sculptures
4. Video self-portraits
Self-perception in the work of Dan Graham
Presence and absence in the work of Gary Hill
Environmental presence: the case of Joan Jonas
Re-presencing the subject: Lynn Hershman Leeson
Surveillance: from wearable computers to AI
5. The selfie
The origin of the selfie
The aesthetics of the selfie
Community and museum selfies
Performing selves in character on social media: the case of Amalia Ulman
The algorithmic construction of the subject in Erica Scourti’s works
Cached Collective
Conclusion
References
Index
