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Portraits on social media are value-laden constructs. Whether documenting graduation or flexing in the gym, users express what they care about and present it for others to evaluate. Since "global" portrait genres are produced and consumed in different locales, their interpretation and evaluation may vary. We thus ask: What values do people identify in different types of social media portraits? Which evaluative criteria do they use when judging them? An analysis of 100 interviews with users from Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the United States reveals that people consistently recognize genre-specific values in portraits and evaluate them through a narrow set of communication-related criteria. Such evaluations vary across cultures in ways that only occasionally match established comparative literature on values. We reflect on the relational character of the criteria adopted for the evaluation of portraits worldwide, highlighting its association with new modes of sociability in digital spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of an advanced doctoral research course, class members participated in an in-depth exploration of the methodology portraiture. In this article, the authors—course instructor and 10 students—represent themselves as researchers through collage portraits and written reflexive responses. A brief review of portraiture, collage in research, and researcher reflexivity, along with descriptions of relevant course experiences are presented. Images of the collage process and resulting portraits are highlighted. A collage portrait of a class emerges as issues of transparency in research, the role of the researcher, and the use of art in research are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an analysis of the film Frida, based on accounts of the life of the Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo. Frida may be seen as a tragic hero in the mold of Antigone and Elektra. The paper explores the process by which a self may be created, with special emphasis on the uses of portraiture; it delves into the integration of contraries in the life of the protagonist and offers a psychoanalytic view of the way the self evolves under a variety of conditions. Frida's body has been injured and broken by physical trauma; her mind and spirit have also been influenced by this and other painful events. She fantasizes that she will be cured and made whole by her mentor, lover, husband, and betrayer, Diego Rivera. But Diego's adversary is Death, a personified force to whom Frida has given at least an equal measure of her love. It is inevitable that Death will win in this struggle: Frida, the phoenix, is consumed by fire that is her destruction but also a symbol of her unconquerable passion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of the several faces identified as self-portraits in Michelangelo's "Last Judgment," only the one on the skin held by St. Bartholomew has been widely accepted as such. This essay does not dispute that identification, but does argue against the interpretation of it as a representation of the artist's psychological torment. Other self-references within the fresco, including one made visible only after the recent cleaning, suggest a different interpretation: one that focuses on the resurrection of the physical body, set within the context of contemporary debates about the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates questions that involve the problematic of the identity in contemporary photographic portraits. Self-portraits are analyzed to discuss the fragility of identities from an artistic production called the Limits of the Daphne, which is composed of a series of appropriate images of the Internet, more specifically selfportraits, selfies. The gesture of self-photographing is approached as an act of identity construction, seeking a theoretical basis in authors who reflect on this theme, such as Annateresa Fabris and Joan Fontcuberta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the book "El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno" by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala is presented. The book was reportedly produced as a letter to Spanish King Philip II and latter to Philip III wherein Goma brings his presence in the book using self-portrait and designated himself a prince. Topics include Goma's imagined encounter with the king, use of images to address the king, and the trends in portraiture.

Previous analyses suggest that artists prefer poses showing the left side of the subject’s face when composing a portrait, but showing the right side when composing their own self-portrait. There is also some evidence that artists may prefer compositions with key features on the right of the picture. Do these findings generalize to spontaneous, pseudo-artistic productions by individuals with no formal training in painting and art history? To investigate this issue, we tested a sample of 104 British schoolchildren and teenagers (mean age = 13.8 years; 80 females). We analysed posing biases in individual photographic self-portraits (“selfies”) as well as of self-portraits including also the portrait of a friend (“wefies”). Our results document a bias for showing the left cheek in selfies, a bias for placing the selfie-taker on the right in wefies, and a bias for showing two left cheeks over two right cheeks, again in wefies. These biases are reminiscent of what has been reported for selfies in adult non-artists and for portraits and self-portraits by artists in the 16th–18th centuries. Thus, these results provide new evidence in support of a biological basis for side biases in portraits and self-portraits independently of training and expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In post-apartheid South Africa, testimony and personal narrative have opened a space for marginalised voices to emerge. At the same time, to testify is to occupy a position of vulnerability. This paper focuses on a series of self-portraits by black HIV-positive women and points to how their entry into the public sphere and the global art market has been conditioned by their social and economic marginality. These portraits have been read as 'maps', providing access to the truth of the subjects they represent. Such readings perpetuate rather than challenge the myth of the transparent, authentic African subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores three "apparitions" of the author-figure in the paratexts (frontispieces and prefaces) of Henry James's New York Edition. These "portraits of the author" are discussed with references to recent authorship studies and studies in the history and function of frontispiece illustrations of the author. The article concludes that James's "self-portraits" within his "collected edition" should be interpreted in the context of visual techniques of nineteenth-century culture (architecture, silhouettes, and photography), visual techniques that figure prominently in James's redefinitions of the author's relation to his past self and life's work. As such, the article proposes that Henry James's New York Edition suggests a new "mode of reading" the relationship between outward forms and interior substances, which cannot be disregarded in interpretations of James's late works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses how it is possible to view Damien Hirst as a brand name. it argues that the brand name is not the mark of an originary relation between producer and product but of a set of highly mediated relations between products. In a discussion of the spot paintings, the process of mediation is seen to contribute to the open-endedness of the relations between products or works established in Hirst's practice. This open-endedness contributes to the distinctiveness of the Hirst brand name as 'life as it is lived' or living-ness. This characterization of the distinctiveness of the Hirst brand name draws attention to the ways in which his practice may be seen as a commentary on contemporary science, in particular the bio-sciences. It is further argued that Hirst does not merely represent himself as a scientist, but as a pharmacist, thus drawing attention to the role of branding in shifts in the processes of creativity, invention and discovery across the arts and sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the cultural and gendered contexts in the photographic self-portraits of Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura. Reputation of Morimura as an artist; Characterization of Morimura's works; Views on the quality of Morimura's photographic self-portraits.

Presents photographic self-portraiture of Tabata Hideomi as a bather in a wheelchair published in the September 1, 1999 issue of "Public Culture."

Takes an in depth look at Pierre Puvis de Chavannes's caricatures, satirical drawings, and grotesques, produced throughout his career (1848-98). His deliberate choice of themes and general aesthetic; Puvis' early scatological caricatural drawings; Mordant caricatural portraits and self-portraits that document his relationships with other artists and friends; Caricatures as a vehicle for the articulation of an aesthetic position.

"I created Unzipped" in response to the challenge of creating a self-portrait that was more than just representational in the literal sense. I wanted to create a drawing that expresses my heart, my soul and the essence of my being. I started out at the base with a realistic grey graphite drawing of my face being unzipped by my hand. A scene pours out and unfolds above, symbolizing my life and what makes me who I am. At the base of the scene the tangled roots of a tree represent my family history. Native American symbols, a German Black Eagle, and a Celtic cross are a few of the symbols woven into the roots in earthy browns. The tree, my family tree, springs out from the roots of my ancestors and is full of lively green leaves, with a trunk of golden DNA that stretches into the future and the past, touching all of the generations ahead and behind me. Whirling masses of color and liquid texture represent my experiences and the memories left behind by these experiences. Besides my heritage and upbringing, these memories have constructed me into who I am as a person, whether those memories are dark or light. Unfolding above the experiences and the foliage of the trees, a flock of doves mediates between physical reality and the spiritual realm. A vibrant golden mandala of light and pattern radiates the peace and truth inherent in creation and the birthright of love that is available to all of us, an aspect of life that is not unique to me but that is a part of every living being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]