On Beauty in Portraits

“Self-portrait or desperate man” (c. 1843). Oil on canvas, private collection. Gustave Courbet.

I recently listened to a short lecture from an art critic on beauty in painting.

He talked about the self-portrait and how, with Dürer, the artist began to paint himself, as a sublime being worth more than any other subject to be represented.

He reminded me of my studies in cognitive psychology, when the little child discovers himself for the first time in the mirror.

From that moment everything changes. Just as it was in painting.

A new subject appeared – what was previously behind the canvas became the one who represents and represented.

 

I have already written about self-portrait in a previous article, relating to the book by photographer Lee Friedlander.

About the wavy line that from Narcissus crosses centuries of painting up to photography: from the famous self-portraits by Vivian Maier to the disturbing and deep as darkness like ones of D'Agata.

So why go back to talking about it?

Because in this short lesson, a famous self-portrait by Gustave Courbet was shown.

The painting is from 1843. In 1861, Courbet will be photographed by Nadar.

In these twenty years, the difference is very strong, apart from the lesson it was aimed at underlining how there is often a chasm between self-representation and being represented.

 “Gustave Courbet”. Nadar (1861).

It sounds ironic that Courbet is considered the inventor of Realism in painting. It is no coincidence that his art was the cause of scandal and censorship; which will lead him to alcoholism and lonely death, after the successes of his first performances. 

“Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist in the representation of real and existing things. An abstract object, not visible, does not fall within the domain of painting. Imagination in art consists of knowing how to find the most complete expression of an existing thing, but never in supposing or creating this very thing. Beauty is in nature, and is encountered in reality under the most diverse forms. As soon as it is found, it belongs to art or rather to the artist who knows how to see it. Beauty, like truth, is something relative to the time in which one lives and to the individual capable of conceiving it. The expression of beauty is in direct proportion to the power of perception acquired by the artist. There can be no schools, there are only painters.”

So wrote Courbet. 

“Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist in the representation of real and existing things.” This way he portrayed as a desperate man, but beautiful.

During the lesson, he was playfully joined in the resemblance to Johnny Deep: rebellious, disheveled, pirate. Fascinating, for sure.

 

It's therefore strange to see him in the image of the great photographer Nadar, who Roland Barthes considered “the greatest photographer in the world”.

In fact, in the sixties in which he was portrayed, Courbet had not yet known the imprisonment, decline, loneliness and alcoholism that caused him to die of cirrhosis of the liver in 1877.

So, it is assumed that the real image was inevitably that of the photograph more than that in the canvas.

That is not the only self-portrait in that style, there are others from the same years who see him in haughty poses, with flowing hair and a thin and beautiful face.

And, in any case, even up to the fifties and close to Nadar's photograph he continues to be portrayed, with a pipe or wounded at the foot of a tree, always thin, fascinating, and with a tapered face.

 

“Self-portrait with a dog” (1842). Petit-Palais Museum, Paris. Gustave Courbet

Let's know that one day becoming a model for the one who handed over the features of Charles Baudelaire, Gioachino Rossini, Édouard Manet and Sarah Bernhardt to history.

This is an important difference. Painted portraits can be trusted, but self-portraits? How reliable are they?

The psychological dynamics of that time are not so distant from that of our days when with applications on phones or with editing programs, we modify our photographs, our selfies.

The intention is always to give a better picture of who we are.

Courbet has to tolerate his obese figure, weighted down, swollen face every day, as it is imprinted in Nadar's film. So, who cares about Realism! That's for the whole world, for everything around me. But not for myself, otherwise what do I need the talent to be able to create?

The first self-portrait showed during the lesson was that of Dürer, who portrayed himself almost in a divine pose, as if to reiterate that if God is the creator in heaven, the artists are here on earth.

Those painted portraits were to be delivered to posterity, making the most famous artists immortal in their idealized beauties.

But if this trick could have made sense in those days, even before photography came to ruin the plans, as for the poor and mocked Courbet, what sense does it have today?

I wonder every time I see friends' selfies edited to be unrecognizable.

If it is true that on the one hand, it is only an innocent game that tickles the vanity in each of us, it is also a sad sign of our weakness and inability to accept who we are.

Because our true faces and bodies are under the eyes of all, they are “present”, visible. Juxtaposing our faces with the images we manipulate, precisely because they are so perfect, do nothing but bury even more what we really are.

We ourselves, without knowing it, are the architects of our insecurities and discomforts, because we delude ourselves that whoever is in front of us only looks at the simulacra of our happiness, looking away from who we are and how we are.

 

Noblemen and women in the past, it is said, loved to walk with monkeys on a leash so that their beauty would stand out.

We have taken the opposite path: we have entrusted the safety of our lives to false and better images, in order to remain so crushed by them, in an irreparable way.

 

Dear Courbet, dear Nadar, this is the Realism of our day.
Sometimes having the best tools only makes things worse.
You learn to go deeper with more style and faster.
Like a click.

 

Italian version