Representation in Self Portraiture This is a blog to keep track of my dissertation research and to help develop ideas in an organised manner.

 This time a real attempt at a remotely decent plan...

- brief point about painting existing before photography and the impact this would have had on self-portraits. usually done in a mirror, reversed output, slowly, carefully considered? expensive, how might one decide to change how one is presented (the previous quote about looking Godlike) pose/background still could be a making of the mind

-Perhaps mentioning some artistic movements? Most old styles stuck to literal representation, but this offers a very limited view does it not? Merely what a person looked like, perhaps some simple clothes... / environment, still not very much. This can lead nicely into Van Gogh, as an expressionist to put emotions into his work to be very honest and consiously aware that he is doing so?

'Dear Theo, it is said, and I strongly believe, that it is difficult to know yourself, but it is also difficult to paint yourself'

-A brief outline of Van Gogh's general life / demise and inbetweens this will have to be the context provided for the chapter, without referring to 'context' do not make a big deal out of the significance... how to reference this? hmm...

Perhaps the best approach is to discuss a few self-portraits in chronological order, and my thinking is to correlate different events to different self-portraits and try and show intention... because X happened so X was portrayed in painting with feeling X, meaning all 3 are the same

His France period was happiest, lots of self portraits x1 per month revealed moods, preoccupation, technical development (state of mind)

• Guaguin Les Miserables, portrayal of himself how wanted to be percieved
• Goghs #30 reply mocking - literal representation impossible

This kind of throws a spanner in the works, I need to develop the whys he painted this and if this helps support me... he of course was consciously aware of this painting  but does it help to give an accurate representation? A comical side?

Bandaged ear, he didn't have to paint this, but he did

• Correlation of his mental attacks and events in his life to subsequent paintings
• #35 seems glamourous after an attack 

His last self portrait, very important, a lot to be discussed? did he know of things to come?

one criticism may have been the long time period it takes to paint, the feeling will dull, I have the quote that tells us he paints fast and with the feeling still there, this aids the truthfulness





 The unconscious chapter will be a critique of chapters 2 + 3

Simon Johnson
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk

 source video http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/van_gogh/10916.shtml blue peter
 'Dear Theo, it is said, and I strongly believe, that it is difficult to know yourself, but it is also difficult to paint yourself, working on two self-portraits as I have no-one else to paint'
YES USE THIS QUOTE


A Degenerate Work of Art: "A Portrait of Himself," by Van Gogh
author: Petronius Arbiter
1917

refers to the portrait dedication to Guaguin
completely slates the self-portrait
'Here we have a work of art which is so self evidently degenerate work by a degenerate artist that we need scarcely say anything about the inept artist!

Michel Foucault - History of Madness (some few mentions of Van Gogh highlighted below as direct passages)

Page 28
It is that tragic consciousness that is visible in the last words of Nietzsche and the
last visions of Van Gogh. It is that same element that Freud began to perceive at the
furthest point of his journey, the great wound that he tried to symbolise in the
mythological struggle between the libido and the death instinct. And it is that same
consciousness that finds expression in the work of Antonin Artaud. If the thinkers of
the twentieth century paid more attention, they would find in Artaud’s work one of the
most pertinent questions of the age, and whose clutches are the most difficult to
escape. Artaud never ceased to claim that Western culture lost its tragic focus the
moment it finally forgot what he termed the great solar madness of the world, the
violent ceremonies which enacted the life and death of ‘the great Fire Satan’.

It is only by examining such extreme discoveries that we can finally come to
understand that the experience of madness common since the sixteenth century
owes its particular face, and the origin of its meaning, to that absence, to that dark
night and all that fills it. The linearity that led rationalist thought to consider madness
as a form of mental illness must be reinterpreted in a vertical dimension. Only then
does it become apparent that each of its incarnations is a more complete, but more
perilous masking of tragic experience – an experience that it nonetheless failed to
obliterate. When constraints were at their most oppressive, an explosion was
necessary, and that is what we have seen since Nietzsche.

 Page 351
Half remaining in the shadows, this experience of unreason changes little from
Rameau’s Nephew up until Raymond Roussel and Antonin Artaud. But for that
continuity to be demonstrated, it must be freed from the pathological connotations it
has been assigned. The return to immediacy in the late poetry of Hölderlin and the
consecration of the sensible in Nerval can offer nothing but an altered or superficial
meaning so long as we set out to understand them from a positivist conception of
madness. Their true meaning should be asked of the moment of unreason in which
they are placed. For it is from the centre of that experience of unreason which is the
concrete condition of their possibility that the two movements of poetic conversion
and psychological evolution are to be understood. They are not linked to each other
by a relation of cause and effect, and they proceed in what is neither a
complementary nor an inverse mode. Both rest on the same base, that of
submerged unreason; the experience of Rameau’s Nephew already demonstrated
all that it contains of the drunkenness of the sensible, the fascination with the
immediate, and the painful irony where the solitude of delirium originates. What is at
stake here is not the nature of madness, but the essence of unreason. If that
essence could go unnoticed, it was not simply that it is hidden, but that it loses itself
in all that might bring it out into the light. For – and this is perhaps one of the
fundamental traits of our culture – it is impossible to remain in a decisive and
indefinitely resolved fashion at the distance specific to unreason. For it must be
forgotten and abolished no sooner than it is measured, in the vertigo of the sensible
or the confinement of madness. Van Gogh and Nietzsche in different ways were
evidence of this. Fascinated by the delirium of the real, by its scintillating
appearance, and by time abolished and absolutely re-found in the justice of light,
ensnared by the immutable solidity of the most fragile of appearances, they thus
were rigorously excluded and trapped within suffering beyond all exchange, and
which figured, not only for others but for them as well, in their own truth, which had
once more become immediate certitude, madness itself. The moment of the
Ja-sagen, of the embrace of the lure of the sensible, was also the moment they
retreated into the shadows of insanity

 Page 352
But to us, those two moments are as distinct and distant as poetry and silence, day
and night, the accomplishments of language in its manifestation and its loss in the
infinity of delirium. For us, confronting unreason in all its redoubtable unity has
become impossible. The nineteenth century, in all its inflexible seriousness, rent the
indivisible domain designated by the irony of Rameau’s Nephew, and drew an
abstract frontier through that former unity, demarcating the realm of the pathological.
In the mid-eighteenth century that unity had been briefly illuminated by a bolt of
lightning, but it was more than half a century again before anyone dared revisit such
a region. After Hölderlin, Nerval, Nietzsche, Van Gogh, Raymond Roussel and
Artaud ventured there, with tragic consequences – i.e. to the point at which the
alienation of the experience of unreason pushed them into the abandonment of
madness. And each of those existences, each of the words that made up those
existences repeats with the insistence of time the same question, which probably
concerns the essence of the modern world: why is it not possible to remain in the
difference that is unreason? Why is it that unreason always has to separate from
itself, fascinated in the delirium of the sensible and trapped in the retreat that is
madness? How was it that it was deprived of language to such an extent? What is
this power that petrifies all those who dare look upon its face, condemning to
madness all those who have tried the test of Unreason?

Page 536
endless rebirth, in the discouragements of repetition and disease, of the truth of a
work of art.
Nietzsche’s madness, and the madness of Van Gogh or Artaud, belong to their
œuvre, perhaps no more or no less profoundly, but in a totally different way. The
frequency in the modern world of these œuvres that explode into madness no doubt
proves nothing about the reason of this world, the meaning of these œuvres, nor
even about the relationships that are made and unmade between the real world and
the artists who produce such œuvre. And yet that frequency must be taken seriously,
like the insistence of a question; since Hölderlin and Nerval, the number of writers,
painters and musicians who have ‘lapsed’ into madness has multiplied, and yet we
should not be deceived – between madness and œuvre there has been no
arrangement, no more constant exchange, and no communication between
languages. The confrontation now is far more perilous than before, and their
competition allows no quarter: their game is one of life and death. The madness of
Artaud does not slip into the interstices in his œuvre: it is precisely the absence of an
œuvre, the constantly repeated presence of that absence, the central void that is
experienced and measured in its never-ending dimensions. Nietzsche’s last cry, as
he proclaimed himself to be both Christ and Dionysus, is not at the limits of reason
and unreason, the vanishing point of their œuvre, their common dream, reached at
last and instantly evaporating, a reconciliation between ‘the shepherds of Arcady
and the fishermen of Tiberias’; but it is rather the destruction of the œuvre itself, the
point at which it becomes impossible, and where it must begin to silence itself: the
hammer falls from the philosopher’s hand. Van Gogh, who did not want to ‘ask the
doctors’ permission to paint’, knew very well that his œuvre and his madness were
incompatible.
Madness is an absolute rupture of the œuvre: it is the constitutive moment of an
abolition, which founds the truth of the œuvre in time; it delineates the outer limit, the
line of its collapse, its outline against the void. Artaud’s œuvre experiences in
madness its own absence, but the ordeal, and the eternally recommenced courage
of this ordeal, all those words hurled at a fundamental absence of language, that
whole space of physical suffering and terror that surrounds the void or rather
coincides with it, that is the œuvre itself – a cliff-face over the abyss of the œuvres
absence. Madness is no longer the space of indecision where the truth of the origin
of the œuvre threatened to transpire, but the decision from
Page 537
which it irrevocably ceases, forever suspended above history from that point
onwards. It matters little exactly what day in the autumn of 1888 Nietzsche went
definitively mad, and from which point his texts were suddenly more the concern of
psychiatry than of philosophy; all those texts, including the postcard to Strindberg,
belong to Nietzsche, and all are connected in a common parentage to The Birth of
Tragedy. But that continuity should not be thought of as being on the level of a
system, or a thematics or even an existence: Nietzsche’s madness, i.e. the collapse
of his thought, is the way in which that thought opens onto the modern world. It is
that which made it impossible that makes it present to us: we are offered it by all that
wrenched it from his grasp. That is not to say that madness is the only language
common to an œuvre and the modern world (we must be wary of the emotional
appeal of the accursed artist, or the inverse and symmetrical danger of
psychoanalysis); but it does mean that through madness, an œuvre that seems to
sink into the world and reveal there its non-sense, and to acquire these purely
pathological features, ultimately engages with the time of the world, mastering it and
taking the lead. By the madness that interrupts it, an œuvre opens a void, a moment
of silence, a question without an answer, opening an unhealable wound that the
world is forced to address. By it everything that is necessarily blasphemous in an
œuvre is reversed and, in the time of the œuvre that has slumped into madness, the
world is made aware of its guilt. Henceforth and through the mediation of madness,
it is the world that becomes guilty (for the first time in the history of the West) in
relation to the œuvre: it is now arraigned by the œuvre, constrained to speak its
language, and obliged to take part in a process of recognition and reparation, to find
an explanation for this unreason, and explain itself before it. The madness where an
œuvre plunges into a void is the space of our work, the infinite path to understanding
it at last, our confused vocation as apostles and interpreters. For that reason it
matters little when the voice of madness first whispered within Nietzsche’s pride or
Van Gogh’s humility. There is only madness as the last instant of the œuvre – for the
œuvre indefinitely repels madness to its outer limits. Where there is an œuvre, there
is no madness: and yet madness is contemporaneous with the œuvre, as it is the
harbinger of the time of its truth. The instant in which, together, madness and an
œuvre come into being and reach fulfilment is the beginning of the time when the
world first finds itself summoned by the œuvre, and is responsible for all that it is in
the face of it.
Page 538
That ruse is a new triumph for madness. The world believes that madness can be
measured, and justified by means of psychology, and yet it must justify itself when
confronted by madness, for its efforts and discussions have to measure up to the
excess of the œuvres of men like Nietzsche, Van Gogh and Artaud. And nothing
within itself, and above all nothing that it can know of madness, serves to show that
these œuvres of madness prove it right.

Simon Johnson
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk

But is it art? - Cynthia Freeland [book]
p. 2001 p. oxford university press?
978-0-19285367-7

(all quotations) (my own thoughts in red)

Introduction
About - what art is, what it means and why we value it.
- loosely 'art theories' - specifically will look for the imitation theory, expression theory and cognitive theory.
-A theory should help things make sense rather than create obscurity through jargon and weighty words.
-Many modern artworks challenge us to figure out why, on any theory they would count as art.
-In classical Japanese aesthetics, art might include things unexpected by modern Westerners, like a garden, sword, calligraphy scroll, or tea ceremony.
-Many Philosophers from Plato onwards have proposed art theories:
     medieval colossus Thomas Aquinas
     Enlightenments key figures Hume + Kant
     notorious iconoclast Friedrich Neitzsche
     diverse 20th cent figures John Dewey, Arthur Danto, Michel Foucault + Jean Baudrillard
    (Foucault is cropping up a lot recently, research into him)
-Have chosen shock tactics
-Among the hardest problems an art theory faces are questions about how to settle art's meaning through interpretation (chapter 6). We will consider whether an artwork as 'a' meaning, and how theorists have tried to capture or explain it-whether by studying artists' feelings and ideas, their childhood and unconscious desires, or their brains(!).
 This above quote, chapter 6, perhaps will be most relevant to the seer section of my dissertation, to have not 'given the game away' as it were in the earliest chapter with Van Gogh.

Chapter 1 - Blood and beauty

-why has blood been used in so much art? One reason is that it has interesting similarities to paint.
-Obviously, blood has a host of expressive and symbolic associations. (dangerous, loss of virginity, adulthood, holy, noble)
Blood and ritual
-ritual theory
-For participants in a ritual, clarity and agreements of purpose are central; the ritual reinforces the community's proper relation to God or nature through gestures that everyone kows and understands. But audiences who see and react to a modern artist do not enter in with shared beliefs and values, or with prior knowledge of what will transpire. p4
-Art world is a competitive place, and artists need any edge they can get, including shock value.
-Serrano infamous photograph 'Piss Christ'
-Hume would not approve of blasphemy, immoraility, sex etc
-The writings of Hume(1711-1776)  and his scussor Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) form the basis of modern aesthetic theory...
Taste and beauty
-aesthetics - from Greek word for sensation or perception
-Hume used the term 'taste' a refined ability to perceive quality in an artwork - subjective?
-How do you prove that your taste is better than mine? Hume and Kant both struggled with this problem. Both men beleived that some works of art really are better than others, and that some people have better taste. How could they account for this?
-Hume emphasised education and experience
-Kant more concerned with judgements of beauty, good judgements grounded in the artwork themselves
-judgements of taste are 'intersubjective' p11
-Kant beleived that judgements of beauty were universal and grounded in the real world, even though they were not actually 'objective'. How could this be?
-something beautiful has 'purposiveness without a purpose'
Beauty and disinterestedness
-When you call a thing beautiful, you thereby assert that everyone ought to agree. Though the label is prompted by a subjective awareness or feeling of pleasure, it supposedly has objective application to the world
I see this possibly having a connection with what I'm looking at and how a self-portrait is percieved.
Kant's legacy
[X] I think for now I will leave this and a few chapters for now and select a chosen few.

Chapter 6 - Cognition, creation, comprehension

Getting at meaning
-Gender and sexual preference-together with nationality, ethnicity, politics, and religion- all seem to have some impact on the meaning of art. p148
-What must we know to clarify an artwork's meaning: external facts about artists' lives, or internal facts about how their works were made?
Useful for my context driven chapters...
-Both the expression and the cognitive theories of art hold that art communicates: it can communicate feelings and emotions, or thoughts and ideas. p149
-Interpretation is important because it helps explain how art does this.
 -I would describe interpretations as explanations of how a work functions to communicate thoughts, emotions and ideas. A good interpretation must be grounded in reasons and evidence, and should provide a rich, complex, and illuminating way to comprehend a work of art. p150
Interpretation: a case study
-Although no one interpretation is 'true' in an absolute sense, some interpretations of art seem better than others.
-Expressionist painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992)
In interpreting I am forced to have contextual information available to understand it... I need perhaps to know the authors intent, their background, others interpretation of what he meant, and this then would cohere to a meaning about the work and may be stronger or weaker than other arguments for a true meaning. (for seer chapter for context)
Triptych 1973
-Sylvestor inadequate interpretation of Bacons work 
- Bacon himself rejected readings of his work in terms of either his personal obsessions or the supposed angst of the twentieth century. He claimed his work was only about painting p152
This is good. For the Van Gogh chapter I can argue in the beginning that interpretation is irrelevant because the artist had already given his intent and that was to paint his feelings and emotions onto the canvas which IS a conscious decision.
 -obsessed with other painters, especially Van Gogh, Picasso
 -Still I don't quite beleive Bacon completely, nor would I rule out his biography altogether; it somehow provides background context for the raw urgency and harrowing content of the paintings p153
This could be important later
 John Russell had another critic
-Interpretations are superior if they explain more aspects of the artist's work. The best interpretations pay attention both to Bacon's formal style and to his content. In interpreting Bacon, I would not 'reduce' his art to his biography, but some facts about his life seem to reveal things about how he painted people
Again, important..
-...illustrates the favoured cognitive theory of art........ expression theory of art can be seen in bacon's work
Expression theory: Tolstoy
Essay at the beginning MUST remember that I am assuming it is the artist who is creating their own identity and representation themselves... it doesn't need any interpretation and context just yet, well not in the sense that one may disagree yet. Van Gogh is creating, not interpreting... try to remember this to avoid myself getting into trouble when thinking about this. So my research must then support this creation of his identity... done through his correlation of events, he wants to be portrayed in a certain way... CAN mention cohering context but I shalnt make too much of it yet and return to it later in the essay.

Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist (1828-1910) had this view that art communicates something in the realm of feelings and emotions, famous essay 'what is art?'
-some critics of Tolstoy some theorists claim one need not have the feeling in question in order to communicate it 
Could these not be supportive of Van Gogh? Or criticise him?
 If Bacon took weeks or even months to complete his Triptych in 1973, it seems unlikely he was himself 'feeling' one emotion the entire time p156
Managed to explain how Van Gogh did!
-The expressiveness is in the work, not the artist
Perhaps I would come back to this as a later criticism of Van Gogh and support the seer and interpretation of art being the most important thing.





Freud on sex and sublimation
psychoanalyst Freud saw art as an expression
Freud thought art expressed UNCONSIOUS feelings
This could then further be an evolution of my dissertation to later criticise Van Gogh so his work CANT be accurate because he is driven by his unconsious feelings... 

-sublimation may sound negative, but it's not
pycho analytic interpretations
claimed works of art, such as Leonardo's refer back to his childhood
-I next what to describe a group of expressionist theorists who focused less on biography than on art itself, holding that art is capable of expressing more conscious ideas and beleifs p159
Key word here being CONSCIOUS support for Van Gogh
Expressing ideas
A chief problem with expression theory, whether Tolstoy's or Freud's is that it seems too limiting to insist that art can only express emotions (whether conscious or unconscious).
-One way to put this objection at rest is to suggest it also portrays ideas.
revised version of expression theory devised by variety of people:
       Benedetto Croce (1866-1952)
     R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943)
     Suzanne Langer (1895- 1985)
all three endorsed the view that art can express or convey ideas as well as feelings.

Foucault and Las Meninas p162
INTRODUCE THIS by death of the author talk...
-death of the author view by Foucault 1926-1984 and roland barthes
What is an author? 1969
become too locked by searching for correct interpretations
what the author intended
representation of representation
in this episteme the subject cannot truly percieve himself. 

Cognitive theories: pragmatism
John Dewey
philosophical approach of pragmatism
art can be a source of knowledge
Nelson Goodman developed this...
(skipped some reading...)

 Mind, brain, and art
new field of cognitive science changed perception of the mind since freud dewey goodman
MRI scans
some worry that a scientific explanation of art will be reductive p171
ramachandran

Interpretation as explanation
expression theory focuses on what an artist is expressing in a work
proponents Freud and Tolstoy

 




Simon Johnson
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk

Constantly try to answer the question 'is the painting an accurate representation?'
Mainly referring to the conscious thought, the act of recreating.

Briefly:
Painting existed long before photography, long been used to make portraits
the first self-portraits in painting?
The painter has a challenge, the goal was for a literal representation (what artistic movement would this have gone with?)

From the research I have done so far:

• Expressionist movement was his style, paintings are subjective reaction, feeling
• painted what he felt
• Self portraits in Paris revealed moods, preoccupation, technical development (state of mind)
• Time period to paint the paintings, 1 or 2 a day, before feeling dulled
• his habit of painting a subject more than once
• Guaguin Les Miserables, portrayal of himself how wanted to be percieved
• Goghs #30 reply mocking - literal representation impossible
• the context given by his letters to theo? remarked?
• Correlation of his mental attacks and events in his life to subsequent paintings
• #35 seems glamourous after an attack

Simon Johnson
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk

source: Human All Too Human - bbc [dvd]

(1844 - 1900)
- 'I know my fate, one day my name will be associated with something tremendous'
crisis of religious faith
death of god would give birth to something new - absolute freedom
birthpan of the modern world
- 'God is dead, and God remains dead because we have killed him, how should we the murderer of all murderers comfort ourselves?'
Philosophy is not a guide to think like him, but to think for yourself
death of god left a void where certainty once existed

Beyond good and evil
tried to make them dependent upon each other...
1847, father diagnosed brain disease.
1849 father died
1850 baby brother died
questions how god let his father suffer, doubt christianity

Parable of the madman
declared the death of god

bought up in a religious upbringing (same as Darwin, same as Van Gogh) As do i
Schopenhauer philosophy appealed to him, pessimistic at the core, recognises human experience is not very pleasant, certain ways we can accommodate this truth, Nietzsche refers to as truth as scilenous? best not to be born, second to die quickly (citation needed)

best illustrated in music Richard Wagner

sought philosophical answer to pain of existence
(became increasingly sicker)
age 30 partial invalid

major turning point 1876, opening of Wagner great opera house, Nietzsche left - illness.
last straw, relationship dwindling

The Will to power
can be read as 'self-making'
-therapy. leads on to Frued. Without Nietzsche there wouldn't be Freud

Human or too human. A book for free spirits 1878

Zarathrustra - lonely, quest for right audience
The overman, mankind is something to be overcome
His superman, hero of the third reich

1900 died from stroke
next 30 years, sister took control of his literacy state
re-edited selections...
promoted him falsely as a nazi thinker

Research further: Will to Power

Simon Johnson
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk

#01 - 1886 - [Fall] Self-Portrait   - drawing
#02 - 1886 - [Spring]  Self-Portrait with Cap  - drawing
#03 - 1886 - [Spring] Self-Portrait with Cap  - drawing
#04 - 1886 - [Spring] Self-Portrait with Dark Felt Hat
#05 - 1886 - [Spring] Self-Portrait with Dark Felt Hat at the Easel
#06 - 1886 - [Spring] Self-Portrait with Pipe
#07 - 1886 - [Spring] Self-Portrait with Pipe
#08 - 1886 - [Autumn] Self-Portrait

#09 - 1887 - [early] Self-Portrait with Pipe and Glass
#10 - 1887 - [Mar-Apr] Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat
#11 - 86/87 - [Winter] Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat
#12 - 1887 - [Spring - Summer] Self-Portrait
#13 - 1887 - [Spring] Self-Portrait
#14 - 1887 - [Spring - Summer] Self-Portrait
#15 - 1887 - [Summer] Self-Portrait
#16 - 1887 - [Summer] Self-Portrait with Straw Hat and Pipe
#17 - 1887 - [Summer] Self-Portrait
#18 - 1887 - [Summer] Self-Portrait with Straw Hat
#19 - 1887 - [Summer] Self-Portrait
#20 - 1887 - [Summer] Self-Portrait
#21 - 1887 - [Summer] Self-Portrait with Straw Hat
#22 - 1887 - [Summer] Self-Portrait with Straw Hat
#23 - 1887 - [Dec]  Self-Portrait with a Japanese Print
#24 - 1887 - [Autumn] Self-Portrait
#25 - 87/88 - [Winter] Self-Portrait
#26 - 87/88 - [Winter] Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat
#27 - 87/88 - [Winter] Self-Portrait with Straw Hat

#28 - 1888 - [early] Self-Portrait in Front of the Easel
#29 - 1888 - [Aug] Self-Portrait with Pipe and Straw Hat
#30 - 1888 - [Sept] Self-Portrait (Dedicated to Paul Gauguin)
#31 - 1888 - [Nov] Self-Portrait

#32 - 1889 - [Jan] Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear
#33 - 1889 - [Jan] Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe
All Self-Portraits in Saint-Rémy show the artist's head from the left, i.e. the side with ear not mutilated
#34 - 1889 - [Sept] Self-Portrait
#35 - 1889 - [late Aug] Self-Portrait
#36 - 1889 - [Sept] Self-Portrait
27th July 1890 - Van Gogh shoots himself
29th July 1890 - Van Gogh dies
source: http://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/

Previous research

vague Nietzsche reference, if his brothers opposition made his work stronger?
'what doesn't kill me makes me stronger'

Paul Guaguin portrait of Van Gogh 'the painter of sunflowers' Dec 1888
Painting when he visited in Arles, only stayed for 2months, they argued.
"body face distorted, deranged invalid - envious of Van Gogh" - Power of art dvd

1889 - final self portrait, he described it as a 'studying calm' vortex, of paint... Engulfing, clinical map of physical and clinical distress. the blue waves, less morbid. Trying to recover... - power of art dvd

he  hoped people would feel  his work, not just see it, he got what he wanted... 'what am I in the eyes of most people?

Inspired by Impressionists, 'Van Gogh developed an art of supreme emotional intensity'
'He did not merely attempt to paint what he saw : he painted what he felt.'
'an expression of the painter's soul and emotions.'
This is primarily my reason for choosing Van Gogh, it is perhaps this uniqueness that meant his paintings would go beyond simply + realistically portraying a person and to see if how one feels is a truthful representation, after all feelings cannot lie? Or can they? Suppressed/unconscious could still affect how we feel so therefore still being biased... Define the term 'biased' to be clearer, these things they artist would have no knowledge, or control of.... could go as far as to our disposition relating to our genes.

 #32 self-portrait - "Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear. 1889. A cruelly truthful self-portrait of Van Gogh after he had cut off a piece of his own ear in a fit of madness. Courtauld Institute Galleries, London."

This kind of art has developed a name - 'expressionistic'
'Expressionist is almost by definition an individualist, pre-occupied with his subjective reactions; but although expressionism has never been a distinctive movement with a set programme, it has certainly been a persistent tendency in modern art.'p9
It's good to have narrowed down what this type of movement was called... and here it is said that it is subjective reactions, which seems to go against the objectivity I am looking for in this dissertation. 
Remember the subjective --> objective move which may be done by the seer... then remember the seer may be subject to the subjective, therefore not being entirely objective. The lead onto the context driven route (kind of coherentism).

'It has appeared in a variety of guises which have in common only the artist's practice of modifying reality in the interests of emotional truth - in order, as Van Gogh himself stated, that the picture might be 'truer than the literal truth'. p9
I think this will be very important in the essay... So would it in fact be 'truer than literal truth'? Perhaps this is how my essay will flow and this painting will be the supporting argument that starts off my essays tendency to go towards the context driven... The context of the work would indeed be the emotions portrayed of the character, but then maybe the question goes to how accurately that it is portrayed and how well the seer perceives it...
Wrote many letters, notably his brother Theo. These therefore aid the context-driven nature of his work. Prior to reading about Van Gogh (gaining a deeper context into his work) I did see his paintings as not an accurate representation. All showed different features of himself...

1886 - Paris years
'But from this time onwards, the most fascinating record of his appearance is the artist's own : self-portraiture, previously occasional, now became virtually a habit with Van Gogh, revealing his moods, preoccupations and even something of his technical development.' p36

'A self-portrait done in Antwerp makes him look older than his years, like a middle aged, pipe smoking labourer clad in his shabby best suit to sit for a photograph. His sombre clothing tones in with the gloomy background; the painting might serve as an illustration of the sort of thing against which the Impressionists had revolted. the Paris self-portraits are not only measureably brighter, and technically adventurous in line with his other works of the period; they also show him in a surprising new light.'......... (talk of dress sense) p36-7
'At the very least the self-portraits express a state of mind - here, surely, a deep involvement with the Parisian way of life.' p37
support for truth
Reflects a good state of mind for Van Gogh, surely. His quote:
"And mind my dear fellow, Paris is Paris. There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even - the french air clears up the brain and does good - a world of good."

#28 - 'A final self-portrait, done in January or February of 1888, shows a distinct change in Van Gogh's self-image. The frenzy of the brush-work has subsided; Van Gogh's figure takes up most of the picture surface, looking larger and sturdier than in previous self-portraits, and radiating a dogged determination.' p48  

'In the Midi, Van Gogh's years of relentless self-instruction began to bring substantial results, enabling him to paint with an astonishing facility and rapidity; and this in turn made it possible for him to get onto canvas the special emotion created by each subject before the feeling became dulled' p52
This quote is important, it explains that Van Gogh didn't spend a long time on his paintings and how the emotion was able to get across more accurately in a painting.

'he often painted a single subject many times, thus increasing the element of premediation in his approach' p52
Perhaps this throws some doubt into the pot. If he chooses the best painting, who knows what small details can be changed to transform the entire aesthetic? Linking here very much to photography. And multiple shots = multiple image selection choice.

'Instead of making preparatory sketches and studies in orthodox fashion, Van Gogh 'drew' directly onto the canvas with his loaded brush, sometimes even squeezing the paint directly onto the surface from the tube.' p52 "I let myself go without thinking of any rules"
If I take this to be accurate, then perhaps there will be more fluidity in his work if this applies to his self-portraiture... perhaps it only applies from the self-portraits in this point onwards, 1888. The previous concern can still apply however, the multiple production of works.

Exchange between Van Gogh, Guaguin and Bernard
Guaguin painting 'Les miserables'   - portrait of the artist as a victim to society p57
If this is a painting to portray something this this can't be an accurate representation as that is a subjective issue is it not? of being a victim? Perhaps if it was of ones emotion, such as being in love / feeling melancholy then, this is more objective because we would be the foremost authority on how we feel.

'Perhaps inspired by this self-dramataziation, Van Gogh painted the most bizarre of his self-portraits, which he described as 'almost colourless', and dedicated it to Guaguin. Gaunt, slant-eyed and shaven-headed, the Van Gogh of this painting radiates a fanatical intensity, his strangeness emphasized by placing him in front of a pale green background. In a letter to Theo, Vincent explained that the portrait was, like Guaguins, an exaggeration of his own personality, intended to represent the artist as an utterly undedicated figure - 'a bonze [buddhist monk], a simple worshipper of the eternal Buddha'.' p57
This is interesting, this is the first instance of a subverted reality, mocking perhaps, exaggerated to an extreme which is not an accurate representation but a representation of an exaggerated personality.  

Correlation between events and Van Gogh's attacks noticed with events in Theo's family life
One just after he announced the engagement
another serious after pregnancy revealed 10th July 1889
experienced hallucinations, suicidal thoughts

'One of the self-portraits he painted after his recovery, in the autumn of 1889, is an almost glamorous image of the artist with brushes and palette.'#35
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- rejected self portraits, ones whose authenticity can't be determined.
- Due to the considerable number of self-portraits by Van Gogh's, for a valid identification reference is to the numbers of Jacob Baart de la Faille's Catalogue raisonné (1928 & 1970) (F) or to Jan Hulsker's updated compilation (1978, revised 1989) (JH).

NEW RESOURCE - http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/van_gogh/
"   "   " - http://ezinearticles.com/?Analysis-of-Self-Portraits-of-Vincent-van-Gogh&id=305568
interesting - could be brother Theo - http://www.livescience.com/14738-vangogh-portrait-brother.html

Simon Johnson
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk

I propose an 8-chapter dissertation (10 including an introduction and conclusion, which should be taken as a given) the last chapter may be removed depending upon how relevant it is.
relevant research that might be important is listed next to each chapter.
conscious action --> unconscious action --> context dependent

Introduction, can talk about how obviously literal representation is OUT, perfection not possible that's why it's a 'likeness' (perhaps????)

Chapter 1 - Identity, clarification of 'representation' and what defines a person

Chapter 2 - Van Gogh, before photography, painting of the mind, discussing his self-portraits, do they reveal much about the man, context driven by the letters to Theo, were they subverted? Could Van Gogh's paintings lie!? Painting how he felt, CONSCIOUS SIDE

Chapter 3 - Relevant photographic practitioners
Cindy Sherman - fictional portraits, truthful? Say more about her
John Coplans - Nude self-portraits? Less clothes = more truth?
Diane Arbus - She is represented through her photos, her transcript and her family... representation is it not.

Chapter 4 - (metacognitive?) Freud, psychodynamic point of view, mood congruence, projection/introjection, mainly looking at the subconscious and its affects on photographs (chapter 2 + 3 refer to the choices we consciously make) This is the background to what we may not be able to help. So, talk about this in relation to a photographer taking photographs, editing selections etc all their choices.

Chapter 5 - The seer
We move from focusing on THE PHOTOGRAPHER - his consious and perhaps unconsious decisions affecting the photographs representation. We now move to THE SEER, the one who views the photograph apart form the biased photographer who may be the most important factor in deciding what a photograph means. Death of the Author will be essential here. Chapter 4 all applies here too, I would imagine as a critique? The seer may indeed be biased too.
Perhaps make the suggestion that if a wide audience deems something to be a certain way then something will be regarded that way and truthful. However there exists a lot of differing opinions on work but they take (for example) written accounts to be facts and it is the interpretation of them that brings meaning, the more facts we have the deeper the truth behind an image? This introduces the idea that context is particularly important...

Chapter 6 - My own images (self portrait project, over 300 self portraits)
Aided from Chapter 4, I need to look into my work, honestly and analyse the meanings and biasms behind the work, this is perhaps my best insight into my question. Although I am biased by being the photographer. I can be aided by Freud's analysis of himself and be brutally honest? If I can... Chapter 5 may apply because I am viewing the work and will then suggest that it is the context of my work that is important and will be supported by some developments in my work I have produced.

Chapter 7 - Social Media, in support of the context approach.
Looking at Facebook profile pictures, we have a lot of context provided by a 'profile' and this helps us determine the meaning of a picture, which also seems to be quite clear given the social convention and purpose of a 'profile picture', comments by other people, a string of previous photos... It would appear quite obvious to us as their 'friend' whether it is an accurate representation of them... Althought what about if it was of a non friend and just their picture available? Is it really of a duck!? This further supports the importance of context driven evidence.

Chapter 8 - Possible Worlds, David Lewis (perhaps other philosophy based alternatives)
I would surmise my evidence in support of context driven seers would prevail towards the end of the essay, however I would still like to offer some alternatives...
This idea of possible worlds would suggest that ALL the representations that exist of you ARE accurate, but not in this actual world, in another unrealised possible world it would exist.
Other possible philosophical ideas? I need something that would suggest the opposite, that nothing is ever a representation of us, perhaps we are always changing and then the representation is of someone that we are no longer, this then rolls into other Metaphysical ideas. (check year 2)
This chapter is a possible chapter which I would love to keep as a thought experiment but can be taken out due to word count restrictions if necessary?
Personal Identity - Locke and Parfitto potentially undo the foundations provided in chapter 1

FINAL POINT - i need to think about, what if it's the painter's/photographer intention to deceive in their work.. a conscious decision to be deceptive? Is this a form of accuracy? can it be proven?



Simon Johnson
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk

Source 1 - The Art of Van Gogh, Nathaniel Harris [Book]
General contextual information of the different periods of his life.

Source 2 - The Masterworks of Van Gogh, Nathaniel Harris [Book]
More contextual work, will have to pick out relevant parts...
Must look for some specific essays on his self portraiture once I have the contextual information.

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Source 1
The Greatness of Van Gogh

Dutch painter, could be described as an 'outsider'
'In worldly terms he was an utter failure - in business, as an evangelist and finally in his true vocation as an artist.'
Out of around 800 paintings, sold only one before his death

Inspired by Impressionists, 'Van Gogh developed an art of supreme emotional intensity'
'He did not merely attempt to paint what he saw : he painted what he felt.'
'an expression of the painter's soul and emotions.'

This is primarily my reason for choosing Van Gogh, it is perhaps this uniqueness that meant his paintings would go beyond simply + realistically portraying a person and to see if how one feels is a truthful representation, after all feelings cannot lie? Or can they? Suppressed/unconscious could still affect how we feel so therefore still being biased... Define the term 'biased' to be clearer, these things they artist would have no knowledge, or control of.... could go as far as to our disposition relating to our genes.

Structure of the paintings add to the impression they give, the built up paint, enlarged sky/moon gives the sense it is about to fall on us 'The sense of mental, of universal, dislocation is complete and overwhelming' p8-9

This kind of art has developed a name - 'expressionistic'
'Expressionist is almost by definition an individualist, pre-occupied with his subjective reactions; but although expressionism has never been a distinctive movement with a set programme, it has certainly been a persistent tendency in modern art.'p9

It's good to have narrowed down what this type of movement was called... and here it is said that it is subjective reactions, which seems to go against the objectivity I am looking for in this dissertation. 
Remember the subjective --> objective move which may be done by the seer... then remember the seer may be subject to the subjective, therefore not being entirely objective. The lead onto the context driven route (kind of coherentism).

'It has appeared in a variety of guises which have in common only the artist's practice of modifying reality in the interests of emotional truth - in order, as Van Gogh himself stated, that the picture might be 'truer than the literal truth'. p9

I think this will be very important in the essay... So would it in fact be 'truer than literal truth'? Perhaps this is how my essay will flow and this painting will be the supporting argument that starts off my essays tendency to go towards the context driven... The context of the work would indeed be the emotions portrayed of the character, but then maybe the question goes to how accurately that it is portrayed and how well the seer perceives it...

Wrote many letters, notably his brother Theo. These therefore aid the context-driven nature of his work. Prior to reading about Van Gogh (gaining a deeper context into his work) I did see his paintings as not an accurate representation. All showed different features of himself...

The Early Years

1 year before Van Gogh's birth, mother had a boy who died within a few weeks also 'Vincent willem' 'writers with a taste for psychoanalysis have speculated that the painter may have suffered from a lifelong guilt at having usurped the dead child's place; but the evidence to support such a view is, to say the least, thin.'

In my Freud chapter I may return to this?

Much drawing as a child, focus on accuracy and technique
First withdrawl into himself came after his unrequited love with his landlady's daughter.
Became obsessed with religious ideas
read Bible constantly
Letters to Theo provide much of the context of his life
'Van Gogh's dark months in the Borinage  proved to be a turning point. By the summer of 1880 he has at last discovered his true vocation as an artist.'

The Long Struggle

love for Kee Vos scandal
The Hague + Sien


August 1882, Van Gogh began to paint (born 1853) Age 29
This point in time, Van Gogh still had aspirations of becoming a successful illustrator
Had to fund this new art ever more so from Theo, tried to justify it in letters
Relationship deteriorated, left her in September 1883
March 1885, Father Pastor Van Gogh suddenly collapsed and died p30

The School of Paris

(Feb 1886-1888) Transformed Van Gogh
Dangerous, personalities/styles in danger of being overwhelmed, drifting from one style to the next without making any distinctive contribution of their own...
Influence by impressionism, and successful absorbtion of other styles... colour

I need to locate translations of his letters as support for some of my assumptions,

'But from this time onwards, the most fascinating record of his appearance is the artist's own : self-portraiture, previously occasional, now became virtually a habit with Van Gogh, revealing his moods, preoccupations and even something of his technical development.' p36

Suggestions of what his self-portrait may reveal, interesting I see a parallel in my own work with this

'A self-portrait done in Antwerp makes him look older than his years, like a middle aged, pipe smoking labourer clad in his shabby best suit to sit for a photograph. His sombre clothing tones in with the gloomy background; the painting might serve as an illustration of the sort of thing against which the Impressionists had revolted. the Paris self-portraits are not only measureably brighter, and technically adventurous in line with his other works of the period; they also show him in a surprising new light.'......... (talk of dress sense) p36-7
'At the very least the self-portraits express a state of mind - here, surely, a deep involvement with the Parisian way of life.' p37

Reflects a good state of mind for Van Gogh, surely. His quote:
"And mind my dear fellow, Paris is Paris. There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even - the french air clears up the brain and does good - a world of good."
Need to find ALL his self-portraits and view them in chronological order along with time periods of things that happened in his life to see the correlation between them.

Paul Guaguin - both made a strong impression on each other

Theo quarelled with Vincent (sharing home) like I suppose some brothers would

'A famous self-portrait from the period seems to reflect this mood; although still remotely related to Japanese and Pointillist works, it is nevertheless a painting of great intensity and originality in which a web of dense, rhythmically patterned brush-strokes lead the eye restlessly all over the picture surface, creating a brilliant and deeply uneasy effect.' p47

Which self-portrait is this referring to??? possibly towarsd the end of 1887, about to leave France, in his phase of entering depression and irritability.

'A final self-portrait, done in January or February of 1888, shows a distinct change in Van Gogh's self-image. The frenzy of the brush-work has subsided; Van Gogh's figure takes up most of the picture surface, looking larger and sturdier than in previous self-portraits, and radiating a dogged determination.' p48



I have thoughts about whether this is really how Van Gogh saw himself? If he has indeed pulled the wool over peoples eyes and this is not the reality of things we percieve it to be. Paint can lie very easily, as can interpretation.
As I said previously, need to correlate paintings to periods in his life and see if these things correlate and if this correlation is indeed affecting the representation of the artist, to a truer extent.

20th February 1888 - train from Paris to southern city of Arles.
 
Arles: Triumph and Tragedy

Heard old teacher had died, Anton Mauve, dedicated 'Souvenir de Mauve' and sent it to the painters widow
clear, colourful and decorative work
Famous sunflowers series, harmonies in yellow, reproduced all over the world
sometimes completed one, two paintings a day!

'In the Midi, Van Gogh's years of relentless self-instruction began to bring substantial results, enabling him to paint with an astonishing facility and rapidity; and this in turn made it possible for him to get onto canvas the special emotion created by each subject before the feeling became dulled' p52

This quote is important, it explains that Van Gogh didn't spend a long time on his paintings and how the emotion was able to get across more accurately in a painting. 

'he often painted a single subject many times, thus increasing the element of premediation in his approach' p52

Perhaps this throws some doubt into the pot. If he chooses the best painting, who knows what small details can be changed to transform the entire aesthetic? Linking here very much to photography. And multiple shots = multiple image selection choice.

'Instead of making preparatory sketches and studies in orthodox fashion, Van Gogh 'drew' directly onto the canvas with his loaded brush, sometimes even squeezing the paint directly onto the surface from the tube.' p52 "I let myself go without thinking of any rules"

If I take this to be accurate, then perhaps there will be more fluidity in his work if this applies to his self-portraiture... perhaps it only applies from the self-portraits in this point onwards, 1888. The previous concern can still apply however, the multiple production of works.

Exchange between Van Gogh, Guaguin and Bernard
Guaguin painting 'Les miserables'   - portrait of the artist as a victim to society p57

If this is a painting to portray something this this can't be an accurate representation as that is a subjective issue is it not? of being a victim? Perhaps if it was of ones emotion, such as being in love / feeling melancholy then, this is more objective because we would be the foremost authority on how we feel. 

'Perhaps inspired by this self-dramataziation, Van Gogh painted the most bizarre of his self-portraits, which he described as 'almost colourless', and dedicated it to Guaguin. Gaunt, slant-eyed and shaven-headed, the Van Gogh of this painting radiates a fanatical intensity, his strangeness emphasized by placing him in front of a pale green background. In a letter to Theo, Vincent explained that the portrait was, like Guaguins, an exaggeration of his own personality, intended to represent the artist as an utterly undedicated figure - 'a bonze [buddhist monk], a simple worshipper of the eternal Buddha'.' p57

This is interesting, this is the first instance of a subverted reality, mocking perhaps, exaggerated to an extreme which is not an accurate representation but a representation of an exaggerated personality.  


mad painter, night cafe, clashing red and greens
Guaguins self-projection (arrived in Arles 23 October 1888) two months together
Guaguin portrait of his friend, quarrel, decided safer to leave
Chair and pipe painting
Theo becomes engaged - threatened
23rd December Guaguin leaves, some altercation took place...
Led to Van Gogh hacking off a piece of his ear...
He gave it to Gaby at a brothel, wrapped in newspaper...
Police called, found him in a coma at the yellowhouse
7th January 1889, released from hospital
returned, poison fiasco
mental health deteriorating.
During periods of freedom, began to paint again
self portrait with bandaged is touching
his doctor
5 versions of La Berceuse, postman's wife Madame Roulin

REMINDER: Dissertation will be a progression from suggesting literal representation is impossible. Therefore, the closest you can come to knowing and understanding is to have as much context available whether it's visual, auditory etc...

The Unbearable Vision

Saint Paul's Hospital
Great creative period - June 1889 - early July 1889
Starry Night
diagnosed with epilepsy
other possible contributors - alcoholism, malnutrition, syphilis and schizophrenia

Correlation between events and Van Gogh's attacks noticed with events in Theo's family life
One just after he announced the engagement
another serious after pregnancy revealed 10th July 1889
experienced hallucinations, suicidal thoughts

'One of the self-portraits he painted after his recovery, in the autumn of 1889, is an almost glamorous image of the artist with brushes and palette.'

Further evidence.

exhibition and first sale
3months of good health
2 mild attacks - Dec 1889, Jan 1890
End of Feb 1890, deadly seizure, tried to poison himself with paint (occured shortly after theo's wife gave birth) consciously delighted, he sent them a painting almond tree

16 May 1890, left asylum for Paris
early June, pressures built for Theo, baby's health and superiors got on badly
 
Sunday 27th July, began a letter to Theo, but never finished... went out into field and shot himself
went back to his room at the inn
'the sadness will last forever' he was determined to die
Died 29th July 1890
Brother died 25th January 1891




Source 1 - The Art of Van Gogh, Nathaniel Harris  p. The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited -london-newyork-sydney-toronto astranaut house, feltham, middlesex england 1982
0-600-39036-5

Source 2 - The Masterworks of Van Gogh, Nathaniel Harris p. Parragon, Bristol 1997
0-75252-554-9

Simon Johnson
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk