3. CONTENT

Changing Ideas of self

 

What is that elusive ‘essence’ , ‘air’,  the reflection of the true personality of the subject that we are trying to capture in a portrait?

 

Jerrold Seigel in his book “The Idea of Self” offers the main elements of the ‘self’ which thinkers from Pre Greek to present day have been grappling with in an attempt to reach a more complete understanding of what it is that distinguishes you from me and everyone else; what it is that portraitists have been aiming to capture as that special distinguishing element in the portraits that have been created throughout human history. Essentially the ‘self’ has been sought by philosophers in varying degrees within the three elements of an individual - the body, the relationships and the reflective ability.

 

“One reason why human selves must be reflective is precisely because they are simultaneously corporeal and relational. Since they are both they can never be wholly one or the other; they must take a certain distance from each, which is the capacity that reflectivity brings” pg 17, 2005

 

Portraits through the ages have reflected this pre-occupation.

 

Plato and neo-Platonists saw the essential defining element of the individual as that part of us they believed survived earthly life - the 'soul'; and the corporeal and social together with that soul made up a cosmic integrated whole: an idea that would be taken up by later Christians. Descarte later separated the reflective from the body and social with his famous sentence “I think therefore I am” Philosophers and artists since have been speculating on the proportions of these three elements that make up a complete picture of an individual with Nietzsche and Heidegger recasting and renaming the elements to suit their ideas, to appropriate their powers under other designations. The postmodernists such as Foucault, Derrida and Barthes again recast the elements essentially claiming that the very reflective powers that human individuals consider offer them free agency are actually constructed by the very society and culture that restricts them. Our reflective ability does not lead to a freedom of thought and self-definition, rather we as human individuals are largely and determinably relational with little freedom. Foucault states ”What was formally a visible fortress of order has now become the castle of our conscience” (“Madness and Civilisation”, trans, Richard Howard New York, 1965, pg 21) Derrida and Barthes carries this focus on the ability of society and its language in particular, to control our thinking and creation, into his essay “The Death of the Author”. He states “The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from innumerable centres of culture” (pg 147, 1977) He could just as easily have stated “The portrait is a tissue of quotations…”, as is the subject of the portrait.

 

Whatever tissue of quotations we choose to inhabit, whether it be an idea of self and the artist as largely determined by thought, society or biology, artists have sought to illustrate the physical characteristics of the face and body in some form; many have included within the limitations of the medium, an illustration of the relationship of subject to their family, their cultural and social interactions, their shared connections, values, language, idioms - in other words, what our lived world allows us to be and what we choose within those strictures; and finally our reflective ability – our capacity to stand apart from ourselves to observe our bodies, our relationships and a deeper sense of active consciousness seeking answers to the questions of who we are or are not.