Last week, this rare self-portrait by Amrita Sher-Gil sold for $2.92 million in an auction by Sotheby’s – a new record for an Indian woman artist.
At the same auction a Rabindranath Tagore untitled self-portrait was sold for $225,000.
Self-portraits, of course, have been around forever. But never have they been more ubiquitous.
From pre-history, when man drew himself in hunts, to the Portrait of a Man in a Turban painted by Jan van Eyck in 1433 – which is the earliest known surviving self-portrait – humans have always tried to project their identity in positive and edifying ways.
But it was only during the late Renaissance, with its increasing prosperity and interest in the individual as a subject, did the self-portrait , or Selfie, really discover ‘it-self’.
Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo – and many of the greats painted Selfies. Rembrandt did at least 40 – which tells you a lot about the man.
Back in those bad old days, you had to have great talent and work really hard to be able to project your version of your Self to the world.
3 centuries later, technology has changed all that.
Today we are all Masters of our Selves. Or at least the Masters of our Selfies.
Everybody, from the Pope to the plumber, is sharing selfies. And it’s not hard to explain why.
One, we need it. The selfie is driven by a basic elemental need for validation, acceptance and love. It is intrinsic not just to all humans – but dogs and cats and the higher primates as well.
Two, it’s dead easy to execute – unlike for our painterly friends of the past.
Three, it’s free!
Last, and most important, the selfie is one of the rare cases of self-definition that we can control.
Unlike a fumbling job interview, an awkward first date, a drunken rant, or any of the small and shameful ways in which we negotiate our self every day, we are in full control of our selfie.
We choose the light, the setting, the expression, the filter. We are allowed a limitless number of attempts to make the face that will meet the faces that we choose to meet. Exactly like advertising.
So what’s the problem?
Nothing really. Except, all of us players in this House of Cards, know it’s a carefully crafted contrivance.
The artist and the audience – all of us going ‘Like’ and ‘Hot’– are all complicit in a vast conspiracy of self-deception – often even without self-knowledge.
A selfie, actually, has absolutely nothing to with our real self – which is most likely a cluster-fuck of anxiety, dread, boredom, panic and stress, and which, if we were to make an accurate representation of, would possibly resemble Edvard Munch’s famous Scream.
But there is no Shame in a Selfie. Go ahead and shoot yourself right now.
What’s one more lie in the Ocean of Lies in which we all lie?
(Sanjay Ray Chaudhuri – a.k.a RayC – is a self-proclaimed reader, writer, thinker and drinker.)
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