Dec 11 2009
Me, Making Art Out of Me.
Sure, it isnt unusual to see how what an artist sees before he paints: could be flowers, a landscape, another person. But how do these artists see themselves? “The Lens And the Mirror:Self Portraits…” was an exhibition at the MET that allowed the viewer to tap into the head of the artist and see how he/she views him/herself.
It is very well known that the artistic sould is an eccentric one (to say the least). After all, it takes someone with a crazy mind to have such a vivid imagination to create something note-worthy, beautiful, to be admired by millions world-wide.
So one might think that these insane people would make a real spectacle out of how they see themselves. The way I saw it, the artist would see himself even wilder than he sees other object that he depicts. In his head goes on something too strange to comprehend, so taking that into consideration, the artist makes his outer appearance correlate with what is inside.
Wrong.
Surprisingly, the self-portraits were quite sane, understandable, normal. The artists re-creating themselves didnt put their noses were their neck belonged, and chose not to have eyes for ears. It seemed as though the painters/sculptors/photographers saw themselves as very down-to-earth, regular people, not above society because they had a talent to create art.
Is creating art a talent? Not to knock artists– especially the well known ones, but isn’t art subjective? That means that there’s in artist in all of us. And all of us can’t be special. We’re normal. Hence, the art was normal.
I agree with Samantha. Artist let us see interesting, sometimes weird, perspectives of the world. I would expect that their views of themselves to fall into this category too.
That sounds interesting, but I think it would have been more exciting if it had met all of your wild expectations.