Pioneers of the Pharaohs .. How did the concept of "selfie" throughout history?

Rahamad Al-Haddad

Look for the name "Frida kahlo" and you will meet dozens of pictures and paintings of a sharp-eyed woman, with two distinctly connected eyebrows, dark black hair, colorful clothes and bright flowers indicating that she is influenced by her Mexican heritage.

Kalou is one of the most important artists to date, and is more famous than anything else by drawing her own face, as if she immortalized her record of formal and artistic development. Its brushes and oil colors that kill time, and express itself constantly changing.

Frida was not the first or the last to seek to explore the characteristics of the portrait, it is an inherent part of the art of painting and beyond photography years ago, and changed its objectives and methods of implementation until it reached its maximum ease with the availability of front cameras in mobile phones, and changed its name from "self portrait" To shorten it as "selfie", does the history of art give us an idea of ​​that development?

Pharaohs preceded
It is difficult to refer to a single image, a specific history or a particular artist and to assert that this is the first attempt to represent oneself in history, even before art became an individual practice, i.e. when it was a historical and cultural practice in ancient times, the personal image exists, and is somewhat hidden.

The artist, whether a painter or a sculptor, puts himself in his final product, whether that subjective is spiritual or resembles his personal features.This can be seen in the constant speculation that the most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, is merely a diversification of the features of its creator Leonardo da Vinci.

However, one of the first preserved portraits to date can be considered to be the ancient Egyptian sculptor Peak, the official sculptor of King Akhenaten. ) Within a framework engraved with words, both of which do not have very distinct features, or at least in the version that survived and allowed us to see, and does not facilitate the continued history after that moment.

His Holiness
In the Middle Ages, for example, the self-portrait was not an independent artistic kind, but a religious and spiritual place.

In his book "Self-Portrait: A Cultural History," James Hall examines the evolution of self-portrait. There is a belief that this is the most sacred self-portraiture. He comes from Christ himself. A linen cloth exists and some believe it is the face of Christ. Others believe it is an invention of the Middle Ages.

Under the holiness of this idea of ​​self-portrayal, some medieval artists portrayed themselves in their works, including St. Danstan. On a book he wrote on the rules of Latin painted the person of Christ and beside him a portrait of himself subjected to praying and pleading.

Portraits can be traced more clearly in the Dutch, German as well as Italian Renaissance, where the self-portrait became one of the types of art beside portraiture, landscape and silent nature. Several portraits with various materials.

In the Italian Renaissance the subjective image was not as clear, but it was common for the manufacturer to immortalize himself among the masses. Mazachio becomes one of Jesus' disciples, and Michelangelo uses his face to paint one of his giant mural figures on the roof of the Cystein Church.

Through the artistic eras after the Renaissance, self-portraits usually continued, both independently and in groups, but the true renaissance of self-portrait art can be considered in the 19th century.

Almost all 19th-century artists practiced self-portrait painting, and some even chose genre as the primary form of self-expression, such as Vincent van Gogh who painted 37 self-portraits as a record of the development of his artistic potential, in addition to recording his psychological and physical condition.

The invention of photography
An important change that can be felt at the end of the 19th century is the invention of photography, which made a huge change in the art of painting and the nature of the artist's vision of himself and the world.

A machine was able to convey reality as it was, and art became more unique and stylistic.

In photography, too, many practitioners are interested in self-portrait. The first self-portrait can be traced back to 1839, and it is attributed to Robert Connelius.

Because of the dominance of photography on the representation of reality came the art of the twentieth century from the previous, it became possible to see surreal portraits such as Frida Kalou, and can also see the difference if we follow how the famous Spanish Picasso paint himself, he began realistically until he ended to his cubist vision.

In 2013 the Oxford Dictionary formally added the word "selfie", which means the image that a person takes for himself, and because of its current ease it has meanings other than immortality.

Analysts and psychologists have always become preoccupied with linking the idea of ​​selfie with narcissism. Because of the openness of information, we are in a sea of ​​self-image and non-self-image.

Multiple perspectives on the phenomenon can be adopted, can be regarded as over-admiration, a desire for digital acceptance, or as a means of self-sharing with the world.