Ego: The Strange and Wonderful World of Self-Portraits, BBC Four | reviews, news & interviews
Ego: The Strange and Wonderful World of Self-Portraits, BBC Four
Ego: The Strange and Wonderful World of Self-Portraits, BBC Four
A persuasive take on the unique art of an often neglected and dismissed genre
Friday, 05 November 2010
Laura Cumming presents 'an intelligent, probing and charming visual essay on a unique genre'
Albrecht Dürer painted himself as Jesus (pictured below). Luckily, he was blessed with the looks, the hair and the initials – echoing the geometry of his golden locks the A straddles the D in his inscribed paintings. And when this German messiah of painting died, his beguiling 1500 self-portrait – one of the most hypnotic ever painted in the history of Western art – was carried through the streets of Nuremburg, his birthplace: celebrated during his life, upon his death Dürer became a cult. A lock of that famous hair is kept at the Vienna Academy.
Albrecht Dürer painted himself as Jesus (pictured below). Luckily, he was blessed with the looks, the hair and the initials – echoing the geometry of his golden locks the A straddles the D in his inscribed paintings. And when this German messiah of painting died, his beguiling 1500 self-portrait – one of the most hypnotic ever painted in the history of Western art – was carried through the streets of Nuremburg, his birthplace: celebrated during his life, upon his death Dürer became a cult. A lock of that famous hair is kept at the Vienna Academy.
The self-portrait is quite unlike any other form of art, for it reveals the most intimate truths
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