The latest exhibition at Edinburgh’s Scottish National Portrait Gallery looks at the history of artists creating images of themselves, from the self-portraits of Rembrandt and Warhol's snapshots to the selfies of Ai Weiwei. “Facing the World,” which runs through October 16, features an impressive lineup of artists including Marina Abramovic, Gustave Courbet, Antoine Watteau, and Joseph Beuys.Spanning six centuries, the exhibition explores the artistic experimentation with the format of self-portraiture and its various motivations — to progress the art form, to make statements about the identity of artists, or to investigate identity in general.This means that alongside famed images like an ageing Rembrandt in his “Self-Portrait, aged 51,” a topless Robert Mapplethorpe with devil horns looking into the camera, and Sarah Lucas in a chair with a fried egg on each of her breasts, there are many artworks less well-known but equally compelling.One such image is a photograph by 19th century photographer James Nasmyth, shooting the furrows on the back of his hand much like Ansel Adams would photograph mountain ridges five decades later. Also of note is German painter Hans Thoma’s “Self-Portrait with Love and Death,” 1875, a fascinating picture which, by showing the painter with death looming over his shoulder, unveils the sense of “memento mori” that is at the heart of any self-portrait.The exhibition also presents works like Samuel Van Hoogstraten’s “Trompe-l’oeil (Still Life),” 1666, a painting of the artist’s possessions that the exhibition argues is as reliable a depiction of his life as any portrait of the artist, thereby further widening the definition of images portraying the self.“Facing the World: Self-Portraits from Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei” runs through October 16 at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
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