IMPACT COMMUNICATION
AND INNOVATION
AND INNOVATION
Millennials—those born between 1980 and the early 1990s—have long been a major media focus and the target audience for various advertising campaigns due to how this generation expressed itself upon reaching adulthood and, consequently, entering the workforce. While certain behaviors and disruptions were viewed as positive and innovative, certain habits and demands also became targets of criticism or even ridicule. One of these is how this generation behaves on social media and uses digital technology today. But the big question is: are Millennials truly responsible for this type of behavior, or is it just a continuation of a habit that has been nurtured for centuries and amplified by technological innovation?
This is the focus of the article by Susan Sims on the relationship between today's selfie culture and 18th-century royal self-portraits. Back then, European royal families made a habit of hiring artists to paint their portraits to immortalize themselves through art. Today, however, with new technologies capable of generating images—from analog to digital photography—we have experienced a cheapening and popularization of the tool. Such a shift has made creating portraits (and self-portraits) a common and frequent occurrence, which inevitably leads us to reflect on whether we live in an egocentric and superficial era, since, just as it happened with portrait paintings, we now edit our imperfections—no longer with oil paint brushstrokes, but with apps like FaceTune. In the words of Sims: “Like the new pastel-toned filters on Instagram, [English artist] Joshua Reynolds and many other artists used their brushstrokes to cover up the harsh reality of imperfect skin, messy hair, and [our] mortality.”
With the falling cost of mirrors, artists began using them as a training tool to create self-portraits—which were much cheaper and more accessible than hiring models. But self-portraits were not considered works of art at the time, despite serving as much more than simple training: they were a chance for artists to also achieve their own immortality in image and conduct a study of their identity, something that was gaining relevance during the Renaissance in Europe, a time when humanism was flourishing and the idea that the more a person knew themselves, the closer they would be to finding God.
Therefore, it is not surprising to find self-portraits of artists who depicted themselves with the appearance of Christ. This is the case with Albrecht Dürer, for example, who also began using his own face for his commissioned paintings of Jesus. But this habit was not reserved for potential egocentrism: Dürer was one of the first artists to reinforce the role of this class as supreme creators, thus anticipating the movement of the artist's emancipation as someone capable of materializing their creativity independently rather than being subjugated to commissions from royalty and the Church. As an offshoot of this effort for change, artists also began to include themselves in commissioned portraits: whether as a reflection in a mirror, as in the famous painting The Arnolfini Portrait (1434) by Jan van Eyck, or as a character, as in the iconic painting Las Meninas (1656) by Velázquez.
Women painters, though few, also resisted and did their best to practice their art through self-portraits, as they rarely had access to the great art circles except as models—in fact, until the 20th century, women were forbidden from observing nude models. It was at this turning point that Frida Kahlo, more for health reasons than political or social imposition, began creating self-portraits as a way to cope with her own loneliness and the confinement imposed by her accidents and illnesses. The difference is that while Renaissance portraits edited beauty into their subjects, Kahlo preferred to represent herself in a raw and faithful manner: with her unibrow and visible mustache. According to Sims, Frida Kahlo even stated that she painted many self-portraits precisely because she felt very lonely. And the question remains: what would Facebook and Instagram users say to justify the multiplication of selfie posts?
With the arrival of Kodak in 1900, more people could produce portraits of themselves and others in a more accessible way, breaking the privilege and exclusivity of the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Although the technology did not become fully democratic, photography still caused a shift in both access and the technical reproducibility of the portrait format. That is, while paintings took months to complete, photographs became instantaneous with the arrival of the Polaroid and its cameras, which cost $180 during the 1970s.
Sims mentions singer Stevie Nicks as an example of an artist who decided to learn more about photography by taking portraits of herself using a Polaroid, thus better understanding both posing and composition and lighting. Cindy Sherman also became an icon and reference for self-portraiture in photography, reviving the exploration of the artist's identity by transforming into different characters with every click. And with the arrival of cell phones and smartphones, access to photography expanded even further and added a new layer to the controversy of artistic creation and image production: that is, while portraits required a lot of technique and learning to be executed, digital photography only requires that we have the device and press a button. From this, influencers and selfie-centric celebrities are born, which Sims concludes is an epitome of what the selfie phenomenon has become or, in reality, has always been: marketing.
“Royalty used their portraits to sell themselves, Artemisia Gentileschi used them to demonstrate her refined education, and Rembrandt used them to improve his skills.
Even so, it is less about self-criticism and more about self-aggrandizement these days. Just like children playing on a playground, it is more about 'look at me,' regardless of whether that attention is earned or not.”
Although the blame for this selfie habit has been reserved for Millennials, it is, in fact, a much older practice rooted in human behavior. Something that actually opens the door to deeper reflections on the symbolism of human representation in imagery, from cave paintings and Paleolithic human sculptures to the way “the common man or woman can feel equal to the Bourbons or Lady Gaga—even if superficially—without actually having any importance.” As paintings and sculptures were a time-consuming, elaborate, and expensive process reserved only for the nobility, this production of images became a synonym for importance and status, which is broken by the simplification of technique in electronic devices, so that anyone can be a subject in a portrait and the logic of importance and relevance dissolves into access to technology—cheaper, yet still a watershed moment.
So, as Sims points out, “in fact, we have more in common with the kings and queens of past centuries than we imagine”; we have just created a new digital kingdom in which our technical images create immortality and relevance in the new symbolic world of social media.
