November 11, 2006
Rembrandt, Warhol and…YouTube?
The modern portrait, which Jan van Eyck’s self-portrait embodies, was born out of the reciprocal tension between the established nobility and those rising to the middle-classes.
Whoever managed to climb the social ladder automatically won the right, so to speak, to have their own portrait painted, which in earlier times had been the preserve of the saints. Using a few examples, I would now like to show how those classes which were climbing the social ladder at that time used the portrait to give visibility to their claim to power and status, how the painted portrait lost this function following the invention of photography and how the portrait, as a result of the opening up of the media to anyone wanting to get themselves seen, has been superseded by other forms of expression.
