Why Do Artists Make Self-Portraits?

Why do artists make self-portraits? Why would someone take the time to create a work of art that merely resembles themselves? To answer this, one must understand the famous artists of the past, both visual and literary. When analyzing a self-portrait, one notices that it often goes beyond the visual characteristics of the author. Minute details that can be easily overlooked frequently delve into the artist’s personality and can sometimes make the viewer look deeper into themselves. To answer the why of self-portraiture, one must understand the how. By comparing the literary elements of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, to the artistic techniques utilized by legendary artists in their self-portraits, one learns the reason of why someone would create a portrait of themselves. When making a self-portrait, it takes much more than simply looking in the mirror and copying what one sees either in text or through art. To make a self-portrait, the artist must look into themselves and select their most important qualities that they want to show to the world. Joyce’s original version of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, known as Stephen Hero, was comprised of over nine hundred pages and his siblings were major characters. In the revision that made it his portrait, he decided to get rid of a few hundred of those pages and to focus exclusively on the psychological growth of his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus. While it must have been difficult for Joyce to completely take out a majority of his work from the published product, the more precise version gave readers a true sense of Joyce and what moments in his life affected his process of growth from a young poet to an accomplished writer. The selective process is one of the most important elements of self-portraiture. Another important aspect of self-portraits is the use of color; in literary portraits, the use of diction. The best way to describe the importance of the two was explained by