Narcissism is a subjective behavior to understand other people through myself, allowing one projecting an ideal ego onto the other's status all the time. Therefore, an artist's ideal ego expressed through his or her portrait is the reflection of artis...
Narcissism is a subjective behavior to understand other people through myself, allowing one projecting an ideal ego onto the other's status all the time. Therefore, an artist's ideal ego expressed through his or her portrait is the reflection of artist's Narcissism. This article analyzes in what ways such Narcissism is produced from the artist's perception and how it is expressed on portraits.
First, the issue starts with understanding Narcissism's definition through J. Lacan's theory of 'The mirror stage', subsequently discuss portraits drawing artist's consciousness through Meta self-portrait perspective in the following chapter.
An analysis on ideal may demonstrate artist's self-consciousness attaching Narcissism's occurrence process clearly and on the basis of this analysis I analyze representatives of Narcissismical portraits, Self-portrait in a fur-collared Robe of Albrecht Durer and Frida Kahlo, The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Diego, Me and Senor Xolotl.
As a result of analysis, I found that Narcissism has difference only in degree. Narcissism is explained as light and shadow pairing with Human's desire and our alter ego veiled in our self-consciousness. Since Narcissism moves with our desire, it operates at the moment of all of our consciousness and actions. However, it is an unperceivable phantom-like existence because of its invisibility.
In this sense, the understanding of Narcissism presented in portraits have us reach deeper understanding of the artist and even that of human.