Borzello, F. (2016) 'Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self Portraits'.

Table of Contents
Introduction
The presentation of self

1. The Sixteenth Century
In the beginning

2. The Seventeenth Century
A new self-confidence

3. The Eighteenth Century
Professionals and amatures

4. The Nineteenth Century
The opening door

5. The Twentieth Century
Breaking taboos

6. Into the Future
The feminist impact

Conclusion
Drawing breath

Frances Borzello's Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self Portraits could not have come at a better time for me. I've been thinking about what to do for assignment one for Practice of Painting and had kind of come up with idea of doing an absent self-portrait - a still-life collection of things that represent me. I have been thinking a lot about self portraiture recently - as my last general research post attests. Having re-started therapy recently, I have been thinking about the place of self and of myself in my life.

Borzello's volume is arranged by century, with each chapter dealing with themes and issues that arrise predominantly within the art of that particular century - these themes are well represented by the sub-titles of the chapter. The book is really well illustrated, with 200 images that represent a vast array of styles and media, over a period of five hundred years. The book is ambitious in that regard, but does not disapoint. The aim of the book seems to be to present a broad overview of the self-portraiture of women over a long time period, rather than to argue for a specific type of advancement though the genre of self-portraiture. In this repsect, the book is a valuble starting point for anyone - not only women - to think about the role that self-portraits play within each artistic epoch and, therefore (as Borzello comes around to in the final chapter and conclusion) within our own artistic frameworks. There is no way a female artists can undertake self-portraiture without tapping into the history of self-portraits and women's self-portraits in particular, whether or not she knows it. At the very least, (some) viewers will have this frame of reference when viewing the work (not that I want to get all Death of the Artist or anything).

I found it incredibly interesting to think about the historical framwork within which (women's) self-portraiture does sit. As an ancient historian who is interested in the way that material culture talks about people in their absense, I find the idea of representing the self in a raw and realistic way (relative to the artistic period) incredibly daunting. Ancient portraiture, while something that does exist in the archaic and classical periods, is highly styalised. The Kore (kore means 'maiden' and generally refers to unmarried girls) statues of archaic Athens, for instance, are beautiful and expressive - and some of them do represent individual girls and women who are named (either in inscriptions on them, or on the plinth on which they stood). This, for example, is a famous statue of a girl named Phrasikleia, who died unmarried and this was errected as a grave marker.

Phrasikleia Kore, National Archaeological Museum. Photo Ellie Roberts (August 2017)

In that regards, it was very useful for Borzello to really lay out the distinct history of self-portrature in a (significnatly!) more modern context than one I am familiar with.

I was surprised at the (contextual) modernity of many of the works, some of which did not seem to fit into what I think of as their 'stereotypical' period styles. This made me feel really excited and energised by the works, that women are doing innovative and wonderful things that push boundaries both by the style of their works and, probably most importantly, by the subject matter. Themselves.

The book also made me start thinking about what the purpose of my writing about the books I read is. It's difficult to step out of the 'academic' desire to review each book, but that is not what I want to achieve from these posts. I want to think about how the various things fit into the work that I am doing, not as an academic or an art historian, but as a practitioner. As a painter.

To that end, this book has inspired me to start thinking deeply about the way that I portray myself, about my desire to paint self-portraits. About tapping into some of the convetions that female artists have set down - I'm not a good musician, but the painting of self-with-piano, for example, can mean something incredibly telling for me as we have a piano at home and my husband plays. Thinking about the ways I can represent that while still playing on and with the convention set down by artists like Lavinia Fontana and Sofonisba Anguissola in the sixteenth century. Portraits with a closed piano in the background, or with my husband playing, back turned. Although this is something that I'd never considered before, reading about the way that women in the past have emphasised their competencies in a world that continually denied them agency has been incredibly thought provoking and inspiring.

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