Self Portrait Quotes

• Self-portraits are a way of revealing something about oneself.

  Eric Kandel

  Self, Portraits, Revealing Something

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.

  Frida Kahlo

  Love, Art, Happy Friday

  Hayden Herrera, Frida Kahlo (1992). “Frida Kahlo”, Rizzoli International Publications

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• The tool of every self-portrait is the mirror. You see yourself in it. Turn it the other way, and you see the world .

  Agnes Varda

  Mirrors, Self, Portraits

  Interview with Liza Bear, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 22, 2009.

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• Everything is a self-portrait.
  Everything is a diary.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Self, Portraits, Diaries

  "Diary". Book by Chuck Palahniuk, www.litro.co.uk. 2003.

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• The self-portrait is an act of objectifying the self and in that regard is a unique form of portraiture.

  Burton Silverman

  Unique, Self, Portraits

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• Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Pain, Book

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.7, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• I do not care about my own appearance, but I would hope that people could see into my soul, and that is presented better in these photographs than in others. (On his self-portraits)

  August Strindberg

  Self, People, Soul

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• Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

  Samuel Butler

  Inspirational, Motivational, Music

  Samuel Butler (2016). “The Way of All Flesh”, p.57, Samuel Butler

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• Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Success

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• When I did my self-portrait, I left all the pimples out because you always should. Pimples are a temporary condition and they don't have anything to do with what you really look like. Always omit the blemishes-they're not part of the good picture you want.

  Andy Warhol

  Self, Pimples, Portraits

  Andy Warhol (2014). “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again”, p.75, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I loathe my own face, and I've done self-portraits because I've had nobody else to do.

  Francis Bacon

  Self, Portraits, Portraiture

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• One is never satisfied with the portrait of a person that one knows.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Portraits, Portraiture, Satisfied

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• Seeing that I am so busily occupied with myself just now, I want to try to paint my self-portrait in writing.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Writing, Self, Trying

  Vincent van Gogh (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)”, p.2764, Delphi Classics

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• There is no self-portrait of me.

  Gustav Klimt

  Self, Portraits, Portraiture

  Gustav Klimt, Ankriktip, Abelia Serotina (2016). “Gustav Klimt Artworks”, p.46, Book and Magazine

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• An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows.

  W. H. Auden

  Men, Self, Ego

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• Self-deceit is a most damaging trait. The remedy, for an artist, is to paint a self-portrait!

  Scott Kahn

  Artist, Self, Deception

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• Everyone thinks these are self-portraits but they aren't meant to be. I just use myself as a model because I know I can push myself to extremes, make each shot as ugly or goofy or silly as possible.

  Cindy Sherman

  Silly, Thinking, Self

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• I use the iPhone now for information. But with selfies, I don't know what those people are doing. It's like they believe what they see is real, even with the [filters]. And God bless them! But to me, it's not a self-portrait, it's a reality project.

  Alex Katz

  Real, Believe, Self

  Source: www.elle.com

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• None of us is born with the right face. It’s a tough job being a portrait photographer.

  Imogen Cunningham

  Jobs, Portraits, Faces

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• When I look in the mirror, I am slightly reminded of self-portraits by Durer and by Rembrandt, because they both show a degree of introspection. I see some element of disappointment; I see a sense of humour, but also something that is faintly ridiculous; and I see somebody who is frightened of being found out and thought lightweight.

  Robert Winston

  Disappointment, Mirrors, Self

  "What I See in the Mirror: Robert Winston". www.theguardian.com. April 13, 2012.

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• It says in the Bible, in plain words, that God made a self-portrait. He created man in His own image - man and woman - for God is Love.Why should we start thinking of a god up in the clouds with wings, if He dwells within us in the spirit of Love?!

  Thor Heyerdahl

  Men, Thinking, Clouds

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• your handwriting. the way you walk. which china pattern you choose. it's all giving you away. everything you do shows your hand. everything is a self portrait. everything is a diary.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Self, Hands, Giving

  "Diary". Book by Chuck Palahniuk, August 26, 2003.

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• My work has been about making a record of my life that no one can revise. I photograph myself in times of trouble or change in order to find the ground to stand on in the change. I was coming out of a melancholic phase. This was taken when I was traveling extensively, on the road from hotel to hotel. You get displaced, and then taking self-portraits becomes a way of hanging on to yourself.

  Nan Goldin

  Taken, Self, Order

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• I am living a new and exalted life of late. It steeps me in a sacred rapture to see a portrait develop and take soul under my hand. First, I throw off a study - just a mere study, a few apparently random lines - and to look at it you would hardly ever suspect who it was going to be; even I cannot tell, myself.

  Mark Twain

  Hands, Soul, Portraits

  Mark Twain (1933). “Mark Twain's works”

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• Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

  John Singer Sargent

  Funny, Art, Truth

  Quoted in Evan Esar, A Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (1949)

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