Self-Portraits: Forms of Identity

Grade Level:

7–12

Student Level:

High School

How we see ourselves influences our perspectives, our decisions, and the daily experience of living. Artists create tangible evidence of their process of reflection through self-portraits. By observing how luminaries from Rembrandt to Picasso represent themselves, we explore a variety of artists' personal statements, historical moments, and technical approaches. Discussion includes self-perception as related to images students may create of themselves as a follow-up or precursor to the program.

Self-Portraits: Forms of Identity (1.94 MB PDF) [1]

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Program Format:

Introduce ways in which artists may choose to depict themselves in terms of the amount of information revealed or concealed.
Discuss naturalistic self-portraits by Rembrandt, Matisse, and Kollwitz.
Discuss instances of borrowed identity in which artists present themselves as someone else.
Discuss obscured identity where the individual is hidden but present in unexpected ways.
Self-portrait interactivity.

Objectives:

Students will reflect on the different roles in which they find themselves.
Students will learn of the relationships between shape and color and how they can be used to express oneself.
Students will see how other artists interpreted themselves; sometimes in many different ways and attitudes.
Students will assess the role depicted in the self-portraits of Rembrandt, Matisse, and others.
Students will choose three aspects of their own identity to use in creating three self-portrait sketches.

The Cleveland Museum of Art

Self-Portraits: Forms of Identity