Fourteen artists and picture book illustrators present self-portraits and brief descriptions that explore their varied ethnic origins, their work, and their feelings about themselves.

"Self Portraits" by Dazai Osamu is a collection of short stories, essays, and personal reflections that offer insight into the mind and struggles of the author. These pieces blend fiction and autobiography, reflecting Dazai’s inner conflicts, including his lifelong battle with depression, addiction, and a sense of alienation. The stories in this collection often present characters that mirror Dazai himself—outsiders grappling with societal expectations, guilt, and shame. Themes of human imperfection, self-destruction, and existential despair are common throughout. Dazai's writing style is deeply introspective, marked by irony and dark humor, as he explores the contradictions of the human spirit. "Self Portraits" provides a raw and intimate look into the author’s life, making it an essential read for those interested in understanding Dazai’s psyche and the experiences that shaped his literary voice. The collection complements his other major works, such as No Longer Human and The Setting Sun, by revealing more personal aspects of his worldview.

Inspired by the stories the author read to his possibly illiterate Sicilian grandmother as a child, these nested narratives are told by couples traveling through hallucinatory, romantic landscapes. As the traveler in "Self Portrait with Sicily" rides a train through the Bronx, boundaries between worlds, geography, and generations blur, transporting him through Sicily and the rural landscape of his Nonna. On a honeymoon in Spain, the narrator of "Self Portrait with Bullfight" decides that "forbearance" is the key to a lasting marriage and proceeds to try the patience of his new bride with a long-winded tale of the "frisson of rivalry" between two youths vying for the attentions of a Gypsy woman. In "Self Portrait with Cheese," an allegory about a family of bears that flees the circus only to languish, bored, in their freedom, offers a convoluted fable about the needs of artists. Tuten's (The Green Hour) polished stories of beauty, longing, and loss are relatable, yet strange enough that they constantly pique--Publisher's Weekly.

In contemporary societies privatization has long ceased to be just an economic concept; rather, it must increasingly be made to refer to the ongoing shrinking of the public space under the impact of the representation of individual lives and images, which cuts across all discourses, genres and media to become one of the primary means of production of culture. This volume is intended to cover such an historical, social and intellectual ground, where self-representation comes to the fore. Targeting mostly an academic readership but certainly also of interest to the general educated public, it collects a wide range of essays dealing with diverse modes of life writing and portraying from a variety of perspectives and focusing on different historical periods and media. It thus offers itself as a major contribution to a better understanding of the world we live in: its past legacy and present configuration.ContentsIntroduction: Signposts of the Self in Modernity Part I. The Representational Dilemma Christopher PRENDERGAST: The Self as a Work of Art: Proust's ScepticismPaulo DE MEDEIROS: (Re-)Constructing, (Re-)Membering Postcolonial Selves Aleksandra PODSIADLIK: `Doing Identity? in Fiction: Identity Construction as a Dialogue between Individuals and Cultural Narratives Clara ROWLAND: Self-Representation and Temporality: `Parabasis? in Guimar'es Rosa's Grande Sert'o: Veredas Daniel ROVERS: New Man: Marie Kessels? Inner Portrait of a Writing Self Gaston FRANSSEN: Good Intentions, Ethical Commitment, and Impersonal Poetry:The Work of Gerrit Kouwenaar Jan RUPP: `For-Getting? Plural Selves: Narrative and Identity in Caryl Phillips's A Distant Shore Lars BERNAERTS: The Straitjacket of Normality. The Interaction with the Psychiatrist in Maurits Dekker's Waarom ik niet krankzinnig benLars DALUM GRANILD: The Self's Struggle for Recognition: August Strindberg and the Other Marinela FREITAS: Unshaded Shadows: Performances of Gender in Emily Dickinson and Luiza Neto Jorge Part II. Signalling Identity Peter BROOKS: The Identity Paradigm Roland GREENE: The Global I Davy VAN OERS: Staining the Past with Ink in Lorenzo Da Ponte's Memorie (1830): The Fallacies of Autobiographical `Writing? Eli PARK SORENSEN: Between Autobiography and Fiction: Narrating the Self in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Vivir para contarla Mirjam TRUWANT: The Passion of Lena Christ: From Fictionalized Autobiography to Biographical Novel Ricardo GIL SOEIRO: Dreams in the Mirror: George Steiner by George Steiner Part III. Images of the Self Across the Arts Timothy MATHEWS: Reading W. G. Sebald with Alberto Giacometti Paula MOR?O: The Impossible Self-Portrait Anna Viola SBORGI: Between Literature and the Visual Arts: Portraits of the Self in William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, and Fernando Pessoa Jakob STOUGAARD-NIELSEN: Photography and Shadow-Writing: Henry James's Revisions of the Self in the New York Edition Patrick VAN ROSSEM: Consumed by the Audience. Inhibition, Fear, and Anxiety in the Oeuvre of Bruce Nauman Anke BROUWERS: There Was Something about Mary: Mary Pickford's Perfect `Little American? Verena-Susanna NUNGESSER: Paint it Red: Death Artistry as a Portrait of the Self

Featuring artwork from a wide range of contributors, this resource explores creative self-portraits through fun and easy exercises and essays that instruct and inspire artists working in all media. Examples of collage, fiber arts, and mixed-media artwork offer visual inspiration while essays throughout the book act as a guide to personal and artistic self-discovery. Step-by-step techniques and creative prompts are used to direct artists through different approaches to creating self-portraits while exercises utilizing collage, drawing, photography, and stitching will jump-start the creative process and get ideas flowing on paper and fabric, encouraging artists to express themselves in new ways.

A dazzlingly original and ambitious book on the history of female self-portraiture by one of today's most well-respected art critics. Her story weaves in and out of time and place. She's Frida Kahlo, Loïs Mailou Jones and Amrita Sher-Gil en route to Mexico City, Paris or Bombay. She's Suzanne Valadon and Gwen John, craving city lights, the sea and solitude; she's Artemisia Gentileschi striding through the streets of Naples and Paula Modersohn-Becker in Worpswede. She's haunting museums in her paint-stained dress, scrutinising how El Greco or Titian or Van Dyck or Cézanne solved the problems that she too is facing. She's railing against her corsets, her chaperones, her husband and her brothers; she's hammering on doors, dreaming in her bedroom, working day and night in her studio. Despite the immense hurdles that have been placed in her way, she sits at her easel, picks up a mirror and paints a self-portrait because, as a subject, she is always available. Until the twentieth century, art history was, in the main, written by white men who tended to write about other white men. The idea that women in the West have always made art was rarely cited as a possibility. Yet they have - and, of course, continue to do so - often against tremendous odds, from laws and religion to the pressures of family and public disapproval. In The Mirror and the Palette, Jennifer Higgie introduces us to a cross-section of women artists who embody the fact that there is more than one way to understand our planet, more than one way to live in it and more than one way to make art about it. Spanning 500 years, biography and cultural history intertwine in a narrative packed with tales of rebellion, adventure, revolution, travel and tragedy enacted by women who turned their back on convention and lived lives of great resilience, creativity and bravery.

The first chronicle of the whole story of female self portraiture through the centuries—a key work in the study of women’s art For centuries, women’s self-portraiture was a highly overlooked genre. Beginning with the self-portraits of nuns in medieval illuminated manuscripts, Seeing Ourselves finally gives this richly diverse range of artists and portraits, spanning centuries, the critical analysis they deserve. In sixteenth-century Italy, Sofonisba Anguissola paints one of the longest series of self-portraits, from adolescence to old age. In seventeenth-century Holland, Judith Leyster shows herself at the easel as a relaxed, self-assured professional. In the eighteenth century, from Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun to Angelica Kauffman, artists express both passion for their craft and the idea of femininity; and the nineteenth century sees the art schools open their doors to women and a new and resonant self-confidence for a host of talented female artists, such as Berthe Morisot. The modern period demolishes taboos: Alice Neel painting herself nude at eighty years old, Frida Kahlo rendering physical pain on the canvas, Cindy Sherman exploring identity, and Marlene Dumas dispensing with all boundaries. Frances Borzello’s spirited text, now fully revised, and the intensity of the accompanying self-portraits are set off to full advantage in this new edition, now in reading-book format.