The Art History of the Selfie | The Art Assignment | PBS Digital Studios
Вставка
- Опубліковано 1 чер 2016
- Pre-order our book YOU ARE AN ARTIST (which includes new assignments!) here: bit.ly/2kplj2h Artists have been taking selfies since the dawn of photography. Cameras allowed people to capture their own image in a way that had never been possible in all of human history, and today most of us carry these magical devices in our pockets, taking self portraits everywhere we go.
Don't forget to subscribe for new episodes of The Art Assignment every Thursday!
---
Follow us elsewhere for the full Art Assignment experience!
Tumblr: theartassignment.com
Response Tumblr: all.theartassignment.com
Twitter: / artassignment
Instagram: / theartassignment
Facebook: / theartassignment
and don't forget Reddit!: / theartassignment
Oh I definitely think that photo of the guy with that shark is art.
How is that swimmer with a shark not art? That's like the most artistic selfie ever
I recently saw a bunch of works by Nan Goldin, including the Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and I really liked this quote by her: "There is a popular notion that the photographer is by nature a voyeur, the last one invited to the party. But I'm not crashing; this is my party. This is my family, my history."
While I have kind of fallen out of touch with the art assignments, these type of The Art Assignment videos I deeply enjoy! Thank you so much for this great perspective on art in my otherwise highly technical live and non-art appreciative environment!
I think the largest difference between the photos you've shown and the modern selfie is the amount of thought that went into their creation. Those artists put considerable thought into taking a single photo, as opposed to modern selfies where one can mindlessly snap 100 photos in a minuet.
You see I'm not sure if I agree with you. I think people put A LOT of consideration and thought into selfies. Not all of them, of course, but the more I probed this question, the less distinction I found between selfies and photographic self portraits of yore. There were certainly plenty of less thoughtful self portraits snapped in the pre-digital age, but we just don't have as much access to them.
Hey, sometimes it takes me like half an hour, trying a bunch of lighting conditions, backdrops, and taking a hundred shots to get a flattering look of my face. Selfies are not easy! Hehe :P
HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYLLLLLLLL YEAAAHHH
this is so on point, I hate when people disregard how pretentious it is to try and dictate who gets to use technology to make art and who gets validation in human documentation. We all (or at least many of us) want to see ourselves and be seen in some way, and we shouldn’t tell others they can’t be artists just bc they’re not traditionally trained or whatever.
That's a brilliant video!!! I found myself googling every single one of the photographers to see what they did.... I had no interest in art before but this series of video opened my mind!!! Thank you so much for doing such an amazing job!!.❤❤❤
Very well written and well spoken! I like the nuanced approach you take in every video. :)
Aww, shucks. Thanks.
i dont understand how this channel doesnt have much views! its my fav art channel
The opening sequence in the TV show selfie is worth a watch. It shows that selfie's have been around for awhile now.
I'm the kind of person that forgets photography as been around for quite a while. For some reason I see it has a new thing every time. Can't explain.
The shark selfie is brilliant!
Thank you for providing several examples of photographic self-portraits and selfies as well as explicitly acknowledging the limitations of this short video as being a brief introduction to Western examples of these types of images. I loved seeing how these images could be as simple as technical experimentation or as complex as intersectionality.
I used to hate selfies but i read a time lightbox article that convinced me otherwise. Can't seem to find it, it went along the lines of selfies being this hypercommunication of saying quickly where you are , how you are feeling, and being more part of -documenting a concert you just watched or who you are with. It's a real democratization of taking and distribution of image, and it's not always necessarily aesthetic, but important and helpful anyway for photography-image as language as a whole. Loved the barrage of artistic precedents!! Super creative and intimate :0 :)
PBS Ideal Channel made a brilliant video about selfie hate (ua-cam.com/video/2j7SIxMGj5Q/v-deo.html) that covers many of those topics. And glad you enjoyed! Thanks for watching thoughtfully!
How interesting. I think this was a thoughtful and wide, if not too brief, exploration in an art form that anyone can do.
This is one of my favorite UA-cam channels
Every photo class I have ever taken had one assignment for a self-portrait. These days cameras and phones are often designed with the selfie in mind. But fulfilling an assignment for a self-portrait requires (one would hope) more thought than just pointing the camera at yourself.
Thanks for this! I've been shooting selfies for decades. I actually gave away 100 selfie sticks to UA-camrs at Vidcon 2013, and told the guy who invented a certain one that he should get a booth. I think he sold about 3,000. I'm the Johnny Appleseed of Selfie sticks, though they weren't called that until 2014.
Man, I love this series.
Excellent video.
This is beautiful and inspiring. I do a lot of self-portraits for a living and this drives me to improve.
This is one of my favorite episodes yet!!
wow this video gave me chills. so great!
It isn't always easy to find people willing to pose. Selfies will always be popular because they are practical. No one else is always with one besides one's self.
Yes indeed! Who's a better sitter than oneself? You don't complain, you don't have to worry about who you come off in the end, you can take your time. Strong agree.
Very intriguing and interesting way to explain the history behind such a plain and shallow form of photography
Life sure is Strange, isn't it?
drggghgreddffffgggghhhhhjjjkjjjkklkkllll assddffr '.
Yass!
You're forever stuck in the retro zone, sad face
Thank you for this. I've done self-portraiture for the majority of my photographic work, and it's difficult to explain to people that it isn't "just a selfie". It sometimes gets a little disheartening hearing that I'm just another narcissistic millennial hellbent on taking selfies.
Yep love the note at the end of the video to keep those selfies tasteful. Lord knows we all have our process work of billions of untasteful ones.
This was such a great video.
I really enjoyed this and I understand your focus on the past century/photographic selfies, but I have been thinking a lot about the nature of self-portraits from even earlier, especially in relation to female artists trying to compete in a male-dominated art world in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. So I was hoping you would be tracing throughout a deeper history of art. A great discussion here all the same!
Great video. I admire your research.
Who says doing something "well" is the only way of doing something that makes it worthwhile, or worth in general? There is plenty of art I really respect that plays with the societal construction of skill and worth. I love selfies that are lazy, badly lit, blurry, dirty, and otherwise "not good" in addition to all the other types of selfies because a selfie is just like a portrait taken by someone else but instead of a being both a representation of the subject and the photographer, the photographer comes into being both behind and in front of the camera. There is a unique glimpse into the soul and life of the creators of selfies and I find them deeply emotional and poignant and intimate. As an actor, my art has to do with representing oneself for others, curating an image for someone else to see and that is a terrifying moment of departure, art-wise. The vulnerability of a selfie is something that I don't think a lot of people have a grasp on because they are so common. However, I would suggest that selfies are very revealing, in ways that people who take selfies don't quite even realize themselves. I could gaze at selfies, "good" and "bad", all day.
That is a great point. There is something glorious and enjoyable about the ill-considered selfie. Researching this video I went down a wormhole of selfie observation, and it made me feel the flawed frailty of humanity in a disturbing but fascinating way.
+The Art Assignment I think all photography is a wretched, violent act, but with selfies, it's easier to see just how terribly unfair and sad it is to render a moment in the life of the universe in bizarre, eternally frozen 2-D. I also think people don't like selfies for a lot of the same reason they don't like looking in the mirror in public: it's hard to confront your own existence visually because you realize how obvious and futile many of the things we do are. I think the salve isn't to ignore and condemn the selfie, but to fall in love with the idea that being a human and doing stupid, pointless, human things is super fun and totally worthwhile.
Berenice Abbot had the first snap hat filter Lol
this notification interrupted me taking selfies because I got a new haircut and I was trying out fringe styles
I took a picture of 'the hank' in and said "I want it like this" and it went excellently
Hahaha. Perfect.
I love this😍
On the theme of selfies and art I thought of Noah Kalina's APicture of Himself Everyday, undoubtedly a clever and moving way of using selfies to narrate the passage of time.
Great, now I have a need to take my own photo. I was hoping for an assignment with this one, but it is none the less a great episode.
I thought about giving out an assignment, but really there is no need. We selfie regardless! And if you want to selfie creatively, try out this assignment: ua-cam.com/video/lmNKc4-zLOA/v-deo.html.
You also talked about the astounding quality of the technology we hold in our pockets - have you considered making a video discussing how this has affected the nature and definition of art? I would be really interested to hear your take!
Hey there! Would you ever consider doing a case for Banksy? My love for art is growing more and more with The Art Assignment and I think it would be a really interesting video to watch :)
Graciela Iturbide also shot a few good ones! Wish she was included but I love this video :')
interesting. I'm now in the pursuit of capturing artistic selfies
I am running out of art assignment videos to watch.. 😭 are there any other similar astute channels that are as good on UA-cam?
I love selfies but I don't send them out into the universe they're just for me
I'll tell you the exact motivation for most selfies, ' Aaayooo. Imma be lookin liit af. Post this on the gran and get a hundred likes. Ayyyeee.'
Anastasia (yes, that Anastasia) took this selfie in 1914
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchess_Anastasia_Nikolaevna_of_Russia#/media/File:Grand_Duchess_Anastasia_Nikolaevna_self_photographic_portrait.jpg
Interesting that you chose not to include any of the Cindy Sherman photos where she's in black face.
I'm interested in art but an idiot. Does anyone have a recommendations for other places to go to become less of an idiot? Thanks
My advice would be to unselfconsciously walk into every art gallery you go past and spend a few minutes just looking at everything. You don't have to talk to anyone, but you can ask questions if you want to. Pick up any fliers or information that may be there about the work in the show, then look up that information later and learn at your own pace.
Google Khan Academy for their art history articles. They give a good art history survey. It's a lot to read, but each article is reasonably brief, and there are lots of videos too. And, it's meant for middle-high school students so it's fairly easy to grasp.
Your teacher sent you here, didn't they?
my teacher just sent us here and told us to take selfies. so lazy
Wow he's so handsome at 1:06
This only has 4k views but it's trending :/
who's here coz their photog teacher made them watch this
Great until the nudity! (I don't care, but I am looking for online assignments for high school art students and cannot have nudity in them! ugh!)
It is the job of a licensed mental health professional to say if someone is a narcissist.
Did you have to include nude pictures at 2:21..? And I'm sorry, but selfies ain't forms of art, in my opinion. Real photographs are though.
Um, 1863? More like 1840s. Why would you say 1863?! I've been enjoying your channel, but it's really disappointing that you seem to be treating the history of clothing as if it's so unimportant that you can just make up totally inaccurate dates for fashion because it's not even worth bothering to look up.
Also, wow, you really need to consider including some trigger warnings. I really wasn't expecting blood and self-harm, and now I might throw up, but I guess this is one way for you to try to be edgy? It's just really disappointing.
Before even watching, I'm posting my gut reaction to this title. A selfie is not art for the same reason your driver's license photo isn't art. You're torturing the term. I'll watch this later today, after I paint.
So, having watched the video, I enjoyed it, but I still don't like the title. This isn't an art history of the selfie, it's an art history of photographic self portraiture, and a selfie is not synonymous with a self portrait. Also, I'm not sure selfies are really hated. At least, as a school teacher, my students still make them all the time. Even my adult friends are into it. Is a selfie potentially art? Depends on how you define both art and a selfie. I would say no, based on the common way selfies are made - quickly and thoughtlessly. You hold the camera or smart phone facing towards you. You may or may not even see what you're doing. And the photo is often blurry, and may or may not capture all the people and things you wanted. It could be a tourist photo or a family/friends photo, but it doesn't satisfy all my criteria for art, not even when WeiWei does it. It may be valid protest, but protest isn't automatically art.
@@TASmith10 Also...check 6:39
@@TASmith10bad art is still art. Badly made art is still art
@@joedav67 If the only question is skill, then there will always be a gray area between creative work that is bad art, and that which cannot in good conscious be called art whatsoever. Of course, skill is not the only factor at play. I wrote a lesson on this, you can view here: visualartk-12.blogspot.com/2022/08/4-different-ways-to-define-art.html
How is that swimmer with a shark not art? That's like the most artistic selfie ever