Self-Portraits in Enigmatic Contexts

Abstract

In this study, the researcher applied a seemingly illogical impossibility of juxtaposing his own likeness on recognizable historical characters to create a sense of enigma and to awaken the sensibilities of other researchers in the realm of psychology so far as irrationality of the modern psyche and existence are concerned .He starts by borrowing portraits of recognizable personalities from European artistic sources as the basis for his argument. However, reference is made also to sculpture with regard to African societies like Egypt, Nok, Ife and Benin portraiture. The images selected by the artist for this painterly experiments have been categorized under three phases. They include;

a)       Phase one - transposing the artist‘s features onto an original historical character.

b)       Phase two - imposing the artist’s own innate style or technique onto the original image.

c)       Phase three –imitating the style of the original painting or image which inspired the artist‘s prototype.

An artist or researcher’s philosophical comment is provided to help rationalize the use of enigmatic imagery in this project by questioning and answering some irrational and illogical actions in man’s existence. He tries to establish the link between this experiment and the philosophy of art movements like Futurism, Dadaism and Surrealism by spelling out the rationale behind this project and reviewing of works by famous artists who belong to the above -mentioned movements. The experiments are conducted using modern artist oil as well as industrial commercial paints as the main mediums. Illustrations in photographic sequential images have been provided to help the reader gain a rough idea of how the artist arrived at the final works. The next section of the thesis seeks to analyze and describe the results of the artist’s output, where the artist’s works are arranged side by side with the original image for easy comparisons.

The eighteen paintings produced by the artist projects the researcher in different character roles made up as an African ancestor ,an Emperor, King, famous artist, an Italian Renaissance Magistrate, just to mention a few. Details of this project are spelt out in four chapters with the appropriate sub- headings under each chapter.

Keywords: Enigma, Psyche, Portraiture, Juxtaposing, Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism and Futurism.