Template:Did you know nominations/Self-Portrait (Ellen Thesleff)
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Self-Portrait (Ellen Thesleff)
- ... that art historians believe Self-Portrait may have been drawn by Ellen Thesleff in a trance-like state?
- Crabbe, Gilee (2019). "Hidden Influences". FNG Research. 4. Finnish National Gallery. Retrieved 19 November 2024.
- Quote, p. 3: "Thesleff was known to have practised automatic drawing...Thesleff continued working on the piece however, and when it was shown again – she dated it twice – the artist had worked on it further in sepia ink, giving it a deeper chiaroscuro, a technique resembling the sepiatone spirit photographs that were popular among esoteric circles at the time. 'The way the head emerges from the dark background makes it seem like an immaterial spirit in the process of materialisation,' said Lahelma. 'This processual method resembles the surrealists' quest to liberate the creative imagination by using experimental methods based on psychic automatism and trance states. Before the surrealists turned this into a conscious artistic method, this kind of technique was used in mediumistic art.' In Thesleff's piece, Lahelma continued, 'the introspective attitude is manifest both in technique and in the facial expression and the artist appears to be in some kind of creative trance. And this is a significant point, here it is not only the content or the subject matter that is connected to esoteric ideas but also the technique – not only what has been represented but how it has been represented. Perhaps here we can think of art as an esoteric practice.'"
- Lahelma, Marja (2014). Ideal and Disintegration: Dynamics of the Self and Art at the Fin-de-Siècle. (PhD thesis). University of Helsinki. pp. 148-179. ISBN 9789521097287. OCLC 897998723.
Viriditas (talk) 05:30, 26 November 2024 (UTC).