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Ah.
The selfie.
Our world is now
consumed by the selfie.
Let's face it.
Some of us have
hundreds or maybe
thousands of these
pics on our devices.
I mean, who hasn't almost
had their eye gorged out
by the selfie stick?
Believe it or not, this
isn't a recent phenomena.
Let's dive a little deeper
into the art of the selfie.
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Support provided
by The Glick Fund,
a CICF fund focused on
inspiring philanthropy.
Additional support provided
by the Christel DeHaan Family
Foundation, in honor of
the children and families
of Christel House.
Robert Cornelius was an
American pioneer in photography
and produced an image of himself
using a daguerreotype camera
in 1839, which is also one
of the first photographs
of a person.
Because the process
was so slow, he
was able to uncover
the lens, run
into the shot for
a minute or more,
and then replace the lens cap.
Pretty cool.
Even though the term
"selfie" has only been around
since 2002, the debut of
the portable camera in 1900
led to self
portraits, or selfies,
becoming a more widespread idea.
In fact, Russian Grand
Duchess, Anastasia Nikolaevna,
at the age of 13, was one
of the first teenagers
to take her own
picture using a mirror
to send to a friend in 1914.
Of course, this idea grew
even more in the 1970s
with affordable instant cameras,
such as the classic Polaroid.
Did you know these
are making a comeback?
Yep.
Probably thanks to
Instagram is my guess.
But once Sony came out with
the Ericsson mobile phone,
in late 2003, the introduction
of a front-facing camera
was born.
Now we have fields
of cloud servers
holding millions of selfies.
Actually, over 17
million selfies
are uploaded every week.
Before the front-facing
camera, artists
had always utilized similar
ideas to the selfie.
I mean, check out how
many famous artists have
done self-portraits.
Many of these
self-portraits were
composed to tell you a
story, similar to you
taking a selfie
while on vacation
or taking an hour to compose
the background of your selfie
by probably adding, you
know, the pope or something.
Take, for example, two of my
favorites done by Picasso.
Check out the amazing
bright colors used here.
Definitely rocking that
yellow orange ascot.
By contrast, check
out this self-portrait
done just a few years after.
Totally different, right?
This Blue Period painting
was done just after Picasso
had lost a close friend.
It's almost as if he took
the equivalent of a selfie
and added a filter just
so you could better
understand how he was feeling.
The reality, of course,
is that he isn't here
to tell the story.
So he's giving us the most
amount of detail possible,
with the heavy dark coat, pasty
skin tone, and blue-gray color
palette.
However, probably even
more closely related
to the modern day selfie would
be the composed photograph.
And who better to look
at than Salvador Dali.
There is no doubt that
Dali would have eaten up
the chance to have an iPhone.
You have to check out some of
the photos he would compose.
Like any good photographer,
Dali knew how to set up a shot.
And he most certainly
wanted to take
the abstract bizarre
nature of his paintings
and incorporate it
into photographs.
Of course, Dali would be killing
it on Instagram with this shot.
It's all about the
kitty cat right now.
By the way, did you
know that in 2015 it
was reported that
more people had
been killed taking selfies that
year than by shark attacks?
I'm not making this stuff up.
In fact, it has become
such an issue in Russia
that the Russian
Ministry of the Interior
released a selfie
safety guide in 2015.
Let's face it.
No selfie is worth
losing your life for.
Question for you.
What if you didn't
have a camera and you
didn't know how to paint?
What would you do?
That's right.
You'd hire an artist.
To better understand how the art
of the self-portrait and selfie
came together, we're heading
over to the Cincinnati art
museum to take a look at an oil
painting, which was basically
a highly composed
selfie at the time.
Follow me.
We are here at the
Cincinnati art museum,
and we're actually in one
of the main hallway gallery
areas that's
actually highlighting
different pieces of art.
And I'm here with Julie Aronson,
who is one of the curators
here.
I'm just super glad you're
taking some time here
to talk about-- we have
a massive painting here
in this gallery that we're
gonna kind of talk about.
Well, first of all, who
actually painted this
and how in the world did
it get here in the museum?
This was painted by
an English painter
of the 18th century, named
Thomas Gainsborough, who
got a start in art very young.
He became interested in art
work when he was a child
and convinced his father
that, at the age of 13,
he had to pick up
and go to London
to study with the masters.
And had a kind of meteoric rise
to prominence in the art world.
Did his parents have a
background in art or did he
just--
No.
That was something he
took an interest in.
And in fact, he wanted to
be a landscape painter.
But like many artists who
want to be landscape painters,
they needed to do something
to make a better living.
And painting portraits
is the way to do that.
We have to remember that this
was an era when photography
didn't yet exist, and so
a painted portrait was
one of the only ways that you
could have a record of what
a loved one looked like.
So painted portraits had
a different kind of value
than they have today,
for both ordinary people
and for the wealthy.
And of course, the
wealthy could afford
somebody like Gainsborough and a
massive painting like this one.
Tell me about the subject.
Who is this and what's
so unique about her?
Ann Ford was a
remarkable young woman
in that she was a
professional musician.
She started out playing
concerts in her home
and aspired to do something that
was very advanced for the time.
Women were not professional
musicians at the time.
And they weren't
thought of very highly.
And in fact, her
own father tried
to disrupt her concert
career by having
her arrested on two occasions.
And you see that she's
got her legs crossed.
That was not considered
to be an appropriate pose
for a young woman at the time.
It was considered
to be too masculine.
And this is a very
sophisticated portrait,
and he shows her to be very
confident and very pleased
with her career.
It's something that's very much
something that she's proud of.
And you get a sense of
that in this painting.
And she has this
absolutely fabulous dress,
which is really a tribute to
Gainsborough's proficiency
as a painter.
You can see these
wonderful-- I mean, sort
of slashing brush strokes
in which he doesn't actually
try to describe every
wrinkle but he gives you
this feeling of this wonderful,
luxuriant, satin fabric.
Yeah.
And was there a unique
style that he was known for?
Well, it is really
this kind of-- there's
a sort of freedom to the
way in which he puts paint
on the canvas that's
quite different from many
of his contemporaries.
And it was very
modern for its day.
Well, thank you so much
again, Julie, for your time.
It was super amazing just
to hear a little bit more
about especially the
subject of this painting.
Thank you very much.
It's wonderful to be here.
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What involves volcanic
ash, dangerous chemicals,
extreme heat, expert
timing, ground pigment,
and expert creativity?
You guessed it.
Fresco painting.
Check this out.
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Fresco painting
using wet plaster
dates back to 1500 BC and the
island of Crete in Greece.
Of course, fresco can be
seen around ancient Greece
as well, often within
tombs depicting
scenes of everyday life.
There are even scenes of a
couple dudes just reclining
at a banquet.
However, where we really see
some incredible examples is
in the ancient--
