Self-Portraiture: The Art of Self–Research

Dr. Nurit Cederboum

Self-Portraiture:

The Art of Self – Research

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Copyright © 2020

ISBN #:978-965-7793-21-3

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ASA -The Academic College of Society and the Arts in Netanya

No part of this book may be reproduced, copied, photocopied, recorded, translated, stored in a database, transmitted or received, in any manner or by any electronic, optical, mechanical or other means. Commercial use of any kind of the material contained in this book is strictly prohibited, except with the express written permission of the author.

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Self-Portraiture:

The Art of Self – Research

A Quest for the Creation and the Development of the Self through

a ‘Chain of Observations’.

By Dr. Nurit Cederboum

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 11

From the Author 13

Preface 21

Part I: Art as research – Art is research 31

Chapter 1: Art-Based Research 33

Chapter 2: Behind the Research 41

Chapter 3: The Researcher’s Voice and Research Question Field 46

Chapter 4: The Language of Art 60

Chapter 5: The Art of the Methodology 70

Chapter 6: The Analysis Quest: visual texts and Artistic Methods 94

Part II: Self for trait – self Portrait 102

Chapter 7: Artistic Means: Style and Genre: The Book Object 104

Chapter 8: Image and Writing:

A Confluence of Languages 135

Chapter 9: Visual Values - Color 164

Chapter 10: Visual Values – Techniques and Materials 207

Chapter 11: Structure and Organization 233

Part III: The ‘Designing Ego’ – thinking through thousands

of pictures 246

Chapter 12: The ‘Designing Ego’ as Myth – Discussion 248

Chapter 13: Implementation and Validation of the Study 283

Epilogue – Reflections 301

Appendix: The Full Story – to Full the Story 307

Appendix 1: A Psycho-Dramatic Process under the Guidance of Dr. E. Avrahami 308

Appendix 2: Image and Writing: A Confluence of

Languages 312

Appendix 3: Visual Values - Color 356

Appendix 4: Techniques and Materials 386

Appendix 5: Organization and Structure 420

Bibliography 443

Acknowledgements

My book reflects a journey; a personal journey of research into creativity, and creation of research; a journey I took alone to examine myself. With this in mind, I enlisted my experience and my passion for creativity - art – painting. I travelled most of the way alone. I looked at myself through a mirror to create a figure and an image. On the way, I watched others. I listened to them, learned from them, took from them, and left things behind; I filtered, straightened a line, and continued. The book is a journey of the self through research, study, and the re-creation of the self that learns and takes from the old.

My thanks first to my family who allowed me to be my own self, despite the difficulties encountered. They supported me with words and an understanding gaze, letting me have the uncompromising space I took and received, with full love and appreciation. This is the foundation without which the journey would have been impossible.

My thanks to all those who left their imprints and tracks in the research and doctoral work published there under acknowledgments, lecturers, researchers and colleagues.

This book, born out of my doctoral work, led me to re-examine research processes, results, its lessons and the manner of their implementation. The goal was to convert it from a scientific text to an inviting, friendly book, to expand its readership and convey its important message to many diverse audiences.Thanks to Ayala Gilboa and the professional team from A.Q -Language Solutions for turning my thesis into a readable book, by studying the research thoroughly and accompanying me during long year of in-depth work that finally turned its outcome into a life story. Without them, this would have been impossible. Many thanks for their cooperation and the prolific, fruitful creative experience.

My heartfelt thanks to the Academic College of Society and the Arts in Netanya (ASA) who believed in me and supported me all the way, helping me convert the book from an idea into a reality.

I thank my loved ones who are no longer alive (my parents, and my young late husband) who gave me various reasons, both good and bad, to explore and dig through the human soul, see and create a portrait, and make it part of public knowledge.

My thanks to the skilled staff at Niv Books that engaged in publishing, in marketing and advertising the book, professionally in a friendly spirit, both from a sense of mission and out of love of the topic.

From the Author

"The object of my study refers to a perspective that brings to the surface what is sub faciem" (Nurit Cederboum)

Ten years after having published my research study mostly focused on self-portraiture, ‘portrait by the self,’ or first and foremost, a portrait of myself, I am now publishing my book.

The study was defined as ‘research on research,’ eventually offering a meta-perspective to what introspection created. The object of my study refers to a perspective that brings to the surface what is sub faciem (what lies beneath).

Something cyclical grows here from roots laid decades earlier, a study that began, without my being aware of it, when I was an art student. In the Prolog to my research, I mention that while practicing self-portraiture, I heard my teacher in the background saying quietly, You will love doing this, yet not understanding to what he was referring and why.

Even when I knew he was right, I still did not understand. Later, when I decided to create and research, research and create, and from inner necessity chose the ‘self-portrait,’ I realized that this is what I had been doing for many years. I understood that I was in the midst of an ongoing research conducted in the visual language, and at the same time, that even if this was a kind of research, even if it sprouted results (the paintings), I still did not understand and could decipher ‘the results of this research.’

Thus, ten years after the study’s publication, during which I continued to research the subject, continued to create, teach, lecture and write, I decided to publish the book that would clarify the research. In other words, if this was a journey of exploration and the creation of a portrait of the self, the time had come to create a portrait for others.

I would like to present in meta-perspective what occurred in the ‘research laboratory’ of my book.

I wish to recount the motives, the journey, the dilemmas encountered on the way, the research methods used and others renewed and developed. I wish to submit the data arising from this research (i.e., self-portraits I drew for study purposes), offer retrospectives on previous and older works (as proof that this was a continuous pursuit, an unceasing research, both conscious yet mainly subconscious). From the findings that emerged from the research and analysis, I extracted more information and acquired a self-awareness that helped me flourish and create a personal self-portrait from a self-portrait; and especially, communicate the universal insights that from the creation - the research, the analysis and the interpretation, led me to develop a theory.

Is it interesting? Who should it interest? What is so unique in occupying oneself with such a trite subject as the self-portrait? Why should an occupation dealing with ‘myself,’ 'my portrait’ and ‘my paintings’ should and would interest anyone else? what is the point in excavating and re-excavating the subject, in the research? How to do this and make credible what is indeed a real research study, not just a selfism self-praise process. To what extent and in what way does it connect to narcissism? What are the insights and psychological implications of this phenomenon?

At a more personal level, since this is a ‘self-portrait,’ why did I choose to engage in it; why do I think it is true and justified - from a personal and general aspect. Did I contribute anything to myself? How can a personal contribution contribute and enrich general knowledge? In my opinion, the contribution is linked to all areas of knowledge: art, psychology, psychotherapy, philosophy and research itself.

These are just some of the questions that justified my undertaking this research journey, as well as the questions I do not spare myself or my readers - whoever you are.

The present book is a by-product of the study, it relies on it, and proposes to present its principles and ideas. Its goal is to tell of the research, making it accessible to a wide range of readers. I admit that its discourse is not the usual dry language of a research study, but at the same time, it is raised to a certain degree by offering to a diverse readership the knowledge it contains, acquired as a result of the research.

Since the research served as both the basis and map for the writing of this book, I consider it a kind of bridge and intermediate station, which on the one hand, collects research journey results, reveals and presents them for reading, while serving, at the same time, as a springboard for later books that will describe what transpired in the wake of the research, narrate what occurred and how, following the research’s implementation.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part concerns general questions relating to the field of self-portraiture in art, philosophical and psychological questions on questions relating to the ‘I’ (ego) and the ‘myself’. (Self).

The book presents values from the language of art, since this is research language in the first part, which is studied in the second part. In this part of the book, I will also present research methods - the analysis - and the interpretation I developed, based on familiar paradigms and approaches from the field of qualitative research.

In the second part of the book, I offer in detail the data collected in the field, - in other words, the paintings I painted during three years for research purposes - as well as the paintings I drew many years earlier and that accompanied the results produced during the study. I explain and present the method of analysis, reveal and interpret the findings.

This part also reveals my personal story, whether I wanted to do so or not. If I undertook the research to extract the story from the painting, exposing and constructing my interpretation of the findings, there my personal story emerged, telling me something or other about myself, and especially about my inner soul.

 Here, let me point out that I did not undertake the research and the study to tell myself about myself. As an artist and painter, it would seem to have been enough for me just to paint, paint, and paint. I did not need to know literally ‘what I was telling myself,’ but that was the consequence, the importance of which for me was that the analysis - the findings and the interpretation - yielded the story. After all, I undertook the research because I wanted to investigate and understand ‘what is a self- portrait.’ What it means. Why does the artist continuously repeat an action again and again? What is hidden in this phenomenon? How can you create text from text itself? Assuming that painting a self-portrait produces interpretive and interpreting visual text, the result of the research during the process of additional interpretation is the creation of additional text - the verbal text.

Here, too, let me state, as an aside, that not every artist deals intensively, consistently and perhaps even obsessively with self-portraiture. Every painter may sometimes come to practice it. However, for some artists it is the main focus of their work, their way of life, their incessant occupation, and even though I am not of the same mind as these famous artists, I came to realize that I myself am very much preoccupied with this subject, and perhaps only with this subject. Having reached this point, I came to understand that there was something here that needed to be researched.

The fact that I returned to the easel and the mirror to paint a self-portrait again and again, yet did not to draw an exact copy of reality, but each time someone else, someone other than myself; and each time, a painting and another painting was created, each time with different materials, different colors, different techniques - all this testified that hidden here was some kind of phenomenon, that something was happening here. This ‘something’ I needed to research. I needed to understand this medium, its power, its meaning, its importance - if such existed at all - then see what could be done with the knowledge produced.

I had to use myself to understand this, learn from it and expose it. You could say I contributed myself, became a guinea pig in a research laboratory. I was fully justified to be the researcher object of the research, since I had the required skill as a painter, and furthermore, as a painter engaged in self-portraiture, I embodied the phenomenon.

Furthermore, when I analyzed the findings, my personal story was extracted. It was interesting in itself, it was also moving, and was the added value I was granted. However, the findings and the story were proof that anyone could apply this method of research to himself. Indeed, this is one of my innovations in this study, arising from the field of methodology. I propose an innovative approach and method to research. When I speak of painting a self-portrait, I infer that this study is a ‘research on research,’ once during the act of painting itself, and another time when researching the product born out of the previous action.

I discover an entire world, reveal and present it, in the context of the meeting between ‘you and yourself’ facing the mirror, the basis of this research. In this manner, I give legitimacy to the personal spiritual encounter where, as a subject, I encounter myself as an object (the figure in the mirror), and conduct an intersubjective discourse that takes place in the language of art which I then attempt to decipher, to know and understand my action, and what I said of myself to myself.

The third part of the book arises out of the ‘self’ bringing new knowledge to the world, knowledge that would not have been acquired and which I would have been unable to realize if I myself had not by myself and with myself undertaken this research journey. This Chapter examines the processes, the research structure, events that occurred on the way, the findings and the interpretation, and connects to previous and other knowledge in the field of art, psychology, and philosophy. In this Chapter, I link the insights that emerged in the study, the findings, and the various psychological theories. This Chapter explains in depth the phenomenon of ‘self-portrait painting.’ It gives a broad and comprehensive picture from which one can learn about the phenomenon, the activity, the impulse of the artist engaged, results that can be derived from this process, and how self-portrait painting is not only the narcissistic whim of one creator or another, but a spiritual journey that reinforces, empowers, rewards, enriches and teaches. This Chapter shows, in practice, that the phenomenon of ‘self-portrait painting facing a mirror’ is not only what it seems but also a fascinating reservoir of knowledge about culture and the human race.

Artists, art therapists, psychologists, and qualitative researchers interested in art-based research, as well as anyone interested in human and world artistic culture, will find interest in this book.

The collection of portrait paintings exhibited on my site shows and displays the different faces of the face. The collection of face portrait that I present, which are not realistic paintings, and do not intend to present a photographic truth, present different angles of my own self, as recorded in real time, in every encounter with my image in front of the mirror. You can say that the collection of different paintings, dozens of them, are different parts of myself, and when they passed through the research laboratory, made me whole, and greater perhaps than its parts.

This journey has not yet ended, and will never end. I am faithful to the Socratic teaching that demands a person to know thyself.

I am willing to continue the research and pass this knowledge on to others.

Preface

The many portraits generated a private story full of meaning. I designed my life as a work of art. I was composing not an autobiography, rather a personal myth. (Nurit Cederboum)

This book represents a unique combination of art and qualitative research. This research when combined with the intertextual approach interpretation produces a three-dimensional body of aesthetic, narrative and paradigmatic knowledge, which stretches the borders of qualitative research, and casts new light on the genre of self-portraiture. It creates a connection between two dialectic concepts – logos and myth.

There are many tools for interpreting finished self-portraits. Qualitative research enables self-investigation through interpreting self-portraits paintings. Hermeneutic research looks for something hidden, what is not obvious in the painting. In addition, the research approaches, case study, grounded theory, self-study, action research, and art-based research also contributed insights and techniques. The research process engendered an encounter between two axes: the axis of investigation and the axis of the self. These two axes join to generate a third axis, that of self-development, which is generated by the research. Content analysis and intertextuality were chief tools that contributed to interpreting the finished portraits.

This research uncovered what I labeled as the ‘Designing Ego’. This is the ego that acknowledges and exposes the materials of one’s personal life. This was a creative, investigative change in which each portrait was created, studied and finally accepted as part of the collective portrait of the whole person. The author learned to manage myself on this journey.

The journey of the ‘Designing Ego’ as a subject on the axis of research changed the self that started the investigation into an ego that designed its comprehensive portrait. On this journey, the ego uncovered, acknowledged and exposed the materials of my personal life and I used these materials to create not only a collection of self-portraits from the numerous individual self-portraits, but to create a personal life of more self-understanding.

The many portraits generated a private story full of meaning. I designed my life as a work of art. I was composing not an autobiography, rather a personal myth. In the words of a great man, René Descartes, who said he hoped the next generation, would judge him kindly; not only for what he had explained but also for the things he had omitted, so as to leave the pleasure of discovery to others. The following are some of the insights I drew from the research.

Assuming painting a self-portrait is an unresolved way of investigating the self, then deciphering hidden codes brings new information that produces significant knowledge in self-understanding and self-development. This researchexposes the process whereby the self can be searched and researched,

The assumption is that an investigation of the self via painting a self-portrait is a process in which the subconscious is dominant. This study shows how the conscious ego actively searches for, reveals, manages and copes with unconscious materials with the aim of designing a collective comprehensive self-portrait. This aspect of the individual is the ‘DesigningEgo’.

The genre of self-portraiture can be more than it seems. The combination of painting and focused research reveals how this genre can be a tool for the study of the self, for self-development, self-empowerment and growth.

My research broadens the concept of self-study research in the qualitative paradigm. This study points to the fact that, under certain conditions, both the investigator and the investigated can produce new knowledge together. The combination of art, research, self and the unique research method I developed enabled me as a subject to operate in this unique investigational situation without harming the integrity of the research.

This study expands the insights and practical implementation of several genres of qualitative research: art-based research, action - research, self-study, and the general hermeneutic approach, as well as the combination of art and research. Contrary to schools that consider art itself a closed kind of investigation, I display the affinity between the two disciplines of art and research and demonstrate that in some situations they need each other, contribute to each other and gain from each other.

The three-stage model of ‘MirrorEncounter’, ‘ArtisticActivity’ and ‘InvestigationActivity’ of the research, proved a highly effective tool for self-understanding and development. My research method as a whole I term ‘ArtBasedSelf-Research’ and consider it a useful addition to the repertoire of qualitative research methods. It produced results on two levels. On one level, it served to find a solution to the riddle of the self-portraits. In this respect, it successfully answered the research question. On the second level, it was a significant research approach in its own right.

The axis of the self and the axis of the research that were designed in the research created an interpretative, developing, creative, ongoing dialogue. Interdisciplinary and intertextual interpretation created and nurtured a very productive dialogue with the painted Visualtexts.

Though the research did not set out to produce a model suitable for therapy, the results show that the process does contain therapeutic components. Under certain conditions and in some contexts, this form of qualitative research can have therapeutic qualities.

Although the research deals with the investigation of one particular self, it is really not an individual story. I chose to use myself as a model for a newly developed research approach and research design, but the approach and design can produce insights for anyone.

This study contributes to knowledge in several areas:

Qualitative research: It contributes to art-based research, self-study, action research and participant research. This unique research method, expand the significance of reflectivity and subjectivity in qualitative research, and enlarge the dimensions and possible applications of intertextuality.

Art: It exposes and expands the possibilities of self-portraiture as an investigative tool and as a tool for both general and art therapy. It sheds additional light on the unique phenomenon of ‘self-portraiture’ and enables additional perspectives.

Psychology: Expands the processes of self-investigation, self-development and management of the self. The ‘DesigningEgo’ can expand to the ‘EgoDesigningSelf-PortraitasaMyth’, meaning a subject who designs his life to be both meaningful and a work of art.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, tell me: am I the fairest of them all? As adults, we don’t often ask these questions openly, yet still we want to know who we are. In my case, I chose to paint myself more than anything else. I needed to understand why. It became a kind of personal discourse where I was actually asking myself, Who am I? Obviously, there was a subconscious drive to have a conversation with my portraits. This made me understand that it was not my private question, but it was a cultural, social, and psychological question. It involves behavior that characterizes the human race. After all, almost every artist, at some point, paints self-portraits.

In order to pursue this self-investigation, it was necessary to wear two hats, one as an artist and the other as a researcher. The quest required combining two disciplines – Art and Qualitative Research. However, the main problem was how can an artist objectively decode and interpret her own self-portraits. In order to solve this problem, I designed a two-stage hermeneutic investigation. One stage paved the way for the second and together they created an interpretative, interdisciplinary and intertextuality model of art-based research and self-study that became a model for self-development. The research methods developed contributed several innovations in qualitative research, specifically in the methodology of art-based research. In the universal aspect, it became a source of learning and further understanding of human behavior. This book presents a unique combination of art and qualitative research suitable for many different genres, from ‘Self Study’ to ‘Action Research’ and so on and so forth.

In their own way artists can be considered a reality explorer.

The artist interprets reality subjectively, so every painting is actually a form of self-portrait. It was Picasso who said that a painting is not a work of art, it is research. The ‘researcher’ uses art, colors, canvases, paint brushes to write in the language of art and to uncover what is hidden beneath what is visible. According to Merleau-Ponty.

However, drawing a self-portrait in front of a mirror, when it is performed consistently, stubbornly and obsessively over time, is a process of conscious and unconscious self-inquiry. It becomes a visual autobiography. In his book Eye and Mind Maurice Merleau Ponty says Artists are the ultimate phenomenological researchers. They see and expose what is hidden not only interpreting reality but also complimenting it.

The artists of the Expressionistic School were the most prominent artists who dealt with investigating the self in a clear and deliberate manner. Included in this group are Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, Emil Nolde and others from the Der Blaue Reiter and the Bridge groups. These were artists who sought their inner reality. Their research tools were the language of art, their medium, their technique and the manner in which they painted helped them to shout and even show their shouting. It is no coincidence that these artists, who sought their inner reality, developed at the same time as Freud published his theory of the subconscious. At this critical time in history, between the two world wars, the artist put himself in the center, kicking the world, and disappointed withdrawing into a world of his own shouting from there.

This was not a unique quest, many years before the expressionist stream Rembrandt used himself as a model to paint self-portraits. He investigated himself and documented his life. He described his inner world, and the state of his body, soul and human spirit. In dealing with the investigation of self, Rembrandt was born before his time. Years later, Frida Kahlo investigated her inner world via the surrealist style of painting. Kahlo surrounds herself with mirrors, and for years and in dozens of paintings, she catches her image and soul on canvas. Her paintings shatter the borders between reality and imagination and create bridges between the conscious and subconscious. The question "who am I?" constantly reverberates in her paintings.