Something Understood

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Religion & Ethics

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life, taking a spiritual theme and exploring it through music, prose and poetry

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Something Understood: Self-Portraits

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Self-Portraits

BBC Radio 4 - Something Understood, Self-Portraits

Poet Michael Symmons Roberts explores the phenomenon of the selfie and the self-portrait.

Poet Michael Symmons Roberts explores the phenomenon of the selfie and its much older relative, the self-portrait, and its aspiration to portray the artist’s inner world.

In this exploration of the self-portrait, the poet Michael Symmons Roberts starts with the modern phenomenon of the ubiquitous selfie and questions whether it really is such a quantum shift in the way we see ourselves in the world. Or is this just the latest tech-twist in the story of self-portraiture?

“It’s become a cliché to mock and revile it,” Michael says, “characterising it as a narcissistic exercise, but the reality is more complex”. 

Self-portraiture goes way back to cave paintings, he suggests, and has a long and complex history. “I still remember when I first saw one of Rembrandt’s self-portraits in the flesh, or LS Lowry’s red-eyed, searing vision of himself staring back. There’s something about them that makes us feel they are giving us the real person, a glimpse of the painter’s true self.”

Michael goes on to extend his definition of the self-portrait from just painters and sculptors to include poets and novelists. The poetry of Nobel Prize winning Polish poet Wistawa Szymborska, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Emily Dickenson, and the music of Philip Glass, singer songwriter Don McLean and Nile Rogers, helps Michael conclude, “Self-portraits, at their best, aspire to portray the inner world, not just the surface appearance.”

Presenter: Michael Symmons Roberts
Producer: Michael Wakelin
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