Self Portrait

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

1988 (circa)

Medium/Material: photograph
Paper Size: 8 3/8” x 11”
Image Size 7 3/8" x 9 3/8"
Note: One of a kind self portrait signed in ink in lower margin

Description

Lillian Schwartz constructed this digital self-portrait by compositing her own likeness onto that of an aristocratic sourced from a historical painting, as suggested by the elaborate lace collar and period headwear. The work exemplifies Schwartz’s early adoption of the flatbed scanner as a creative tool, enabling her to import photographs and art-historical images directly into digital editing environments. A hatched, blocky veil laid across her face evokes the visual language of early computer graphics, while the red interior backdrop is divided by subtle tonal shifts that heighten the sense of constructed space. By digitally sampling and recontextualizing scanned historical imagery, Schwartz positions herself as both participant in and mediator of artistic tradition, demonstrating how emergent image-editing software of the 1980s could transform archival material into a new, self-reflexive form of computer-based collage.