RUTH BORCHARD SELF-PORTRAIT COMPETITION AND EXHIBITION

Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Competition and Exhibition

The £10,000 PRIZE WINNER IS CELIA PAUL.

 To view the Exhibition Catalogue please click here.

It is not only fitting but something of a delight that, just over a century since Ruth Borchard’s birth, her stunning collection of self-portraits, by leading British 20^th Century artists, should be marked by a new National Self-Portrait Competition. Her own collection was a labour of love growing out of her interest in diaries and other autobiographical material and her method of acquiring it, by offering the artists concerned the modest sum of 20 guineas, was both shrewd and cheeky. However, she was rarely refused.

Today, in the age of instantaneous digital image-making, it might be assumed that self-portraiture has fallen from favour. Not so; it is as vigorous and as popular as ever.  A broad public understands that the self-portraitist is not only looking at himself but also looking into himself: how else to explain the reverence in which Rembrandt’s self-portraits are held. That same broad constituency also grasps that although likeness is important the bland verisimilitude of photographic accuracy is inadequate; the heightening and suppression of both form and colour are the means by which feeling is generated.

The strategies that the self-portraitists adopt are manifold, however.  Like Velázquez in the supremely complex “Las Meninas” the artist, who should be central to the painting, becomes a kind of bystander, a mere grace note. Concealing oneself in one’s working context, surrounded by studio props, is a time-honoured tactic. Sheer hard looking, too, is the most basic – and rewarding – of strategies. Matching Stanley Spencer’s meaty physicality is an honourable, and challenging, aspiration.

The possibilities are endless though, from schematic reductionism to the tormented search for the “spirit within the mass” by Bomberg. Latterly, however, several artists have opted what the theorists call “autobiografiction”, which the rest of us would call masquerade. Cindy Sherman’s multiple personalities explored photographically demonstrate a phenomenon which painters practise too.  Their feats of impersonation seem to imply an attempt to conceal, rather than reveal the artist’s identity. That very effort of evasion though is perhaps more psychologically telling than factual truth.

Whatever approach is taken to this apparently circumscribed activity (the response to one’s reflection in a mirror) it’s a safe bet that the winner of this competition will be characterised by an unignorable vitality and a resonance that transcends mere appearance.

From the 508 entries 173 works have been selected for the exhibition which runs from 14 October to 25 November.

The panel of judges include: Rachel Borchard, Sister Wendy Beckett, Robert Travers, William Feaver and William Varley.

Please click here to view the list of exhibiting artists.

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