L’autoritratto espanso: dalla pittura alle frontiere digitali

The expanded self-portrait: From painting to digital frontiers In the last century the history of the artist’s self-portrait has taken on a double practical-theoretical dimension, osmotic and dialoguing, not in contrast with his original sense: one expressed through static forms (drawings, paintings, photography, sculptures) the other one is dynamic and kinetic when the artists is represented in move- ment with gestures, faces expressions, the sound of his voice. All these details of the artistic making contribute to show the artists to the observer. The self-images, in static or movement forms, are valid, interchangeable, in effective artistic competition. They are capable to demonstrate increasingly complex and articulated forms of documentary and memorial sphere, in a potentially seamless creative and interpretative kaleidoscope. This new and mixed media artistic form, is capable to immortalize the existence of an individual (the artist) in a multidimensional encyclo- pedia of the self. A veritable mine of sources for the historian of art and portraiture of the future. This is what we could define as an expanded form of self-portrait.