【The Impotent King (2005) in English Subtitles】

Madonna might have The Impotent King (2005) in English Subtitlestold the world to "Express Yourself" way back in 1989, but it's millennials who have taken self-expression to a whole new level. And we've only got Instagram to thank for that.

That's not because — despite what the headlines might say — we're a bunch of vain narcissists with nothing better to do than take endless selfies. It's actually because Instagram, and the mass adoption of cameraphones, has democratised self-expression and portraiture for everyone, regardless of class.

SEE ALSO: Millennials aren't entitled. It's employers that need to change.

Contrary to what you might think, this desire to express oneself through imagery isn't unique to millennials. Far from it, in fact. It's actually been around for millennia, art history experts say.

Portraits were once a privilege reserved almost exclusively for the aristocracy. But now, in 2018, anyone with a smartphone can produce a self-portrait within seconds.

Dr Julian Luxford from St Andrews University School of Art History says that in centuries gone by, the "social structure" in place meant that "people below a certain class were simply not meant to be representing themselves." "It contradicted decorum," says Luxford. "Whereas nowadays, in a democratic society people are free to represent themselves as they like."

"All of a sudden you have this explosion of self-portraiture"

The manner of medium used to facilitate self-representation has, of course, evolved over the centuries. As Luxford points out, the "media for self-representation" like smartphones, iPhones, and cameras, are "readily available and relatively cheaply." "The fact that this technology is so successful and so cheap, it means that all of a sudden you have this explosion of self-portraiture," he adds.

In Britain, in the centuries before the inception of smartphones and cameras, only those with the wherewithal to commission an artist to paint their portrait were able to represent themselves in image form. Individualised portraiture really kicked off back in the Roman times, when those in the highest echelon of society were represented in marble portrait busts. Back then, people started off creating realistic, verisimilitudinous depictions in sculpted portraits, but eventually became less concerned with rendering an exact physical likeness, conveying instead qualities like status and character.

Interestingly, a few things Instagrammers do on a daily basis actually began aeons before Instagram, iPhones, or even the internet were invented. Things like making ourselves look a little more attractive than we actually are, #humblebragging about our travels, and using images of ourselves to create a public identity. These things have been going in Britain — which has long enjoyed a love affair with portraiture — since the Tudor period.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Dr Kerry Bristol — a senior lecturer in art history at the University of Leeds — says that portraits have always been considered "the British disease." The Brits have, according to Bristol, been obsessed with images of themselves for centuries. This can be traced back to the Tudor period due to increased social mobility following the Dissolution of the Monastery, which occurred between 1536 and 1541 during Henry VIII's reign.

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"An awful lot of the men— and the occasional woman—who bought their way into the aristocracy were able to do so after the Dissolution of the Monasteries," she says. These wannabe aristocrats bought up church lands that were being sold off by the king because "he had no money in his own coffers." But, because these aspiring individuals didn't have aristocratic backgrounds, they needed to find a way to create a plausible personal history that could be visibly displayed in their homes.

"When you have a merchant background or a legal background, it means that you don't have a collection of ancestors on the wall," says Bristol. "What they were doing quite quickly was commissioning portraits of themselves and of the families into which they married to essentially create a lineage, to create a personal history." Much like people today use social media to fabricate a personal brand, these social climbers commissioned portraits to create the illusion that they had always been at the very apex of society.

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We might think of celebrities using Instagram and social media to publish images of themselves in the way they want the world to see them as something unique to the Instagram generation. But, again, tightly controlling one's personal image has actually been going on since the days of Queen Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603).

"Elizabeth I tried very specifically to manipulate her image," says Bristol. "She said that basically, 'there are a lot of paintings out there of me that aren't very good, so here is the official prototype that must be followed.'" This allowed Elizabeth I to disseminate images of herself which made it look like she never aged, and always featured her signature red hair and very pale skin. She was in control of her public image and ensured that no unflattering pictures were in circulation. "Lots of people would have these officially-approved style portraits of the queen because that was their way of showing allegiance to a reigning monarch," says Bristol.

Portrait artists have also been known to be rather, err, generous when painting their subjects. Years before we started slapping a filter onto a selfie to make ourselves look better, Anthony Van Dyck (1599 - 1641) was making the subjects of his portraits — himself included — look a hell of a lot prettier.

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"Van Dyck paints himself quite often and he makes himself look much prettier than he was, he makes his sisters look prettier than we know they were, and he made the Queen Henrietta Maria (wife of Charles I) look much prettier than she was," says Luxford. "We know that because we've got descriptions and portraits of them by other artists."

Bristol says if we look to the portraits painted by Hans Holbein The Younger — the artist who painted Henry VIII's portrait — they're "no different from what people would do today." "They're basically just the equivalent of here I am standing in front of my house and you're painting me," says Bristol. "That's no different from what people would do today. We'd get out our phone and take a selfie."

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Painting someone's true likeness wasn't really the priority in Tudor portraits. "We often look at those Tudor portraits and think, 'oh, is that really what such and such a person really looks like,' and the answer was: probably not because we haven't got smallpox scars, we can't see the teeth because there probably weren't any, and they're always in their best clothing."

But, it wasn't just the Tudors who were big on self-representation. If you look to the 18th century, when British people began to go abroad, you start to see the beginning of what we'd now call #humblebragging. "If you move into the 18th century when the British go on their grand tour to Italy, what do they commission? A portrait of themselves with a famous building or statue in the background," says Bristol. "An artist like Pompeo Batoni made a very good living painting grand tour portraits of the British abroad looking their absolute best." These portraits would then be taken back to Britain and hung up in a country home for all to admire.

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The dawn of photography changed everything. As Liz Rideal (reader in fine art at Slade School of Fine Art UCL) points out in her essay Warhol’s Dream: the self multiplied in 500 Self-portraits, "photography changed the course of portraiture by democratising the process, it was cheaper to be photographed and with emancipation, women too began to manage their own studios." The process has been democratised to a large extent, but Rideal also points out that "not everyone has a smartphone and not all of us use it in this fashion."

For millennia, humans have used images to tell stories — even if those images sometimes bent the truth a little, making them look better, more important, and more powerful. Vanity, narcissism, ambition and social climbing have been around forever. And they're not necessarily a bad thing. Technology has cast the spotlight on these long stranding human characteristics.

By the looks of our Instagram timelines, these traits aren't going anywhere soon. They've just been magnified.

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