These two digital images reflect my pencil drawings at the Met of two more artist's portraits of themselves. Munch's Self-Portrait with Cigarette, a 1908-9 lithograph on paper was drawn in black pencil for this site, on 30 May 1998, Kokoschka's 1913 oil on canvas self-portrait, was drawn a month and a half later, on 13 July, using colored pencils. My drawing of Munch carries a note copied from information at the exhibit: "Smoking his last cigarette before trying to quit, to regain health harmed by a breakdown." By then, of course, he had already produced his most famous painting, The Scream and well before, had, with Gaugin and Valloton revived the use of woodcuts. A second, earlier Munch self-portrait was drawn for this site, in Oslo, in June 1999, and the two may be compared on another screen (to access the pair, click on the one above). The Kokoschka painting reflected here was greyish and very dark and the background was very smooth but somber grey, something the pencil copy only roughly suggests. The digitized image here was darkened on the computer, and framed with an appropriate color, to give it a bit more of that original cast, but it is still rather different. Kokoschka had barely begun to paint at the point of this self-portrait, and surviving the turmoil of two world wars, he enjoyed a first exhibition at MOMA in New York, in 1949.
