How the Internet has Debased Self-Portrait: A Curated Dissertation Considering the Impact of Digital Aesthetics and Media on the Art Historical Canon

"[It] could be a very punk rock thing. Sure, a lot of people are trying to be something that they aren't. But think of all the paper waste that we could avoid by using the internet as an alternative to flyers, perzines, and print photography. I'll wade through thousands of tritely constructed compositions and boring layouts to find one interesting work, one moving image."

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How the Internet has Debased Self-Portrait: A Curated Dissertation Considering the Impact of Digital Aesthetics and Media on the Art Historical Canon

"I just think that the whole idea is analogous to the false sense of self-actualization that the internet makes available to everyone. Rather than study, work, and produce, one is able to simply namedrop, reconfigure the colorways of their templates, and present a non-thing as a product. (phone rings, playing an arpeggiated Tristan Chord.) Excuse me. And somewhere, shrouded in the subconscious, he or she is allowed, no, expected to suppress any guilt. That person continues the cycle of masturbatory, self-aggrandizement in lieu of real actuation."

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How the Internet has Debased Self-Portrait: A Curated Dissertation Considering the Impact of Digital Aesthetics and Media on the Art Historical Canon

"Running rampant are these people who claim Sherman, Mapplethorpe, and Schiele as influences. Yet, it is as if [they] are only covering [their] tracks with a now obliterated tradition of self-portrait, stemming from 15th century self-promotion, to a more modern introspection through one's own work. Velazquez may not have been modest, but myspace.com was not his gallery. Photoshop was not his studio."

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How the Internet has Debased Self-Portrait: A Curated Dissertation Considering the Impact of Digital Aesthetics and Media on the Art Historical Canon

"The red, mesh booty shorts were what terrified me most. Although, to find one's father hunched over an old iMac is a wholly terrifying experience. His back was bent, thrusting his small paunch, and his head was crooked so he could see the monitor. The only appendage not locked into that awkward contrapposto was his index finger, ready to click the digital shutter. If his Parisian dealer would have walked in instead of me . . . his [work's] value would have plummeted."

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On Payment

"Payment of the heating bill makes you feel at ease. Even if it's late, licking that goddamn envelope slakes the shakeys. You keep living like a dog, and that thing is in the mail. Dogs don't pay bills, but you don't lick your asshole--couldn't if you want to. You lick envelopes."

-Anna d'Choldbiet, age 73

Paul Danbury, age 14:

But I guess that’s what dreams essentially are, though; just some heightened sense of perception. You just really feel dreams. It’s pretty intense, and sometimes I think that I am actually experiencing my dreams like I would experience any other waking moment, but after I think about it for a spit, I always reduce that notion back to just thinking that I had an extra sense of sense. When everything else was shut down in my body, I could actually take some time to entertain those cavernous thoughts that I had every single second of every single day. I know that I’ve heard that dreams are pretty much just actualized thoughts, but I’m talking about the ones about feeling up girls and unhooking their bras, and driving a fast blue car down a sleek highway in some loud lush rainstorm; the ones that I wanted; the aspiration kind of dreams. I knew those kinds of dreams were there, usually, but when I had to look at other things and taste all the air all the time and smell the pungent fragrance of a rainy morning, I just couldn’t give them the attention they deserved. That feels strange for me to say, because while I’m walking around all the time, I’m thinking all about dreaming, and all about my dreams, but the second I would utter a word to anyone about any aspect of them, they would shatter into a thousand brittle shards. So, I just didn’t talk about them, ever. I didn't talk about anything. I don’t know why people always say to follow your dreams, though. They should tell you to be more selective about just which dreams you should be following. I’ve learned that I have a lot of dreams that come straight from the hottest pits of hell itself.