Petra Kolářová
"Facing Myself": Karel Hlaváček’s self-portraits
The Czech decadent poet and artist Karel Hlaváček (1874-1898) was the author of a series of self-portraits in which he expressed a modern conception of the artist's individuality as represented by the Moderní revue circle and in the broader context of European Symbolism. Hlaváček's own portraits are interpreted in the light of the motif of the face as mask, as well as medical research on human expression, in the context of ideas about the degeneration of society at the end of the 19th century and in the broader tradition of depicting melancholy in art. In his crowning self-portrait My Christ from 1897, he achieves an emancipation as a self-aware artist confronting contemporary society.
Keywords: Karel Hlaváček – self-portrait – face – mask – Decadence – Symbolism – melancholy – Félix Vallotton – Edvard Munch – Albrecht Dürer – Duchenne de Boulogne – Stanisław Przybyszewski – Arnošt Procházka – Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic
design by Bedřich Vémola
