The role of portraiture as an Avenue for Enriching the Artistic Journey and Biography of the artist: An analytical and descriptive study of selections from the works of the M'hamed Issiakhem

Abstract

The research delves into the aesthetics of portrait art, whereby this genre of art expresses multiple cultural, identity, and specific value dimensions, most notably facial features and their expressions, or the beauty and ugliness of the outward and inward aspects of the depicted personality. Considering that artistic paintings and drawings of portraits are one of the primary artistic aspects for recording historical events and immortalizing artistic figures and historical heroes, and confirming their names across the timeline, the portrait emerges as an icon that enriches the artist's imagination and transcends the external framework of the embodied personality. This makes it a self-expressive tendency that reflects his internal emotions and individual experiences, thereby breaking the bond with prevailing norms and opening up the field for deepening the experimental thought of the spirit of the time with its circumstances and events that influenced it. This also allows him to break free from aspects of traditional aesthetic vision and creative thought, responding to his intellectual inclinations with the aim of creating specificity between him and the attempt to innovate previous topics or the experiences of others.

Portrait art as an independent art form is embodied in "self-portraiture," which does not require any form of artistic production other than the artist drawing a self-portrait in and of itself. The artist stands before a test of the personality he believes in and becomes confined within its sanctity, then embodying it and disappearing behind it at the same time. Thus, he becomes two in one day: the artist and his personal painting that will continue to honor and document him. This raises a series of questions and several issues, the most important of which are: does the artist resort to drawing his self-portrait as an artistic method to appreciate himself during the life cycle that accompanied him throughout his autobiography and artistic career as he sees it himself, or is it an enlightened artistic expression born out of modernization, transcendence, and experimentation?