Exhibition Of The Week From Selfie To Self-Expression

It requires just four actions and less than five seconds to take a selfie, said Kate Samuelson in Time magazine.

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Small wonder, then, that we collectively take around 93 million of them worldwide every day. The selfie is often condemned as a narcissistic phenomenon, but as a new exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery suggests, it may just be the latest chapter in the rich history of self-portraiture. The show brings together hundreds of exhibits, tracing the story of self-representation from the Old Masters to the present day. Reproductions of self-portraits by artists as diverse as Velázquez, Lucian Freud and Andy Warhol are presented alongside famous contemporary selfies, such as the infamous “viral” image of David Cameron, Barack Obama and the then Danish PM, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, snapping themselves at Nelson Mandela’s funeral. Ultimately, the exhibition poses a timely question: are