The main preoccupation is with the genre 'self-portraiture' and the theoretical and social basis of artistic creativity in the GDR, in particular the methods of socialist realism and the phases of GDR cultural policies, the critical artistic reaction to the genre, the treatment of self-portraiture as a genre in collections, exhibitions, and the study of art in the GDR. The work focuses on the iconography of the self-portraiture that emerged in the GDR and, in particular, analyses powerful and highly metaphoric paintings. The study is based mostly on painted and drawn self-portraits from the public collections of the former GDR, unpublished documents from archives such as the GDR Society of Fine Artists (VBK), GDR publications and conversations with selected GDR artists. Instead of conforming to the ideal image of the socialist artist, numerous self-portraits prefer to draw on traditional artist mythology, and testify to the deep-felt contradiction between the individual person and the role imposed on the artist from outside. The thesis establishes that although a large majority of the artists living in the GDR conformed to everyday socialist life and social structures, many self-portraits express a self-perception of the artists that is actually far removed from the socialist idea. In real socialism, the state-ordained function of art was primarily to portray the merits of the socialist model of society.Īn abundance of self-portraits, however, testifies to a considerable amount of self-preoccupation, and can be interpreted as an act of self-assertion that hardly accords with the predestined role of the artist in socialism. The large number of self-portraits that emerged in the GDR conflicts conspicuously with the social role of the artist anchored in the cultural policies of the GDR, in which the artist was supposed to perceive himself as a cultural worker whose creative working process was conferred the same value as any other working process. Self-Portraiture aund Self-Understanding in the painting of the GDR from 1945 to the '80s

Personal portraiture