In 1855, Courbet produced an enormous painting of his studio, entitled, The Artist's Studio: A Real Allegory of a Seven Year Phase in my Artistic and Moral Life.
Good for him!
He had the audacity to show it in a tent next to the 1855 World's Fair, which had accepted other of his work, but not this one. The world came to his studio to be painted and he painted them. But this painting is his, in some wonderfully, selfish, ostentatiously selfish, way. They come to his studio; he is the center of the world. Here is the world, figured around him, rather than a painting of the world focusing on them.
Most self-oriented art is numbingly boring because there is not that much interesting about you to anyone other than yourself, your mother, and maybe sometimes your partner. If you have a dog, maybe your dog, but the dog is probably more interested in your roast beef sandwich than what you are saying. My students sometimes ask me why I do not permit them to write personal essays, and I always tell them that once they have proven to me that they can say something interesting about the world in which they live that is thoughtful and well-researched then I will be glad to hear what they have to say about themselves and their thoughts. I might say the same to many artists.
But Courbet had done the work and, like Velazquez' Las Meninas before him, could place himself in the world consciously as well as self-consciously. And, for doing so was able to inspire many other artists to work hard to find their own audacious impulse, and each of them worked hard to get there too.
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