Why Final Self Portraits Are Terrifying 

My grandmother was a painter and she had to give it up before she passed. She was not famous but she was very talented. She was very depressed when she couldn't paint anymore. I hope one day I could take pictures and make a website for her to show the world her beautiful paintings.

those drawings by william are fucking haunting how hollow they are

I'm having a really bad episode in my life. Suffered from mental illness since I was 5-6 years old. I'm an artist and listening to all these stories from other struggling artists makes me feel that I am not alone, and that many other mentally ill artists used their art as a medium that in the end, inspires more people like us.

Utermohlens last portrait is simply harrowing.

Picasso's last words were apparently "Drink to me."

Fantastic video. Goya's shift from painting Spanish royalty to some of the most dark shit is something I'll never not love. I'd love to see more like this!

Sad but fascinating look into the human psyche

It's unfortunate that you don't get much recognition from RU-vid's algorithm but your videos have demonstrated consistency in quality if not in frequency. Another excellent video 👏

one of the symptoms of schitzophrenia is losing your ability to make facial expressions as well as going a sort of nonverbal. theyre called negative symptoms. i think this is probably also what brian was expressing in his mouth fixations. i went through it myself, i could only write to express myself. and at that my thoughts were very broken. i could at times not even finish a sentence

My father has schizophrenia, and his name is Brian too. The self portrait at 6:56 touched me in a way I can't really place but it brought tears to my eyes. Thank you for showing this to me.

One of my mom's best friends was an artist who did a painting every morning for like 50 years straight. She got dementia but she never forgot to paint every morning. Her paintings became more and more abstract and wild as she deteriorated, it was like everytime she painted she would leave a part of herself on that canvas. I dont know what her last one was but watching the whole process unfold over the course of years is still the most heartbreaking and beautiful bit of human emotions ive ever seen.

I got real near dying for a while because of being postponed for a surgery, and then surgery complications. I made some wild self portraits. I felt like I was falling apart, just a breeze somehow keeping my meat-shell moving. It was very depersonalizing and none of my portraits had full faces. I'd get to the eyes and it would all fall apart. One had my head cracking open like a shattered egg. Another just had static and clouds. I am still puppeting this meat body around, and The worst of its over, but I still don't feel quite like I'm living

my takeaway was to do more art while I still can, and explore myself more thru it. thank u rly good vid

Me: One more video before going to bed. The video:

I’m so glad you included the point about the quality of the art piece deteriorating with the mental health of the artist. I always hated the trope of troubled artists making the best artworks when they are troubled- when in reality, at least for me, it’s always been the opposite. When your mental health is low, it feels almost physically impossible to create “good” artwork.

Brian Charley is one of my favorite artists. His artwork is a view into a world that I can’t even imagine living in. Truly beautiful work, i love it.

Williams final portraits are gonna haunt my nigtmares

I thought Goya’s last self portrait was “saturn devouring his son” (which isn’t even the actual name of the painting but)

The artist uses brain, eyes, hands, The whole body really, in a coordinated project to represent the world.

3:21 This is like the Epic Mickey concept art, now that I think of it they kinda even share similar stories

I love these videos! Please keep it up!

Had the feeling to check your channel and sure enough there is a new video yay

good to see this channel back !

Excellent as always 👌🏻🥇

Been waiting for someone to make a video like this! New sub!

Your videos have come so far over the years! Lemonade stands to rap battles and great video's! 😁

I really enjoyed this. Your explanations are very insightful. 😊

The face over Goya's shoulder is one of the most frightening depictions of a human I've ever seen I think the faces behind him were meant to portray people close to him who didn't have the best intentions. The kind of friends and relatives that only stick around when they think they could benefit from your misfortune-- they look hungry, desperate. Inhuman

Damn I love this channel. Excellent video

Also to mention Helene Schjerfbeck's self portraits that changed dramatically from 1895 until the very last at 1945.

So glad you’re back

that last line is so good, "the darkest parts of this battle wont be seen on a canvas". good shit

watching someone slowly lose their mind is sad. its happening to my father right now because of brain cancer. his drawings and words are often nonsensical but there are moments of clarity i cannot understand. id take some of his burden if i could.

great conclusions. great video

This was an awesome video 💯👏🏻!

Great video, thank you

great original content,thanks

fascinating video. The schyzophrenia one is amazing at describing what is pretty much a demonic growth dooming someone's mind, living on (in) his head triumphaly yelling and babbling.

Crazy the algorithm gave me this wonderful info as I’m doing a self portrait mid spiral.. though the similarities are striking, most of our final self portraits die with us

Awesome video my friend

Goya's final painting is Haunting.

Great video. Incredibly sad but life often is :(

great video and commentary

I think Goys is weakly holding on to his bedsheets which shows his precarious health state at the time, and in contrast his doctor is very strong and administering treatment to him.

I'd like to add that Goya is simply one of the best painters of all time. Being a spanish person, myself, I was taught this from a veeery young age by dozens of extremely talented painters. Every day I jog near his own square, in Madrid, all the way down his street, Goya, one of the best streets in the city.

That last self portrait by francisco Goya is so beautiful. I want to tattoo his work on my body

👏🏽 good show!

Wow this is so intense. The emotions…..i dont even know what to say. It’s all really heavy.

this was really good

Time for me to go to bed one last video to watch before I go to bed. *Last video before I go to bed* Guess I'm not going to sleep. 😅 Thanks youtube!

Missed u deburke

Can’t wait for my Bryan Charnley moment 😊😊😊

Brian also had the "ESP horns" in his work. The squiggles and mouths are common in schizophrenic art.

william's are no doubt the most haunting

Excellent

Picasso was the biggest troll in art ever. Dude must be still laughing beyond the grave watching his doodles selling for millions of dollars.

Beautiful

These stories are so sad!

I domt like how vague he is about these artist's illnesses. William had Alzheimer's Disease and that series of painings was him painting how he viewed himself at each of the six stages. He clearly loved art so much to be able to remember how to do so.

Very interesting and terrifying

Can you do more of this stuff 😀

There's a video of the caretaker's music set to William UD Molen's portraits. its hauntingly apt.

I find these calming but horrifying.

Have to make a self portrait for my art class. Let’s hope it’s not my final one lol

i honestly feel like i struggle to express myself properly through art. i love to paint and draw but i just struggle to know what i feel and i wish that i could shut off the part of my mind that i know is holding me back from putting it on paper.

Interesting last words. I often think my drawings, etc, are meaningless, so I usually just don't do anything, lol.

Another thing that was really freaky was that in those early abstract self portraits, one of them actually had his own blood splattered all over it

damn what a cool fricking channel

Probably need to start doing some art to get this type of thing out of my head before i get too old and theres too much in there. I dont want to have to look at it though 😮

Hearing the salt and sanctuary main menu theme has me tweaking

Fun fact: Willam UD Molens last "painting" in 2000 actually was used with a pen on a piece of napkin

Not self promotion, more a moment of transparency and observation. I believe that professional artists are doomed to develop serious mental diseases and it's due to the unnoticed stress of the artwork. The work does put artists in a form of mental distress that they don't notice. That's why alot of artists don't want to be stuck on one piece with how mentally exhausting it is to compose or concentrate deeply for so long of a time. That's just the time and energy, nevermind the feelings. My own gallery work, although vividly colorful, sends me into feelings of isolation to the point that I feel like there's nothing out there, to the point where my self portraits always include me bleeding from some kind of serious injury. 3 of them are private and hidden showing my brains being blown out. TL;DR Artists go crazy.

It’s crazy to think of Molen's series from an analytical perspective. Was his art accidental? Could he have even understood that what he was creating was a perfect reflection of his mental deterioration?

6:23 jump scared me for some reason.

Damn. Having a bad time today, so I only have negatives to say, but I'll spin it into a controversial positive. Had they lived forever, they never would've made these powerful paintings.

You should do a similar video about musicians, or even just hip hop (since rock n roll is covered so often its a little cliche at this point). Capital Steez is an interesting individual with a very sad story, and the song "Free The Robots" is the only song Capital Steez made where he didn't sound happy (He jumped off the top story of the Capitol Records Building not long after making the video) he was an amazingly talented individual who was screwed over by record label's. Also had eery lyrics that seemed to allude to how he would go such as "I'm fly like $uic1de jumpers" and "The yellow tape was a warning sign, but it's hard to cut straight to the chase without a dotted line" Eyedea is another very interesting individual who won rap battles and had a very promising future ahead of him but overdosed at a young age. I can go on and on, but there's definitely enough on this topic to make a video about it, or even an entire series

Really good ending.

another self portrait i think needs to be included in this is keith harings. i think that’s one of the most heartbreaking pieces ive ever seen and it shows a powerful message about the aids epidemic as well

I don't like that Idea that the real William passed away a long time before he died. William was still there, changing, suffering til the end.

Judging by his self portraits he didn't age well at all.

Interested to see what Jack Stauber's final self portrait will look like.

Alzheimer and dementia are horrible diseases. I hope they'll find a cure one day.

john william godward last painting is the prettiest.

fuck, this is depressing.

Enjoyed the video though I do have a suggestion could you have their names present on the screen too? I was trynna look up two of the artists I’d never heard of but couldn’t figure the spelling of their names

😭😭😭😭Picasso was petrified

Melancholy.. 😔

Utermohlen definately tried to draw himself after that, its just that it didnt do anything

Haunting bonechilling and interesting

You should do a collaboration with solar sands

Awesome video tnq

👍

i just found out picasso died in the 70's. i always thought he died in like the 1700's lol

Love

This is pretty horrifying

Yeah, hate to break it to you but that wasn’t Utermohlen’s final drawing. He actually made two more after the last one you showed.

Well hey there stranger ❤

Dang

Counter point they aren’t terrifying we just attribute that meaning to them because we are afraid of death.

I adore goya