Filters and Flattery

Modern selfie filters — smoothing skin, enlarging eyes, slimming faces — echo the flattery of court portrait painters who softened royal features to please their patrons. The technology changed from brushstrokes to algorithms, but the impulse is identical: present an idealized version of yourself to the world.

Warhol's silk-screened self-portraits treated his own face as a consumer product — reproduced, color-shifted, and mass-distributed like his Campbell's Soup Cans. The self disappeared beneath the brand. The portrait became advertising.