I was shaken by Schjerfbeck’s self-portraits at the Finnish National Gallery. Taken as a series, these paintings grapple with mortality and disappearance. Perhaps a self-portrait always does. But these do not flinch. In the last two years of her life, Schjerfbeck painted twenty pictures of herself until she begins to appear alien. The final image comes just before her death at the age of 83: a simple charcoal sketch of her face, half illuminated and half in shadow.

Our art and literature are fueled by the desire to capture and archive the self, to untangle the mess of dealing with being a person who knows they will disappear someday. Can a series of Instagram snapshots be viewed as an extension of Schjerfbeck’s inquiry? Today’s social media inherently coats any image with the gloss of performance rather than something earnest, curious, and raw. But perhaps the screen itself has become too tainted by the nervy energy of distraction and need to allow for contemplation.