Evan Johnson(revised)

Portraiture through history was a way for artists to study form, and for the subjects to have a keepsake. At the turn of the century modernists came to realize that their existence was merely the result of happenstance and portraiture became a way for artists to study human psyche. Pablo Picasso studied himself through self portraiture to consider his own existence. Another of his fascinations was the women he used as subjects, sexualizing them in their portraits. The multitude of different females in his portraits made his personal feelings for the subjects perfectly clear. Les Mademoiselles d'Avignon shocked the world with the provacative depiction of the women in the picture plane, and thus sexuality became a major topic of expression through portraiture.

Frida Kahlo, female artist from Mexico immortalized her sexuality through her self portaits in which she presented herself as being as beautiful as she saw herself to be. She saw her natural state of being as perfect, she let her brow and hair on the upper lip grow just, and in her confidence and repitition she made physical traits thought to be masculine and unattractive for a women to posess sexual and gorgeous.

Andy Warhol expressed his sexuality very openly in his social life, during interviews, and in his art work. The 1964 film Blow Job is a self portrait in which Warhol is framed from the neck up and between the title and his actions, the viewer can only imagine that he is receiving oral sex just below the camera. 

https://vimeo.com/45258317