Astrology and Art: Capricorn Self-Portraits

There are two main ways I like to use astrology when I’m thinking about art.

1. Knowing an artist’s birth chart or simply natal Sun can give you real insight into how planets might work out in real life. Works of art are a non-verbal expression of character that often speaks more directly than flabby paragraphs. (In short, “a picture paints a thousand words”)

In particular, I find the self-portrait tremendously revealing since it is necessarily a self-examination. Here are a couple of self-portraits by Capricorn artists. Take a look and see how they speak of January’s cardinal earth sign.

Berthe Morisot (1885), self-portrait

Paul Cezanne (c.1894), self-portrait in a felt hat

If you’d like to see a few more self-portraits organised by sun sign, look at this post I wrote in the summer.


2. And the other astrology game? If you have a strong response to the work of a particular artist, it’s interesting to see where his or her chart touches yours.

As an example, how about two giants of the 20th century  – Matisse and Picasso – and little old me? I adore Matisse (Yup, who doesn’t?). I find his work touches my soul easily. So no surprise then to find his Venus (art) exactly on my descendant, his moon (soul) exactly opposite mine and his Sun (ego) exactly sextile. No wonder he makes me feel comfortable.

Contrast that with Picasso. I see what the fuss is about, but he doesn’t speak to me. What do we share? Weirdly, we do have one exact contact – a Uranus conjunction.

See how this works for you. There are plenty of artists’ charts over at astrodatabank.