‘The original selfie?’: Cardiff borrows Van Gogh self-portrait for selfie show

Visitors to the paintings, which include Van Gogh’s Portrait of the Artist (1887), will be encouraged to take their own self-portraits. Photograph: Wales news service

It is possible the artist may not have wholly approved of one of his searching, intense self-portraits being likened to an image grabbed on a mobile phone.

But a Van Gogh oil painting has been unveiled as the centrepiece of an exhibition in Cardiff that poses the question: “Is a self-portrait the original selfie?”