The advent of Abstractionism in the early 1900’s led to an even further shift away from the realistic face than of Gustave Courbet’s fantasy self-portraits. Artists like Picasso and later Chagall, unlocked their imaginations and let shapes, colors and patterns represent their inner selves without as much emphasis on capturing a literal likeness of themselves.

The father of Abstraction, Pablo Picasso, created several remarkably different interpretations of himself in paint, pencil and ink. His earlier self-portraits from 1900 and 1901 are very much in the same vain as Rembrandts’ and van Goghs’. Picasso stares out from the canvas at the viewer, allowing his expression to reveal himself. In 1907, he took a Cubist approach and with areas of color and exaggerated features made himself into a wide-eyed character. By 1938, he abstracted his figure to such a degree that both eyes rested on one side of his face, allowing the essence of his likeness to replace the realism of his features. Picasso utilized the narrative self-portrait even further in a series of prints in the 1960’s. In No.319 of the series, "Picasso portrays himself as a wizened voyeur wearing a jester's hat, who peers morosely at the enthusiastic love-making of a handsome young artist and his model." The staging of this design, with Picasso’s apparent anguish with old age and revealing portrayal of himself, is quite different from the careful display of characters in Courbet’s Interior of My Studio.

Another notable narrative self-portrait from the same era was Marc Chagall’s I and the Village created in 1911. In it, Chagall created a memoir of his childhood in Russia. The painting is a deeply symbolic fairy-tale of characters and color. In the center are a man and woman, perhaps Chagall and his wife, abstracted figurines walking on a hillside. The character does not really resemble Chagall, in fact, he did not even need to consult the mirror for inspiration. The story he wanted to tell was deep inside him.