Ryan Pickart's Portraits

Ingrid, Ryan Pickart

I came across oil painter Ryan Pickart's work over on Escape Into Life here. It's a bit like a modern Klimt, in pastel oils rather than gilt, but still with those big languid eyes, no? They just jump out of the flat, decorative background.

The artist has more work, including some lovely sketches, on his blog.

Alina, Ryan Pickart

Death Masks

Sir Walter Scott

Death masks were wax or plaster molds applied post mortem to create a replication of the dead's face, and could then be reproduced further. Casts became popular to display or use as a model for a bust or portrait in the late Middle Ages. This practice was common until the end of the 19th Century. Some of the surviving masks are wonderfully expressive. While admittedly morbid, there's something touching and honest about the surviving portraits. They would have served as accurate reminders in the age before photography, perhaps less flattering than portraits but seemingly immediate.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

William Wordsworth

Dion Boucicault

 

Isaac Newton

All these images came from this online archive of Princeton's. Even more can be found here at this Paris shop still in existence today. For a brief audio exploration of death masks, check out Radiolab's podcast here and learn where the face of the CPR dummy came from.

Picasso's Muse Marie-Thérèse Explored at Gagosian

Marie-Thérèse Walter was Picasso's lover, if not his wife, for most of her life. The exhibition Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L'Amour Fou up at Gagosian through June 25th is a museum-quality exploration of Picasso's many iterations of the blonde, Grecian-nosed woman using works borrowed from private collections and prestigious museums. The likelihood of seeing such a gathering, especially some of the privately owned works again is rare, a reason in itself to visit.

The works themselves are of mixed quality, but there are some truly fantastic pieces in themselves. What I enjoyed even more was the story the show told; a romantic one of continuing if not untroubled love. Marie-Thérèse became Picasso's mistress at 17, bore him a child, and committed suicide after his death, 50 years after they met. He painted her throughout his life.

"I see you before me my lovely landscape MT and never tire of looking at you, stretched out on your back in the sand, my dear MT I love you. MT my devouring rising sun. You are always on me, MT mother of sparkling perfumes pungent with star jasmines. I love you more than the taste of your mouth, more than your look, more than your hands, more than your whole body, more and more and more and more than all my love for you will ever be able to love and I sign Picasso." - Letter to Marie-Thérèse from Picasso

A great slideshow on the WSJ site shows many of the pieces.

Right up my alley: Parisian flat containing €2.1 million painting lay untouched for 70 years

As my friend put it when he emailed me this article, this seems right up your alley. Dead on.

An apartment kept although never visited. An exquisite Boldini portrait and old Mickey Mouse toys found. All discovered after the owner's death under a thick layer of dust. More from the Telegraph here.

The portrait discovered there has since been attributed to Giovanni Boldini and went for a nice 2.1M Euro at auction, spurred on by the discovery that the never-before seen piece had been painted of the artist's muse, actress Marthe de Florian.  Boldoni (1842–931) was an Italian genre and portrait painter who was known as the "Master of Swish," because of his flowing style of painting. He painted many high society people.

Portrait of the dandy Robert de Montesquiou

Traces of glamor come through even under dust an inch thick.

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Frida Kahlo, and Me, at MoMA

Me with Frida in Fulang-Chang and I

I took this picture at the MoMA the other day. I really do LIKE Frida Kahlo, even while I think she is over hyped. Fulang-Chang and I depicts Kahlo with one of her pet monkeys. The painting was included in the first major exhibition of her work in New York in 1938 to much attention. Later Kahlo gave the painting to her close friend Mary Sklar, attaching a mirror to it so that, if Sklar chose, the two friends could be together.

And of course, I love inserting myself into other people's art; see Pistoletti and Kiki Smith.

Image from the museum's website, so you can see the painting better:

Henri Cartier-Bresson: Portraits of the Artists

Albert Camus

Some people look exactly like you would imagine them to based on their work. With others, putting a face to a name gives you a rather different insight into who they are (or at least how they look). Cartier-Bresson's portraits of a range of artists, writers, and other creators are perceptive and honest. Each one appears to be that iconic shot you forever associate with the name.

Truman Capote

Marcel Duchamp

Henri Matisse

Alexander Calder

Colette with Her Companion Pauline

Any surprises in here? I love the photograph of Matisse, yet surrounded by birds and well-wrapped up is not at all how I imagined the artist. All photographs are from the Portrait section of Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century at MoMA through June 28. This extensive exhibition is a fantastic one to stroll through and remember yet again why Cartier-Bresson remains such a beloved and respected photographer.

Which is the real Madame X?

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Which of these two images is the real Madame X painted by John Sargent?

As I learned yesterday at Lisa'a History Room, they both are. Sort of.

If you though the one on the left was the Sargent's Madame X, congratulations--you've been to the Met, where that version of the painting is hanging. The image on the right was made to represent Sargent's original Madame. Sargent first painted the infamous Madame X with one strap dangling off her shoulder. The outcry in France over the fallen strap was such that Madame X's mother demanded Sargent remove it from the salon. To appease the public, Sargent painted this second version with both straps firmly in place. The whole risque fiasco ended with Sergent moving to England because of the disapproval of Parisian society.

Who knew there was such a story in a little strap?

A Nude Mona Lisa?

Via the Discovery channel, "Leonardo da Vinci, in a Renaissance version of Mad Magazine, may have painted his famous Mona Lisa in a number of ways, including nude. Now, a painting has surfaced that looks much like the original, sparking debate over just how far the master took his iconic painting.

The newly revealed painting, hidden for almost a century within the wood wall of a private library, shows a portrait of a half-naked woman with clear links to the famous (and clothed) Mona Lisa. The work, which documents suggest was at least based on never-seen similar work by Da Vinci, is now on exhibit at the Museo Ideale in the Tuscan town of Vinci, where Da Vinci was born in 1452. The lady in the portrait does not exactly resemble the original Mona Lisa, but there is little doubt it has parallels with the painting hanging at the Louvre museum in Paris."

While it's not likely to have been painted by Leonardo, evidence suggests it may be a copy of his work. Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa between 1503-1506. This manner of protraying the female nude is not typical for the time. Although Renaissance painters were rediscovering the human body and looking back to Greek and Roman sculpture, their nude creations were ideal forms representing gods or virtues. This is a woman, rather than a reclining Venus or a weak, defenseless Eve. And she's looking looking straight at you. How bold.

Maybe that's what she was smiling about.

Shakespeare, that Beautiful Bard

You think I have a twisted point of view? Because I called the bard a looker?



Perhaps I was unduly influenced by his sonnets to the Dark Lady, you know:


'My Shakespeare's eyes are nothing like the sun; / Coral is far more red than his lips' red; / If snow be white, why then his chest be dun; / If hairs be wires, black wires no longer grow on his head.'



We've all seen the engravings of the balding, scruffy poet...but only recently has a new portrait of the bard emerged and been authenticated.

Voila!

Ooo la la, my aren't we the handsome lad? Aged 46 at the time it was painted, here Shakespeare still has a youthful bloom to his cheek. Not to mention some fine duds. The Guardian reveals:

"New research revealed yesterday contends that the only portrait of
Shakespeare painted in his lifetime has been found. Debates about the real image of Shakespeare often get mired in complicated, art historical detail, but
Professor Stanley Wells, one of the world's leading Shakespeare experts,
announced in London he was 90% certain the portrait is that of the
playwright.

Also, the story of the painting - known as the Cobbe portrait - once again raises questions about Shakespeare's sexuality. Was he more than just good friends with the man who commissioned the painting, his patron the Earl of Southampton?"

Resistance and Success: Career Portraitist Le Brun

Self-portrait, Paris, 1782 (27 years old)

Resistance and success came in tandem to Le Brun as a female painter in French fin de siecle society. The daughter of a portraitist, Louise-Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun (1755- 1842) was painting portraits professionally in her early teens from her parent's home. As this was illegal without a license, Le Brun had to publicly apply for license and the French Academy (unwillingly) had to display her works as part of the process. This was in 1774, when Le Brun was 19 and a year before she married a painter and art dealer who would help her rise. Soon Le Brun found more success than resistance, as Marie Antoinette invited her to court to paint her portrait. The Queen's invitation laid the foundation for Le Brun's great success as the portrait painter of her day.

Self-Portrait with Daughter, Paris, 1789 (34 years old)

Le Brun's skilled, Rococo style and personal warmth pleased the Queen so much that Le Brun was commissioned to paint many at the royal court. In 1783, Le Brun and another woman were both admitted as members of the French Academy (although only through the political pressures of the Queen).

Self-Portrait, Russia, 1800 (45 years old)

The French revolution upset all social order, and Le Brun fled the country. She spent years painting the heads of state of Italy, Russia, and Austria. Then, Napoleon welcomed her back to France, and Le Brun remained an active painter well into her older years, painted over 800 paintings and wrote memoirs that provide a glimpse into how artist's were trained. She lived to be 87 years old, and is as remarkable for steady production of work as well as her rise and fall with the tides of national fortune. All the more remarkable for doing it as a woman.

Self-Portrait, 1808, Paris, 56 years old

Portraiture: the ignored step-sister of Contemporary Art

The Old Masters all did portraits in oils as their bread and butter, but that isn't the case with the big names in art today. Damien Hirst is immersed in formaldehyde, and the majority of great talents are swirling in the shapes of abstraction. Who is painting portraits today? By portrait, I mean the old-fashioned, limited definition that focuses on a human subject and depicts their likeness in oils on a canvas with a degree of verisimilitude.

The real question is, does anyone do that anymore? The photograph is many way has taken over the simpler aspect of portraiture, that is, to record a person's appearance. I was struck by the amount of portraits in the Met's exhibition Art and Love in the Renaissance Italy, and by how few I had seen by contemporary artists. That's not to say portraiture is a dead art, but it is hardly a genre that gets a large amount of attention.

There are a few artists of note, however:

Closest to Tradition
Elizabeth Peyton does small, intimate portraits of friends and cultural icons much as the Old Masters would have, that is, with an eye to documenting what the person looks like. She focuses on portraiture, a rarity these days. A successful and well known artist, she is the only one whose oeuvre consists mainly of portraits.

Figurative Painters of Erotic Tendencies
John Currin is well-known for his figurative paintings, albeit of a more erotic nature. Yet he documents people less and less as stylization's based on cartoons and old masters like Lucas Cranach, and more like individuals. For example, see this portriat of Rachel Feinstein, his wife.

Lucien Freud's work tends to be less camp and more fleshy, but he too is known for his figurative paintings. Here we have a self-portrait on the left. This works is a portraits in the sense that it represents him, but most of his figures are anonymous pieces of flesh. Certainly, Freud is a capable portrait artist though.

Like a photograph, but not
Chuck Close made his reputation on photorealism and figurative painting. While it's true the style below in this self-portrait is not one Rembrandt would have used, it doesn't comprimise the viewer's impression of what he looks like. His very large productions that recreate the pixellated effect of prints and photographs while focusing on a realistic face.

A dying style?
Obviously this is not an exhaustive survey of contemporary art. Please tell me if I'm missing something big.

Portraiture of the old style seems to be out of style. Take a look at Art Net's 300 most searched artists and try to find another living artist on the list who does portraits. That's not to say there are no longer artists for hire, should you want to commission a traditional portrait. It's just that the people on this list aren't on the top 300 of Art Nets.

I would have argued that interest in the individual was perinneal, but perhaps I'm wrong. Has traditional portraiture become irrelevant?

Review: Catherine Opie Retrospective at the Guggenhiem

Catherine Opie's shocking and raw portraits of herself and friends from the early 90s are what came to mind when I heard of this show on view until January 7, 2009 at the Guggenhiem New York. Her oeuvre on view at the Guggenheim not only disabused me of any notion of rawness in her work, but also opened me eyes to the extent of her subject matter. This classically American photographer came into the limelight for portraying herself and her friends as gender bending homosexuals into body modification and sadomasochism. Beyond horror or titillation, she exposed an underrepresented class of people with political intent and humanity while exploring notions of home and family.

Home and family seem stereotypically female in a way that Opie is not often considered, given her non-traditional presentations of gender. The people we see in her works are homosexual couples posed in traditional ways, of men dressed as women and vice-versa, and of tattoos and piercings that look deliberately painful. Her presentation of them staring at the camera with a direct gaze is agressive in a simple way. Yet stereotypically female too is the self-portrait of the artist holding her baby above, similar to a Madonna and Child scene, except that the luminosity and realism exposes her scarred breast where the word "Pervert" was carved for a previous portrait.

The rawness I anticipated in her work is actually a direct, at times aggressive portrayl of who people are with no apologies. She tends to present her subject--be it a person or a bridge-alone. Her portraits share the quality of formal compisition with the gaze direcly at the viewers, as well as a sense of art historical reference. For example, Opie was influnced by Hans Holbein's use of luminous color and worldly references for a series of portraits of friends. Opie often uses ornately patterned fabrics as a background. The contrived aspect of scenes and formal aspect to portraiture lend her work a theatrical quality that is in every sense neo-Baroque.


She combines the visually gorgeous with the horrific. Two clear example are the self-portraits that involve cutting into her flesh, in which she intends to shock her message into the consciousness of America. In the first one, pictured above, she takes on what it means to be a lesbian in America in the 90s, by putting a social label on her body. The other work, showing the artist's back cut in a childlike pattern of two figures holding hands in front of a house. The figures are two girls. This is how Opie communicates about gender and family and home--how sterio-typically domestic, no?

No, Opie is much more than that. I felt her most moving work was done of a friend and performance artist to the performance artist Ron Athey, who had recently been diagnosed with HIV. In 2000, they createded large-format Polaroids to create larger than life images of him based on past performance pieces. One strong and moving work is a lovely composition in which the precarious balance between life and death is presented as the artist lying on a bed of gold with an upraised arm from which hangs a series of neeedles. As image reproduction is severly kept in check, you would have to go to the Guggenheim to see it.

Series of highways, series of portraits, series of homes, series of couples/homes across the United States, Opie hammers home her message through repetition, as if demanding we look not at one individual, but many. The use of series really helps her explore subjects in a more illuminating and thoughtful way--otherwise easy to dismiss as a fluke. She presents a body of examples and says this is America. The importance of Opie's work is in it's messages about people, and, in that way, her photography is as American and compassionate as Walker Evans' photographs during the depression were.

Portraitist Elizabeth Peyton is no Warhol (and not as fun as C.L.U.E. either)

The New Museum of Contemporary Art of Bowery is hosting Live Forever, works by portraitist Elizabeth Peyton, and so I took my excited little butt there last night, after a long day of work. (Not coincidentally, the New Museum is free on Thursdays from 7 to 10 p.m.)

I had only seen Peyton's images online, but thought they used color well and that it was exciting to see something as traditional as figurative portraiture make a splash on the contemporary art scene. Peyton paints friends and also cultural icons in her remarkably cohesive oeuvre. As it was her paintings of Kurt Cobain, lead singer of grunge band Nirvana who committed suicide in the 90s, that brought Peyton into the limelight, I thought I would be encountering something Warhol-esque, where the confluence of the individual and pop culture become huge statements about our cultural identity.
My expectations were confounded. Peyton perhaps gives us an intimate glance into her interior world, but I wouldn't even go so far as to say she's making a statement about herself. And yet, she manages to say nothing about the people she portrays at the same time. Remarkable.

Peyton's works are small and intimate, consequently seeming overwhelmed by the whiteness of the New Museum's gallery space, and painterly in a broad way. Miniatures are often exquisitely detailed, but these approximately 10" x 12" works were broadly sketched out like watercolors. They were unlike traditional portraiture in that, instead of taking the subject in a formal pose, these were composed like Polaroids as if the subjects were caught unawares at extreme angles. They were well-painted and pleasant. Unfortunately, I can't say much more in their favor.

While Peyton is a figurative portraitist, she does have a distinctive style that colonizes her subjects as her own. All her subjects become triangular faces with bright red mouths and slanty eyes, and she seems to prefer fey males. The works are stylized enough to be distinctly hers, and are more revealing of her than the subject. Perhaps that itself is the difference between her work and traditional portraiture.

Seeing her oeuvre at once, I had the idea of that this was her interior world in which the works were snapshots of memory.Peyton's style does not seem to have evolved--any of the portraits could have been painted at any point in her career. Overall, it was a little...boring.

However, I insist you stop the New Museum anyhow, for a very small and very fun installation. Wedged into the interior staircase between the third and fourth floors, an installation called "C.L.U.E." will entertain you better than clowns and acrobats at the big top. According to its press release, "C.L.U.E. (color location ultimate experience) is a collaboration between artists A.L. Steiner and robbinschilds (Layla Childs and Sonya Robbins), AJ Blandford, and Kinski. Like a living organism, C.L.U.E. adapts to the space it temporarily occupies. In this manifestation at the New Museum, it takes the form of site-specific performance, multichannel video installation, and video projection."

What does that mean? It means that, once you put on the headphones, you can't help but bob your head in time as the matching pair of girls do funny dances across parking lots, deserts and redwood forests, all via projector through the window onto the building across the way. A blast.

Paul McCarntey and Nicolas Sarkozy star in Art Gone Asunder

Two fabulous headlines for your Wednesday morning: Paul McCartney left his head on a train and Sarkozy is 'needled' by voodoo doll.

Ahhhh...Wednesday morning news...

Paul McCartney’s Head?

Yes, it's true. McCartney's head has been lost, rather, the ape-like wax representation of it. Professional transporter/grand bobby Joby Carter was taking it to an auction in Berkshire, England, where it was estimated to fetch up to 10,000 pounds. Then Carter, similar to Mrs. Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest, left the baby, ahem, the head. The BBC reports: "The head was left in a bag under a seat on a train from London at Maidenhead station in Berkshire on Thursday. The service would have terminated at Reading."

I suspect McCartney paid him so that nobody would ever connect him with that terrible head again. And speaking of unwanted likenesses, Sarkozy's in a bit of a stitch across the channel. Oh the power of the public image! Oh life as art! Oh unwanted portraiture! Oh the horror!

Nicolas Sarkozy is not amused.
As one can tell from the image of the French President, left, Sarkozy is not amused to have been transformed into a voodoo doll. BBC reports that "Sarkozy has threatened to sue a publishing company if it does not withdraw from shops a 'voodoo doll' in his image." It even comes with pins! According to BBC, "The publisher said Mr Sarkozy's reaction was 'totally disproportionate' and has so far refused to pull the doll from shops." Vive la revolution!

Ah, life and art don't really change, do they? As I wrote in an earlier post, a voodoo doll bears a remarkable similarity to a medieval portrait, and here we see the voodoo doll as portrait. In the Medieval ages after a regime change, the new rulers would scratch out the eyes in portraits of previous rulers.

So what conclusions can be drawn from this morning's news? If you are a public figure, people will do terrible things to your likeness, in which case you must either steal or sue the maker. Then after passing your hands three times over the false image, you must suck the tiny bit of your soul that is trapped in it out. (I recommend the breath they teach in Lamaze class.) Then you must burn the false, soul-sucking idol. Add its charred remains to the images you create of your enemies for a little extra oomph.

Tidbit: how similar is a voodoo doll and a medieval portrait?

I've been reading about the history of the portrait lately. The section before the Renaissance, medieval Europe, seemed like a blip to get through. Really, one, if one were less aesthetically inclined, might use the word, dare I say it, boring?

Not really the case. Portraits functioned as more than just commemorating an occasion, such as marriage, or representing a person visually. It was not important that portraits resembled their subject at the court where people were idealized or to entice one into marrying a woman or to honor the noblest qualities of a ruler.

As it happens, the portraits depicting their subjects naturally were destroyed. These people were criminals who had escaped justice. Portraits had fetishistic properties, and could be used as a substitute for a person. So a criminal who could not be caught was depicted, and then his punishment was given to the portrait, limb by limb as the case may be. Referred to as "excutio in effigie," the portraits could even be burned publicly.

Hoardings of portraits have been found of persons with their eyes scratched out. Often when a regime changed, the new rulers would gather images of the former governors and scratch their eyes out. Images--often unflattering ones designed to provoke scorn--were placed in public view as well. All these have the ultimate aim of destroying the subject's authority through defiling the image of them.

So one function of the portrait is punishment? It's crazy to think that in the Middle Ages, when ruled by God in Christian lands, people gave such power to the graven image. Reliquaries were worshipped as holding real bits or traces of holy people. But did they believe the images of the saints and devils in the churches had the same power? What would happen if someone scratched the Virgin Mary's eyes out? Maybe the world still gives the same talismanic properties to images they deem holy.

There you have it: why a voodoo doll is like a medieval portrait. Up next, why a raven is like a writing desk, and other important questions.

Grotesque Old Woman: Why did Leonardo and Matsys depict you?

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) sketched the head of the woman to the left. Flemish painter Quentin Matsys (1466 - 1530) painted the oil portrait below. People have generally assumed that Matsys was copying Leonardo. Obviously, there is a remarkable similarity between the two heads produced in roughly the same time. Both artists had an interest in the ugly as much as the beautiful, and these images have popped up multiple times in my reading on ugliness and on portraiture. I think these two works say a lot about the nature of beauty and function of portraits.



I've read that Leonardo despaired of finding true beauty after struggling with the Vitruvian man, and turned more to grotesques and caricatures. I don't find this very convincing. Ugliness, just like evil to good, is so much more interesting than beauty. Also, throughout his life, Leonardo displayed an acute attention to all aspects of life.

So there are many questions about who this woman is, who drew her first (assuming she is the same woman), and why she was drawn. This oil is one of Matsys's best known pieces today, and, once considered simply a copy of Leonardo, is now thought to depict a real person with Paget's disease, though it is sometimes said to be a portrait of Margaret Countess of Tyrol, also known as "the Ugly" or "Satchel-mouth." Was it a commissioned portrait of an individual, or a grotesque head done for fun? Without answering any of these questions, I think one can delve into the ideas of beauty and portraiture that informs these works.

Beauty in the Renaissance era functioned as an outward sign of one's inner self. Beauty was associated with goodness, and ugliness with vice. Paradoxically then, females--as the original temptresses-- were either beautiful and pure, or ugly and lecherous. What a man is to do in those circumstances, I don't know. More and more in this time, we see men paying homage to ugliness as the safeguard to chastity, or ridiculing old women for their fading charms, or chastising women for using make up to alter their appearance and trick people. In this portrait, the woman is clearly ugly. She does not seem lewd, nor does she seem made up. In Matsys portrait, her old-fashioned bonnet would have made her seem additionally ridiculous. However, Matsys portrait--perhaps just because of the oils--makes her look like a real individual, especially in the eyes, whereas Leonardo's sketch seems like another of his grotesque heads even as the bulbousness of the figure is less pronounced.

Are the images of the grotesque women meant to depict a real person (or people)? I would argue that both fall into the tradition of the caricature, placing them squarely at odds with beauty. Notice, though, how despite her ugliness she is not revolting. Caricatures, by creating a harmony out of the disproportions of ugliness, neutralize the bad associations that ugly females had. Albeit at the same time as it mocks and dehumanizes its subject, caricature elevates ugliness to a kind of beauty. It is a really interesting phenomenon, documented in Umberto Eco's On Ugliness, which I highly recommend.

There are very few women who have spanned the centuries by being Quasimodos. Women are traditionally celebrated for their beauty or virtue. These two, or one, women interest me. If anyone know more about them, please let me know.