Portrait on a Pedestal

In her introductory essay to this year’s BP Portrait Awards, Alison Weir said that because of portrait photography the painted portrait has become an anachronism; it no longer requires to be representational since this task has been seized by the camera’s precision. What painted portraiture necessitates today is to be more ‘artful’; to posses the aesthetic appeal that will allow for it to be remembered as the ultimate orchestra of formal artistic elements. This, together with an artist's ability to look beyond the public face of his or her character and reveal the inner being of their subject, Weir says, is the recipe for the survival of portrait painting.

Does Weir suggest that because photography is representational, it automatically assumes the invisible inner being of its subject? Paul Beel spent months preparing his project, his equipment and himself for Epic Mirtiotissa. His nights were passed in local Greek restaurants meeting and getting to know his models before starting the month long painting of his portrait. What is even more surprising is that Beel’s Epic Mirtiotissa was not even a portrait of people. It might have contained people,  but as Beel said himself, it was a portrait of a place - of Mirtiotissa beach. And regardless of this, Beel still put aside so much of his time to recruit and connect with his various models, to built relationships with them, win their approval and access their comfort zones.

    

A portrait photographer on the other hand receives his subject, directs him on where and how to sit or stand and then starts snapping away. With the simple press of a button he supposedly captures the true essence of his sitter. No planning, preparation, subject-artist relationship required? Just the camera - a big black excuse, a metaphor for the replacement of personal communication by technology: We don’t meet, we email; we don’t call, we sms: we don’t talk, we type; we don’t converse, we absorb and observe information through various hardware mediums. We don’t even have to meet someone in person in order to befriend them. These days we just send a ‘friend request’ and judging by the look of our profile picture they can either accept or reject us as friends. The same happens in the photographer’s studio: Accept.  Photograph. Reject. 'Thank you very much. Next please!'  

I am aware that this is not true for documentary photography. Here photographers often spend weeks, months, even years living with their subjects, getting to know them, understand them and finding the best, most respectful way in which to photograph them. We can then almost equate the making of Beel’s Epic Mirtiotissa with the making of a photo documentary, since he followed the exact same procedure a documentary photographer would, if assigned to document a specific people or place. Why should portrait photography then be any different? Especially when photography already has a reputation for being subjective or ‘cruel’ as Susan Sontag would put it?

Even when an artist succeeds in accessing its subject’s comfort zone, the subject is still exposed to a public or external eye which changes and determines his behaviour, expression or pose. As Roland Barthes said of portrait photography: 

In front of the lens, I am at the same time: The one I think I am; The one I want others to think I am, (and) The one the photographer thinks I am...       

Roland Barthes also referred to this as ‘the mortification of the subject’. Once aware of public observation i.e. the moment the subject freezes into a pose - there occurs an immediate ‘...Death in person’. Portraits photographs will therefore always remain mere photographs of an individual, not representations of the individual  him(her)self. And I am tempted to judge portrait painting by the same measures. Even after extensive subject research, working one-on-one with a sitter for days and weeks on end while painting him(her), it could be argued that it is impossible for an artist to achieve entire objectivity towards his or her sitter. Look for example at Wen Wu’s ‘Venus as a Boy’:

Wu saw her friend as representing the male version of Venus and she decided to paint him in this way as her entry piece for the BP Portrait Awards. The sitter - Wu’s friend - doesn’t necessarily regard himself as resembling Venus. This portrait is Wu’s subject  as she sees him, not as he sees himself or as he is in real life. The way in which Wu painted her friend might perhaps also have been influenced by the location, wardrobe, and ideas she had access to or by what she thought the judges of the BP Portraits Awards might appreciate. Taking all this in consideration, very little space remains for the display of the actual inner being of the subject. 

We could say that Wu’s ‘Venus as a Boy’ is perhaps rather a representation of the modern male as we know it. None of us would be surprised to hear that our contemporary world overflows with boy Venuses. Very few modern males are strong, tough, mucho, ex-soldier material - like the kind our fathers and our father’s fathers were. Now we are talking skinny boys in skinnier jeans with rosy lips who work in offices, use night cream and book in at male spas. If we look at it in this way, Wu’s portrait makes a strong statement. We could say this is a portrait of the modern male. But not of Wu’s friend. It doesn’t reveal anything of her friend’s character, of his inner being, his essence or whatever form of ‘private self’ he might possess.     

Alison Wier also says, because of the high standards of representation set by portrait photography, painted portraits can now no longer just be realistic, they should also be ‘artful’. In order to stand out from the other forms of portraiture, portrait painting now has to speak for art itself and its formal attributes. Colour, line, shape, texture, composition are important elements that will ultimately elevate the reputation of art-for-art’s-sake. This additional requirement subtracts even more space for the revelation of the subject’s inner essence. A subject's naturality now becomes pushed aside, contoured, disfigured and finally abstracted in order to ultimately come alive - not as the voice of the subject him or herself - but as a loud orchestra of multicoloured brushstrokes. This whole seemingly hopeless ordeal of subjective portraiture is revealed in a wonderfully witty way by Cayetano de Arquer Buigas’s portrait entitled ‘Ohh!’ where the sitter - a girl painted in perfect realism - is shocked when confronted with the result of her portrait - an unrecognizable  abstraction of herself.

The great abstract artist Paul Klee reckoned: ‘Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.’  Portraiture, it seems valid to say - whether photographed or painted  - cannot tae credit for Klee's statement. The inner being of a subject can perhaps be advanced toward, but it cannot be approached in its entirety under the conditions of any form of public display. And even more so if the artist - photographer or painter - is a complete stranger to his or her model; it is then when portraiture becomes mere masquerade.

Greek Chariot

Slipping out the backdoor of the National Portrait Gallery after a lazy morning at the BP portrait awards, I suddenly and without reason felt injected with a curious anxiety. As a freelance writer, what was my judgement of these portraits? Did I like them? I sure did. But why? What do they say? And can I draw a line across all of them that points to one quality of modern portraiture itself? I didn’t know where to start. I was begging to answer a question that I didn’t have. But to my relief my helpless fright didn’t last for long. Once I read Paul Beel’s report on the making of his portrait, Epic Mirtiotissa, my frosted thoughts started melting fast, spilling continuous drops of questions onto the tip of my tongue.

Beel happen to get his hands on the BP Travel Award in 2010 – probably the most exciting thing that can happen to any aspiring young artist. Every year the BP Travel Award invites artists to propose ideas of portraits set in interesting locations around the world. If their proposal wins, they are given the opportunity to travel to that exact location in order to work on their desired portrait. Only one artist’s proposal is accepted each year. Their final piece is then shown as part of the following year’s BP Portrait Award exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Beel won the prize for his proposal to paint a portrait of the nudist beach, Mirtiotissa, on the Greek island of Corfu. At first thought I unjustifiably assumed that Beel saw this as a chance to suck empty an opportunity overflowing with all the effortless benefits of a paid holiday. He took a brave chance at proposing the most idyllic, glamorous and relaxing location he could find on planet earth and happen to be lucky enough to win the prize. What a bargain? A week of holiday on the beach in Corfu...

It turns out, my parasitical judgement of Beel’s intent was a big mistake. 'Holiday' was what Beel needed after his 1^st two months of preparing the project prior to his journey to Corfu. And the real work was yet to begin. As absurd as this may sound to us ‘normal’ people, half of the two month preparation involved the emotional state Beel had reach before the commencement of his project - which he intently decided had to be completed as lived ‘through the experience of a Greek God’. The other part of the preparation entailed researching the exact layout and proportions of the beach, planning how to reach the bottom of the beach with all his equipment and hence was followed by Beel’s design and building of custom made equipment as well as a painting cart with which to transport it all(this – Beel bizarrely regarded as his ‘chariot’) and lastly a serious and long overdue exercise routine – the benefits of which Beel would feel as he made his way to and from the beach everyday for as long as the project may have last.  

Beel also organized for two models to be flown in to Corfu for the project - one from America and the other from London. The rest of his models – idealistically free willing - had to be recruited on location, which meant spending long, late nights in Greek restaurants throwing back sufficient litres of ouzo to win the respect of the 'not-so-eager-on-Beel' beach regulars. Beel kept at it for a whole month, painting every day from sunrise till sunset, spending days on some models and minutes on others, until his Epic Mirtiotissa - now known as  a masterpiece – was complete. Beel regards his creation not as a group portrait, a seascape or a genre painting. Rather he considers it to be ‘...a portrait of a place’.

Why did all this make me want burst with inquisitiveness? You’ll be sure to find out if you stick around for the next episode...     

Sassy Schiele

sas·sy ¹  (ss)

adj. sas·si·er, sas·si·est

adj. 1. lacking restraint or modesty, rude and disrespectful.

        2. also a modern term for stylish, chick or sophisticated

A man who was infatuated with sex. The ‘artist’ who painted porn in its most explicit form at a time when the word ‘porn’ didn’t even exist. A complete narcissist, who detested his mother, angered his father and fantasized about his 12 year old sister, Gerti. The ‘painter’ who’s studio became a candy shop where little girls spent long afternoons sucking on sweets. Egon Schiele. The ‘pervert’ who was arrested and briefly imprisoned on charges of molesting and pornography. He painted mostly nudes – often sickly and deformed and engaging in savage sexual acts: males with females, females with females and girls with girls. I am not too surprised that his work scandalized the Viennese public of the time. Or am I?  

I cannot deny that Schiele’s nudes make me feel somewhat uncomfortable. But they also make me feel. They contain an indescribable form of sensation. They make me want to sob. Not because I feel disgusted, upset or even pity for his subjects, but because I think they touch on something deep that very few other nudes touch on. They celebrate the beauty of our savage sexual natures without apology. Schiele’s nudes are shameless. 

Compare Schiele’s nudes with photographs from a 21^st century fashion publication or even a fashion feature from a contemporary pop culture magazine and you’ll be surprised at what you’ll find: cadaverous, wasted-looking girls with dark, gothic make-up, slouched shoulders, aggressive attitudes - androgynous even. Schiele’s nudes resemble something very similar to these photographs. They address issues very familiar to our present day lives: depression, lesbianism, pornography, anorexia, rebellion. Egon Schiele seems to have been foretelling the coming of modern culture when modern culture was but a fetus.

    

Schiele’s ‘porn with a paintbrush’ makes pornography become beautiful, even essential. It puts porn right up there with Goya, Cezanne and Titian’s nudes. Or perhaps even above them. Compare a Titian nude to that of a Schiele. Which is more captivating, more grabbing? Titian’s nudes seem cold, dead, almost inhuman. They are female sexuality ‘well-behaved’. They are 'sweet' if you like. And for those of us who regard Egon Schiele's work as objectifatcations of the female body - it doesn't take a connoisseur to realize there is much more sexism to discuss in a Titian nude than there will ever be to consider in one of Schiele’s nudes and, needless to say,  much more to pity. Besides, Schiele painted himself in very similar, often much more explicit ways than he did his female subjects. Titian's female subject exist for the mere purpose of pleasing. They are objects of male satisfaction. We feel sorry for them. In Schiele’s nudes the pity seems to be reversed back to the viewer. Schiele’s nudes pity all those prudish cowards who fail to rejoice honestly in the beauty of our savage sexual natures. His nudes are different from the rest. Schiele’s nudes breathe. They have warm blood flowing through their veins. Where a Titian nude is poised, seductive, firm, healthy, balanced, adorned and rich, Schiele’s nudes are sick, savage and hardcore. They personify those things that we, as humans, actually experience in real life. His nudes are alive. They feel and make feel. Egon Schiele was a ‘silver-tongued poet’, not a pervert.

Art are...

Some say that art is what you want it to be - that art is a creation of each individual’s own mind. We decide for ourselves what we want to declare as art – whether it is a stain on the pavement, a conversation between two people or a graffiti-covered wall. This is perhaps the purest and most relieving way to think about art. It not only reminds us of our own power to create, but it also makes art look innocent and honest – freed from the prejudice that we would usually attach to it.

I sometimes think of art as a group of powerful people - artists, art critics, art gallery owners, art curators, art sellers and art collectors. I imagine them sitting around a table in a dark room deciding over art’s fate. A bunch of cynical entrepreneurs who are laughing at the ignorance of an inescapable consumerist mentality. This gathering of connivers have slurped up even the last drop of benefit dripping from the 20th Century myth they’ve created and which I have now dubbed ‘The Demise of Talent’. As for the rest of us - we have bought into this myth. They have made us believe that talent has retired, that it is long past its expiry date. That talent is ‘uncool’, conservative, boring. To us talent is no longer the key to success. What counts now is controversiality, shock and difference. Aesthetic beauty has come to be a mere bonus to our appreciation of art.

Art - the talented, humble, small town boy who use to work to make a living has finally smelled success. He now sits on the top of the social ladder, legs crossed in a shiny suit, waving around a big, fat cigar. He sells pebbles for the price of gold. He manipulates the rich and ignorant with his clever spell of words. He is a combination of Macbeth, Iago and Aaron all fused into one perfectly designed villain. Art cannot be trusted. Art is unpredictable. It is driven by superficiality and success. It is a trickster. A traitor. It insults, revolts, upsets and objectifies. And what does it get in return? Money. And lots of it! Not even to mention the publicity, fascination, fanaticism and saucy gossip it leaves behind. Much of what is called Art today is sensation in its purest form. We should not trust Art, but yet we somehow indulge in our addiction to it.

Why is it that we find ourselves in a love-hate relationship with art? Perhaps it is because we can’t figure Art out. And - as is characteristic to human behaviour - we cannot settle for uncertainty. We cannot let go if we do not grasp. Another reason why we feel uneasy yet drawn to Art could be that Art admits about us what we do not want to admit about ourselves. Do not each one of us also contain a measure of Shakespearean villain inside of us? Could it be that we hate Art because it gives away our secrets, our flaws? And that we love it because of its willingness to celebrate our confused nature, honestly and openly?

Perhaps then, what seems to be meaningless trickery is in fact Art as we remember it - objectively smart! Contemporary Art is merely reflecting the mindset of the society it finds itself in. It personifies materialism, consumerism, capitalism and the ever growing loss of morality that goes hand in hand with these extravagances. Very clever we might add, how Art once again carefully camouflaged itself as an inherent part of our being - an unquestionable, ‘indissectable’ creation of our naivety, when in reality it is perhaps desperately trying to pierce through our hopelessly blind satisfaction with ourselves. There is hope once again! We need not give up on Art, but rather we need to watch it closely, carefully and with sufficient scepticism in order to capture every hint it throws at us - or else we might soon find ourselves tiptoeing down the walk of shame with overpriced pebbles in our pockets.