What is a portrait?
What are the moral dimensions for the audience/artist and artist/sitter?
How to convey emotions?
What is the 'essence' of the portrait?
Is a portrait non-fiction?
Fortunately the most interesting session was the first, so I could pay attention properly!
Dr Kathleen Stock - Objectification, Subjectification and the Portrait. Sussex University
Objectification is all around us - images in adverts (eg Beach Body Ready, Calvin Klein 6 pack). It treats the person as an object, and is not just about sex (although it often is).
Referred to Martha Naussbaum who lists significant ways of objectifying
1. Portrays a person as an instrument (ie as a means to an end, or as using the person)
- lacking in autonomy
- inert or lacking in agency
- interchangeable with others (ie not individuals)
2. Portrays a person as violable
- something than can be owned
- lacking subjectivity.
So with the above conditions, is an image, a portrait, objectifying if the above are applied?
Not necessarily.
Manet's Olympia. What is not objectifying about this, is the gaze of Olympia - Direct and gives individuality. Sex instrument, but in control. However the Maid is objectified as she lacks autonomy, is interchangeable with others, is likely to be owned, lacks subjectivity.
Encourage the viewer to see. The viewer should see the mental life of the sitter, the free will of the personality. It is mind suppressing to focus on other thanks than the mind of the person depicted.
Lucien Freud Sunny Morning - we cannot understand the faces
All could be representatives of a class, not individuals. They are props in general images. They are all about flesh, not thought. Mind suppression reduces the awareness of the mind of the person depicted.
Subjectification is defined as paying particular attention to the mind of the person.
Yet portraits are silent, static, non-linear - limited in response to an individual's subjectivity eg gesture, movement and speech. However Stock said this is not a problem, because it is common to the medium of portraiture. The portrait is still about the individual, not the group. About a particular named or identified person, ie not interchangeable. Example Guardian Women's Page Contributors (see bottom for image)
Van Gogh Potato Eaters. Represents the class.
Advertising stock photos. Represents the consumer classes.
Portraits focus on faces - this enables unique identification. Bodies are not so distinctive. There are culturally mediated recognised forms of expression - dress; objects; post; gaze; composition. EG Elizabeth I - pearls for chastity; sun for power; hand on globe.
But Portraits are not necessarily about the inner life - because of:
- angle of shot
- about nude body, not the head
- being someone else.
Nadav Kandar and Max Houghton. (in conversation)
Portrait as mirror. Ethics of the face-to-face encounter. Need to be understandable - self as other; narcissus.
Image of Trump on old battered royal-style chair. Looking back.
Tracey Emin - breaks down socially constructed persona.
A look away (or death mask) shows the inner life of the sitter. Viewer has to fill in the dots. Viewer has to work.
Kandar uses shadows a lot in his photographs. Shadows are part of oneself that we struggle with. Negative. Follows us. darkness. Something behind - more than is visible. What is behind the shadow on the wall? What has happened is not necessarily positive. Louis XV. Small minded to put own slant on it.
Nature gives you the face you have at 20.
By 50 you have the face you deserve.
Triangle between Artist
Viewer Seeing
All links equally important.
Hans Maes. And Time will have his Fancy. Portraits of Unknown People.
Writers do not write about being overwhelmed or enchanted by a work. Enchanting and moving art - identify them and list why. A personal view. Not about greatness. Portray the innermost soul of the subject. How do we know what they reveal is truthful or accurate? Or not misleading? Why does it matter. The inner self does not explain enchantment. Complex.
- Eye contact - direct/personal engagement.
- Neutral background - no period details.
- Naturalism - real person - flesh and blood.
- Head and shoulders - proximity - face-to-face. No up and down gaze from the viewer.
Stare; serious; stillness; reflection and self reflection. Direct gaze leads to heightened perception.
- Unknown sitter. Sitters were important in their time - now completely forgotten. (Like me and my work!!)
Vanitas paintings. Memento oblate idid - you will be forgotten. This insight creeps up on you.
Not self defeating.
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