Why are portraits popular?

Posted: 22/06/12 02:20 | 7 Comments

The BP Portrait Award has just announced the winners of this year’s competition. It’s got me pondering why I’m always keen to visit it, and why it stands among the most popular of annual exhibitions in the UK. It’s simply, I think, that portraits are highly accessible.

We immediately connect with faces, with people, and with representational images of faces. It’s also a bridge to understanding that artists tackle portraits in incredibly varied ways, and offers an opportunity to reflect on why an artist has chosen the media, the techniques, the approach and the context visible in their work. Having said that it would be unusual for a piece to win that challenges the figurative tradition. The winning artists this year have been quite candid about their practice. Its an eclectic band of winners. There’s the overall winner, Aleah Chapin, whose open and intimate portrait of ‘Auntie’ draws you towards the details of her ageing body in an empathetic way. Then second prize went to Agustín Estudillo for El abuelo (Grandfather). This artist studied in Cordoba, and I think sits firmly in the Spanish tradition with the figure appearing from the darkness. I don’t think comparisons with the dark images of Goya are amiss. He talks about the portrait:

photo(5) — El Abuelo by Agustín Estudillo

‘I worked with artificial light and with a chromatic scale, mainly within the black and white spectrum. I made this painting because of my grandfather and his life experiences attracted me. It’s not a purely analytical portrait of my grandfather, but it’s a way of showing a part of the human condition to which he belongs. ….I’m not only creating a portrait of my grandfather but also revealing a part of myself.’
The Richie Culver portrait by Alan Coulson came third. He did observational sketches from life and then finished the painting at home.

photo(6) — Richie Culver by Alan Coulson

Finally there is Jamie Routley won the Young Artist award with his portrait of a news vendor. He talks, on his website, movingly about the process of painting Tony Lewis, and why is was an intense experience for both of them.

He also explains that he didn’t start out with the intention of creating a triptych, but that it grew out of the project, as he attempted to capture moods, situations and feelings.

Posted by author: Jane Parry

7 thoughts on “Why are portraits popular?”

Jose says:

22nd June 2012 at 3:48 pm

I find that portraits always have a magical quality to them. You look at a portrait and, in a way, it is like looking into a mirror. You see yourself on a different lifeline. It makes you think “that could have been me had I been born him/her”. I would say that of all forms of visual representation, it is the portrait that most strongly elicits a sense of common humanity in the viewer.

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Laura says:

22nd June 2012 at 6:43 pm

I am also a fan of nice portraits. For me being portraited is being subject to a test, how does he/she see myself. Very often the artists transfer psichological or antropological features to our portraits do not match exactly with how we ourselved do see things, and that is a miracle, being seen by somebody elses eyes.
Have a great week-end.
Laura

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Olivia Irvine says:

24th June 2012 at 7:57 pm

I love good portraiture but am always disappointed with the Portrait Award. The paintings are usually highly photographic and lack empathy. I went last year and was out within twenty minutes. I found it a highly depressing experience. The winning piece was reasonable, but everything else just looked copied straight off photos. What is the point of that? Perhaps this years is better- the winners do look more interesting. It is hard to capture someone from life and takes real skill and determination.

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- Jose says:
  
  26th June 2012 at 11:04 am
  
  Very interesting comment Olivia…it is usually photographers aspiring to be painters – e.g. HDR manipulations – and not the other way around! I hadn’t thought about the marked photographic bias of the portraits in the Award…But what really made me think was your comment about the lack of empathy. I wonder why that is. Could it be that in an attempt to make the portraits so photographic, as in, visually objective, the artists denied their own feelings and subjectivity towards the sitters?
  
  Reply
  - Peter Haveland says:
    
    26th June 2012 at 1:25 pm
    
    Perhaps what needs consideration here is what is the motivation, the meaning behind photo-realistic painting (I tend to feel still that HDR manipulations are a solution looking for a problem) and I am ignoring those who feel painting has been on a downward spiral since Zeuxis!
    In general photorealism seems to be based on the idea of subverting both painting and photography using the possibility that exists in painting to be totally selective in deciding what to include and what to exclude in the image (the paintings of George Shaw for example never have any sentient beings in them and may even be a figment of his imagination) whilst referencing and relying on people’s perception of photography that it is totally accurate and objective. Add to this the increasing demand for ‘actuality’ from a public who seem to revel at the same time in ‘reality’ TV and celebrities who are famous for being famous (Paris Hilton?…what’s that?) It would seem that Beaudrillard’s ideas of hyperreality; the copy of something that does not exist; have some leverage here; are we sure that the portraits are of a real person for example?
    As for sympathy added to the photorealism do we have an unholy synthesis of Freud and Richter?
    
    Reply
  - Olivia Irvine says:
    
    26th June 2012 at 10:16 pm
    
    Yes, Jose, you may be right. It used to be a stipulation of the Portrait Award that paintings had to be done from life. I’m not sure if it still is but it couldn’t be regulated anyway. Painting every eyelash an blemish shows skill, but little else. I feel it leaves no room for the viewer- it’s like we are locked out.
    
    Reply
  - Peter Haveland says:
    
    27th June 2012 at 10:51 am
    
    Perhaps what needs consideration here is what is the motivation, the meaning behind photo-realistic painting (I tend to feel still that HDR manipulations are a solution looking for a problem) and I am ignoring those who feel painting has been on a downward spiral since Zeuxis!
    In general photorealism seems to be based on the idea of subverting both painting and photography using the possibility that exists in painting to be totally selective in deciding what to include and what to exclude in the image (the paintings of George Shaw for example never have any sentient beings in them and may even be a figment of his imagination) whilst referencing and relying on people’s perception of photography that it is totally accurate and objective. Add to this the increasing demand for ‘actuality’ from a public who seem to revel at the same time in ‘reality’ TV and celebrities who are famous for being famous (Paris Hilton?…what’s that?) It would seem that Beaudrillard’s ideas of hyperreality; the copy of something that does not exist; have some leverage here; are we sure that the portraits are of a real person for example?
    As for sympathy added to the photorealism do we have an unholy synthesis of Freud and Richter?
    
    Reply

Why are portraits popular?

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