Latest news with #portraiture
The National
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The National
'It's not just a big selfie': Inside the unexpected revival of old-school painted portraits
It was, concedes Claudia Fisher, a lot of money to spend. 'I'd never spent that kind of money on something before,' says the American creative director of women's tailoring brand Belle Brummell. 'But I have something unique that gives me a lot of joy, and I have supported the art form and that's important.' Indeed, Fisher's Dh98,000 outlay went to having her portrait painted by celebrated portraitist Paul Brason, who counts leading industrialists, academics and the British royal family's late Prince Philip among his subjects. 'I just loved the way he could render fabric so exquisitely, giving his paintings an old master quality, even if the painting now just hangs in my house,' says Fisher. 'It's fun to say 'hi' to it once in a while.' Fisher is not alone. Both the Portrait Society of America and the UK's Royal Society of Portrait Painters – the two most august institutions of portrait painting, which not only promote portraiture, but also operate commissioning services that connect artists and subjects – report healthy demand. If one might worry that the smartphone age – which has made the constant taking of pictures almost compulsive – would kill off portrait painting, it seems the reverse is the case. 'Portraiture is quite a big business within the art world, really, even if it is often portrayed as being rather traditional, in the sense of being concerned with old ideas of beauty in art,' says Anthony Connolly, president of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. 'And while a lot of institutions still commission portraits – the church, military, academia, corporations, heads of state and so on – portraiture is changing dramatically from the idea that it's an elitist thing to do. Now, it's more just a culture of people painting people.' Connolly argues that while a portrait is definitely a luxury item, for a one-off work by a highly skilled individual, and for something that will last generations, it can nonetheless represent very good value, 'especially if you put it in the context of another bespoke item, the likes of a Savile Row suit '. Besides, portrait painters run the gamut as much in their price – from as little as Dh2,000 to much, much more – as they do in their style. Dubai artist Suzi Nassif, for example, creates portraits in surrealistic, sometimes cubist styles, with her subjects expressed more through unexpected colours and symbolism than an accurate likeness. 'They're imaginative portraits, more as I see them and not necessarily as the subjects might see themselves,' says Nassif, who, once she has got to know her subject, prefers to then work from memory. 'The power of the portrait is to examine the psyche behind the mask, and to do that I think it makes sense to use all the creative tools available to the painter.' Certainly, while for an artist who prefers to work in person, a portrait might require the sitter to give perhaps two to three hours of their time, maybe four or five times over several months, it's also increasingly commonplace for artists to work in part or entirely from photographs. For example, artist Columbus Onuoha, who also lives in Dubai, is recognised for his photorealistic portraits in oil paint. Digital photography actually helps him zoom in on the precise details that make his portraits so arresting. It also allows him to tackle the work as inspiration strikes rather than be beholden to the sitter's schedule. Far from being put off by having their image rendered in exquisitely unforgiving detail, 'clients love the honesty of the results, the transparency', reckons Onuoha. 'Though, occasionally, people of a certain age want to be represented as a little younger than they are. But a portrait should be a record of a time of life. I tell my subjects to be proud of the age they are, though I sometimes do a self-portrait to remind myself how it feels.' And how does being intimately examined, and then represented in paint, feel? Connolly, who is currently having his own portrait painted, suggests that far from being a discomforting experience 'it's very convivial, intimate without being salacious and almost like a kind of meditation. You feel like you're part of the painting process even though, of course, you're not painting the portrait.' Yet surely just having a photograph taken – even one by a professional – is faster and simpler? Yes, Onuoha agrees, but that is to miss the point of why people want to be painted. He argues that, while social media has certainly helped him to build a career, it's the very ubiquity of digital images – and the way they have democratised portraiture – that encourages many of his clients to want 'something that's handmade, tangible, and that puts them at the centre of an artistic process', he says. 'These people also tend to love art. They want to be involved.' But others go further, arguing that a painted portrait simply catches what a photograph never can. As Christine Egnoski, chief executive of the Portrait Society of America, suggests, it reveals the qualities of a person unseen by a snap, 'offering the viewer a more real sense of the person's presence, as well as the artist's own expression. An artist adds the feeling of the person.' It explains why, she argues, 10 million people queue to look at the Mona Lisa each year, and the enduring appeal of the portrait in art, both before and since the advent of photography. Frances Bell, portrait painter and recent winner of the Portrait Society of America's prestigious Draper Grand Prize, puts it another way. 'A painted portrait has something of the thrum of life about it, something transcendent – there's so much life on the canvas that it can feel like a window on another, sometimes historic world,' she says. 'The artist is trying to work out who that person is – their mannerisms, how they hold themselves and so on – so the result understands something deeper than a photo can. It's not just a big selfie, but is very personal, which is why it's very important that a sitter pick the right painter for them.' It's also why, she suggests, people so often turn to this special means of representing someone not out of vanity, but to mark a special moment in their life – an important anniversary, for example, or, as more than one of Bell's clients have done, to celebrate getting over a major illness. And why, so often, it's not the sitter who commissions the portrait for themselves, but a partner or family member. Sure, the result may never be hung in a gallery or a museum, but what better way to celebrate and immortalise an individual life than in paint?
BBC News
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
The Documentary Podcast Amoako Boafo: Creating space to celebrate Blackness
The Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo has attracted global fame for his bold and sensual portraits. He paints bodies and faces using his fingertips instead of a brush, capturing form through direct, tactile gestures. When he went to art school in Vienna, he was struck by the extent to which Black subjects had been overlooked in global art. Determined to change the status quo, he drew inspiration from early 20th Century Viennese artists like Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele and added his own techniques to invent a fresh new style of portraiture. Lucy Ash follows his preparations for a major new show at Gagosian in London. It involves a transformation of the gallery space into a full-scale recreation of a Ghanaian courtyard – just like the shared space in which he was raised. With the help of his collaborator, Glenn De Roché, an architect famous for community buildings and with an artist friend who produced a set of playing cards, especially for the event. This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from In the Studio, exploring the processes of the world's most creative people.
Yahoo
15-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Smithsonian faces an existential crisis. The world is watching.
When the National Portrait Gallery was created by an act of Congress in 1962, the authorizing legislation defined portraiture as 'painted or sculptured likenesses.' And when it referred to the future directors of that museum, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution, it was with exclusively male pronouns. 'His appointment and salary,' the text read, would be fixed by the Smithsonian's Board of Regents. Fourteen years later, Congress amended the original legislation to widen the definition of portraiture to include photographs and 'reproductions thereof made by any means or processes.' As the NPG built its collection and expanded its mission, it was clear that there were many Americans who would never have their images painted or sculpted — mainly Americans who weren't White, male and wealthy — yet were nonetheless essential to the story of America, its history and culture. Kim Sajet, who became the first woman to lead the NPG in 2013, was hired to continue what that amending legislation did in 1976. She expanded the definition of portraiture and widened the scope of people considered worthy of representation in the nation's portrait gallery. Visitors now encounter painted portraits, photographs, ink-jet prints, sculpture, videos, assemblage pieces, paper cutouts and videos. Women, people of color and those who identify as LGBT are more regularly seen in the museum's galleries. Last week, President Donald Trump attempted to fire Sajet, continuing an assault on the leadership of top cultural institutions that has led to the dismissal of Deborah Rutter, the first woman to lead the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; and Carla Hayden, the first woman to lead the Library of Congress. Trump offered no substantial reason for Sajet's dismissal, using only a variation on his all-purpose denunciation of leaders he doesn't like: She is, he said in a Truth Social posting, 'a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI.' When she was hired, the Smithsonian celebrated Sajet's broad cultural range and diverse roots as a Dutch citizen born in Nigeria, educated in Australia and with deep professional roots in U.S. cultural organizations. Efforts to caricature her tenure as partisan or obsessed with diversity or identity issues can't be squared with her track record of traditional programming and collection building, which included acquiring the oldest photograph of an American president (an 1843 daguerreotype of John Quincy Adams) and exhibitions such as the rock-solid 2023 survey of colonialism, '1898: U.S. Imperial Visions and Revisions.' It's not clear that Trump has the authority to dismiss Sajet, and a Smithsonian spokesman said 'we have no comment at this time' when asked whether she is still the museum's director. Despite receiving federal funds, the Smithsonian is independent of the executive branch, and its museum directors are hired by the Board of Regents. But Trump's effort to oust Sajet presents the Smithsonian with an existential crisis: If the president succeeds in removing a key leader who is not accused of any professional or personal misconduct, he will effectively gain control over the content and mission of the entire Smithsonian. This also presents a critical leadership test for the Smithsonian's secretary, Lonnie G. Bunch III, who is negotiating potentially devastating budget cuts from Congress, including zero funding for the forthcoming National Museum of the American Latino. If Sajet's status as head of the NPG becomes a negotiating chit, then everything the Smithsonian does — including its commitment to telling the truth about history, science and art — will be negotiable. The Smithsonian has a long and sadly craven history of caving to critics, including making changes to exhibitions after pressure from activists and members of Congress. Former Smithsonian secretary G. Wayne Clough censored an NPG exhibition of portraiture featuring LGBT people in 2010, after pressure from conservative Christian activists. Clough forced museum curators to remove a single video, by the gay artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz, which actually made the exhibition more popular when it traveled to Brooklyn and Tacoma, Washington. The precedent for that intrusion on editorial independence had been established at least since 1995, when the National Air and Space Museum censored an exhibition about the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb. The Enola Gay controversy, which centered on some veterans' opposition to an evenhanded curatorial discussion of why the bomb was dropped and whether it was necessary, damaged the institution, but it also helped foster widespread and lasting resistance to censorship and content meddling throughout the organization. But those examples were mere brush fires compared with the destruction that would follow a new precedent, the right of the president of the United States to dictate hiring and content. Trump's ongoing efforts to assert control over the performing arts, museum sector and the larger American historical narrative have been audacious and destructive. Subscriptions sales at the Kennedy Center are down some 36 percent from last year, and community arts and humanities groups around the country are suffering from the loss of small but essential grants from organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Unlike previous scuffles with Congress, which involved particular exhibitions and were limited to a few controversial subjects, Trump is using his anti-DEI agenda as a master key to exert transformative power over the Smithsonian. If successful, he won't stop with the removal of Sajet, who was hired because Smithsonian leaders and the nation at large were once committed to telling a richer, more inclusive story of the American people. The Smithsonian is currently seeking a new director for the American Art Museum and will need to find one for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, as well. If Sajet is removed, that will be a third major post to fill. What qualified, respected museum leader would take these jobs knowing that Trump has final say over exhibitions, hiring and publications? Throughout the past four months, people tracking the administration's attack on the federal arts and culture infrastructure have periodically wondered, is this the moment of truth? Will the latest executive order or social media post from the president determine the future and independence of the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, the Smithsonian, the National Park Service, the Institute for Museum and Library Services? Is this the tipping point from mere chaos and destruction into genuine authoritarian control? On Monday, the Smithsonian Board of Regents will hold one of its four annual regularly scheduled meetings, and Sajet's future is almost certain to be one of the main subjects under debate. It will be tempting for the regents to attempt some kind of compromise, find some middle road that appeases the president and preserves the Smithsonian from further harm. But there are no good options, only worse ones. A direct confrontation between the Smithsonian and Trump would probably lead to a protracted battle in Congress and perhaps the courts. But compromise measures, such as reassigning Sajet to some other Smithsonian position, might only embolden Trump for further, even more destructive attacks. There is no middle road. Appeasement won't work. The fate of the Smithsonian is now in the hands of Bunch and the regents, and the precedent they set will reverberate throughout every institution in America that, like the Smithsonian, is dedicated to the 'increase and diffusion of knowledge.'
Washington Post
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
The Smithsonian faces an existential crisis. The world is watching.
When the National Portrait Gallery was created by an act of Congress in 1962, the authorizing legislation defined portraiture as 'painted or sculptured likenesses.' And when it referred to the future directors of that museum, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution, it was with exclusively male pronouns. 'His appointment and salary,' the text read, would be fixed by the Smithsonian's Board of Regents.
The Guardian
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Secrets of the hair salon, from high street to high rise: Eileen Perrier/Dianne Minnicucci review
The art world is obsessed with the idea of 'being seen'. In a culture of lookism, being seen is understood as tantamount to existing, even to survival. But being seen is complicated. Both the current exhibitions at Autograph grapple with this through photographs by two women of the same generation working in portraiture. Eileen Perrier's A Thousand Small Stories occupies the ground-floor gallery. Since the 1990s, Perrier's work has centred on setting up temporary photographic studios, in homes, hair salons, on the streets of Brixton and Peckham in London, and at a metro station in Paris. Her 2009 exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London displayed large-format Polaroid portraits taken in pop-up studios at Petticoat Lane market and in the nearby 23-storey tower block Denning Point. The travelling portrait studio has been a device Perrier has used for 30 years, to take photography into diverse communities and tackle the politics of beauty and identity. This is the first survey of her work. Perrier makes portraits that don't rely on beauty but find it everywhere. She doesn't flatter – in fact the lighting and poses in her pictures in some series are direct references to school photographs, such as Grace (2000) in which her subjects, including the photographer and her mother, share the physical trait diastema (a gap between the teeth). Perrier's subjects are mostly regular people, commuters, passersby. In these quick encounters with ordinary lives, Perrier gives glimpses of beauty where you don't look for it. An image of two women on a leather chesterfield, from the series Red, Gold and Green (made between 1996 and 1997 in the homes of three generations of British Ghanaians), scintillates with shining confidence, from the women's style to the polished ceramics gleaming on the dresser behind them. The makeshift red cloth Perrier has hung up behind them is a reminder that this is a studio, too, where an unexpected moment of beauty, through the alchemy of the camera, becomes an eternity. There's an unresolved paradox in Perrier's pictures, between the artifice of beauty and the photographer's constant quest to find it. Perrier acknowledges this, between celebrating beauty and critiquing it, right from the start of her career. One of the earliest works in the show belongs to her documentary portrait series, Afro Hair and Beauty Show. Between 1998 and 2003, Perrier photographed women attending the annual show at Alexandra Palace, one of the venue's biggest events of the time. It's a document of evolving styles, creativity and the importance of self-expression through hair. While making the portraits, Perrier also began collecting and photographing products for black hair and skin from London shops and photographing them. She turned these grooming goods into a wallpaper that also charts a controversial side of the beauty industry: Dear Heart promises skin lightening, hair relaxant for children is marketed as Beautiful Beginnings. Perrier is positioned through this show as an important counter to a Photoshopped, retouched reality, in a culture of beauty and image worship. Upstairs Dianne Minnicucci's small exhibition of new works – made as part of a residency funded by Autograph – picks up on the impact of white-centric beauty standards on women of colour. Minnicucci confesses to not being comfortable in front of the camera herself – she has portrayed her family and domestic scenes with an intimate, autobiographical tenor but had never ventured in front of the lens herself. Her show, Belonging and Beyond, is about a personal struggle with self-image, compounded by photography, and now using photography as a means to unravel and understand it. Like Perrier, Minnicucci began by dismantling and reconstructing her studio – bringing it into the classroom of Thomas Tallis school, south-east London, where she is head of photography. Working alongside her students for six months, inviting them into the work as collaborators, Minnicucci was forced to practise what she'd preached – to embrace discomfort. A series of wistful black and white self-portraits sees Minnicucci try to break through this awkward confrontation, all of them shot in Lesnes Abbey Woods. We see her figuring out what to do with her body, her hands, her gaze. Half-masked by spiky shrubs and trees, thesepictures have a quiet, self-conscious grace. Minnicucci dressed in white in this misty atmosphere looks shyly away from the camera, tentative, uncertain. This is not really about the images but what the process reveals. In a film accompanying the images, Minnicucci realises where her trepidation in taking self-portraits as a black woman might come from: 'Because I haven't been exposed to those images, maybe that's why?' Eileen Perrier's A Thousand Small Stories, and Dianne Minnicucci's Belonging and Beyond are both at Autograph, London, until 13 September
