Portraiture art
Schultz’s Peanuts comic strip are well known around the world, open source images are hard to come by. We “see” in images of Charlie Brown, Lucy, and Linus convincing depictions of child characters whom we know from repeated experience and from narratives that make them live for us. Yet few would argue that Charles’ Schultz’s spare sketch lines meticulously capture the faces of children. We find these techniques comfortable and convincing because they have become conventional. In our day, cartoonists and advertisers suggest characters, emotions, and actions with a few deft strokes of a pen. The image is composed with abstract conventions: the braided hair, the pointed facial features, the fixed, dreamy smiles, these would have been virtually identical in similar funereal pieces.Īrt can represent its subject, then, can very well as Stylized art: “Figurative visual representation seeking to typify its referent through simplification, exaggeration, or idealization rather than to represent unique characteristics through naturalism” ( Stylization). Stylized Art is actually very common. We might imagine that the couple preferred to be remembered for their social class rather than for their specific appearance. Instead, it effectively represents a conventional idea of an affluent couple in Etruscan society. But how perfectly must an image emulate the precise appearance of a figure (the visual subject) for us to recognize it? And are we looking at a specific object or person or an image representing a class of subjects? The image of our Etruscan couple makes little attempt to capture the individuals in the way that a modern photographic portrait would. Representational Art presents visual subjects that we can recognize. So, what do you think of the representational technique in the Etruscan effigy? How vividly do you see the husband and wife as individuals? A “good” portrait, many feel, would capture the idiosyncrasies of an individual’s appearance and character. Centuries of post-Renaissance portraiture and nearly two centuries of photography lead many in the Euro-American West to expect Mimetic, imitative realism.
Of course, we approach the image from our own perspective. Portraiture is clearly a branch of Representational Art (also known as Figurative Art) which depicts images that can be recognized from the real world.
Many cultures have attributed magical properties to the portrait: symbolization of the majesty or authority of the subject, substitution for a deceased individual’s living presence or theft of the soul of the living subject ( Portraiture). From earliest times the portrait has been considered a means to immortality. The principal portrait media are painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography. But portrait painting continues to flourish.The art of representing the physical or psychological likeness of a real or imaginary individual. Since the 1990s artists have also used video to create living portraits. At the same time, photography became the most important medium of traditional portraiture, bringing what was formerly an expensive luxury product affordable for almost everyone.
Most of Picasso’s pictures of women, for example, however bizarre, can be identified as portraits of his lovers. Instead artists painted their friends and lovers in whatever way they pleased. A notable exception was Francisco Goya in his apparently bluntly truthful portraits of the Spanish royal family.Īmong leading modern artists portrait painting on commission, that is to order, became increasingly rare. Portraits have almost always been flattering, and painters who refused to flatter, such as William Hogarth, tended to find their work rejected. They have been used to show the power, importance, virtue, beauty, wealth, taste, learning or other qualities of the sitter. Before the invention of photography, a painted, sculpted, or drawn portrait was the only way to record the appearance of someone.īut portraits have always been more than just a record. Portraiture is a very old art form going back at least to ancient Egypt, where it flourished from about 5,000 years ago. Unknown artist, Britain The Cholmondeley Ladies