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Portraits that aren't
Traps and trickery in contemporary portraiture
Has the portrait ever been quite what it seems?
In most cases, probably not. The dazzling realism of, say, a Holbein may lead us to assume we're viewing almost a mirror image, but for centuries artists have flattered fee-paying subjects as readily as today's art editors digitally enhance top models.
Modern movements - Cubism, Fauvism, Expressionism - attempted to leap beyond the purely mimetic, with their effect on portraiture prioritising the presence, aura or psychology of an individual.
Photography, briefly, gave us the most accurate documentation of everyday reality, but that, too, quickly became as much about artifice as objectivity - although belief in its authenticity lingers stubbornly to this day.
Contemporary portraiture, however, has many further tricks up its sleeve. Much of today's most exciting use of the genre crams a multitude of possibilities into an action-packed, snare-filled space. True products of the contemporary mash-up, these are the kinds of work we'll be considering here: portraits that are no longer simply depictions of individuals, but portraits, in a more complete sense than ever before, of our own lives and times.
Mistresses of disguise
The photographic work of American artist Cindy Sherman is perhaps one of the best-known examples of portraiture that isn't what it seems.
During her long career the artist has consistently appeared in her own photographs, yet always assuming an identity other than her own.
In her first important series, Complete Untitled Film Stills, Sherman posed as actresses from varying movie genres, the production of the images carefully styled to give the requisite sense of authenticity.
Since then, Sherman has adopted many other guises, including historical figures, clowns and even centerfolds. In some of her most recent work, new photo-editing techniques seamlessly duplicate her image so that she appears twice - as different people - in the same photograph.
© Cindy Sherman, Untitled No: 129, 1984; Untitled Film Still No: 7, 1978
Sherman's practice challenges our long-held belief in the objective reality of the photograph.
'The camera never lies', yet her self-portraits of people she isn't vacillate between fact and fiction and in so doing, explore further assumptions that many tend to regard as truths. For example, Sherman has often adopted specific gestures, costume or props in order to convey recognisable 'types', a reflection of the societal clichés commonly used to (mis-)interpret those around us.
Portraits of the future
Japanese photographer Miwa Yanagi likewise plays with the idea of portrait / self-portrait in her ongoing series My Grandmothers.
The artist's work has generally centred on an investigation of women's roles in her native country and to create the Grandmothers series, the artist interviews young women about the dreams and aspirations they harbour for themselves - however improbable - fifty years into the future.
Based on these comments, Yanagi photographs the women experiencing the scenarios described, yet made up to resemble the old women they will eventually become.
In this way, the photos act as a kind of 'future portrait', investigating notions of time, identity and personal fantasy.
© Miwa Yanagi Mika, My Grandmothers (details)
Another Japanese artist, Yasumasa Morimura, has specialised in 'appropriations' of artworks since 1985.
Inserting his own face and body into reproductions of famous works by artists such as Manet, Frida Kahlo or Valezquez, the artist literally stamps his own personality on classic art. Similarly, he has posed as well-known movie stars, sometimes in elaborate sets recreating stills from films in which they have appeared.
© Yasumasa Morimura
While many see Morimura's flamboyant, camp aesthetic as a fun but slightly obvious strategy, others consider his work more complex.
For example, the images appear to operate as a kind of wish-fulfilment motivated by the artist's fascination with various aspects of fame. By 'becoming' a classic image or celebrity, Morimura assumes some of their instantly recognisable, enduring status.
This approach, as we shall see, is characteristic of several other contemporary portrait makers, and his obvious re-workings of both high and popular culture certainly provide a clear-cut example of the eclectic borrowings of post-modernism at work.
Interestingly, the artist has also recreated pieces by Sherman - in which, of course, he poses as Sherman posing, in turn, as one of her own fictional characters.
Beneath the mask
While Morimura generally delights in facilitating recognition, UK artist Gillian Wearing partially or completely disguises subjects in order to emphasise alternative aspects of their identity. Masks, in particular, are a favourite form of concealment.
In a 1994 video, members of the public responding to a small-ad invitation to "Confess all" donned party-style rubber masks in order to anonymously reveal misdemeanours, vices and personal traumas.
A year later, Wearing filmed herself walking through a busy London street with her face completely bandaged (below).
Based, as the title suggests, on a real experience, the true subject of this movie portrait is not the artist herself, but the reactions of those around her as well as the unknown woman who inspired the piece.
© Gillian Wearing: Homage to the Woman With the Bandaged Face Who I Saw Yesterday Down Walworth Road, 1995
In later works, Wearing conceals the identity of subjects through far more sophisticated means.
At first, 'Olia' appears to be a sensitive, though fairly conventional photographic study of a naked woman. Yet there is something disquietingly unreal about the figure, and in fact, the image depicts a model 'clothed' in a latex cast of her own face and torso.
Olia, 2008 © Gillian Wearing
In order to understand this portrait in any conventional sense we would literally need to delve beneath the subject's skin, and here, as in Sherman's work, the artist forces us to question the notion that photographic images are indeed authentic and absolute.
In 2003 Wearing again used herself as model for the elaborate project 'Album', in which complex prosthetics transform the artist into members of her immediate family, as well as a teenaged depiction of herself.
Self-portrait as my father, 2003 © Gillian Wearing
Although the disguises - created in collaboration with the famous waxwork museum Madame Tussaud's - are extremely convincing, Wearing takes pains to reveal her strategy by openly terming each work a 'self-portrait'.
Thus asserting her own identity, the portraits become a statement concerning the artist's perception of family ties. Her striking visual conceit claims that, in a very real sense, genetic and social links mean that she is, at least partly, each of the people she portrays.
Painting the photograph
A further project - and one of the artist's most recent - moves the emphasis away from photography to reflect instead on the artifice of the painted portrait.
Rowena, 2008 © Gillian Wearing
The seven slickly erotic Pin Ups have clearly been created according to the conventions of glamour modelling. Though figurative in style, they could easily represent fantasy figures derived entirely from the imagination.
Yet each portrait (commissioned from illustrator Jim Burns) is of a real subject - two men and five women - who Wearing located through an ad placed online, then sent for a make-over and photo-shoot before passing the images to the painter.
In a fascinating twist, each of the paintings hinges opens to reveal a hidden archive. In it are the subject's original responses to the ad; a letter explaining his or her reasons for wanting to be represented in this way, and several personal snapshots. Needless to say, these photographs rarely coincide substantially with the subsequent portrait.
While Wearing's project cleverly investigates the chasm between notions of painterly reality and photographic verisimilitude, one of the most powerful statements on this subject lies in Gerhard Richter's celebrated 'photograph-paintings'.
Although the subject matter in these works varies considerably, many are ostensibly depictions of individuals ranging from family members to historical figures or faces simply snipped from magazines or newspapers.
Far from accepting these works as portraits in any conventional sense, however, Richter has always stipulated that they should be seen only as portraits of photographs.
The distinction is subtle yet immensely profound, and in practice, highlights our instinctive need to assimilate and prioritise the human presence above all else.
While Richter's early photo-paintings visually support his contention through black and white imagery and hazy, indistinct brushwork (see image, top of page), later paintings are highly realistic, with a slight blur serving as the only distancing mechanism.
Moritz, 2000 © Gerhard Richter
In Richter's painting featuring his baby son, above, our emotional engagement and perception of the image is almost inevitably directed towards the figure of the child - even if we know that the real subject of the painting is not, for Richter, the boy himself, but the photograph in which he is depicted.
portraits that aren't: the contemporary portrait - continued >
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The contemporary portrait: identity and subterfuge in modern portraiture: Gillian Wearing, Cindy Sherman, Gerhard Richter, Miwa Yanagi
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