In my last post, I talked the about how the Art Academies of old Europe looked down on portraiture, believing it required nothing more than an ability to copy from nature. As it turns out, likeness isn’t the only fault of this beleaguered genre. Academics also disparage portraiture for its inherent profitability. Even in the 17th century Art Academies, making money from one’s work was considered vulgar,* and it’s a sentiment that is alive and well in our sell-out sensitive culture.
In Changing Perceptions from 1999, the art historian Elizabeth Cayzer describes an artist who paints portraits for clients as “chained to the treadmill of commissioned portraiture.” With her book, she intends to give a full survey of 20th century British portraiture,** but she purposefully focuses on artists who “are ‘occasional’ portraitists--those who have not had to rely on finding clients in order to make a living” because those who do so are repetitive hacks. I’m paraphrasing that last bit, but without altering Cayzer’s tone.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, outside that stuffy academic bubble, making a living with one’s work is a very good thing for so many reasons. Money is a vital fuel for most of us (who aren’t financially supported by someone else), and whatever we do for a living is probably what we’ll do most of--in order to feed ourselves. So if it’s art that we do for money, we’ll be doing a lot of it and we’ll probably have to get better at it as we go. It’s really too bad that a handful of portraitists who secretly despised commission work and lacked imagination have given the whole genre a bad name.
But, in 18th century Britain, a few artists figured out how to make money from portraiture without losing too much intellectual credibility. They invented allegorical portraiture, an astute combination of the money-making possibilities of portraiture and the reputation-building properties of history painting.* These portraits unite a sitter’s likeness with the attributes of a character from Greek mythology, the Bible, or history. The paintings were often titled something like Lady So-And-So As Such-And-Such.***
The Next President Of The United States (African American)
2007
acrylic on denim
34 x 31 inches
(For more information about the making of this painting, visit this post.)
I could very well have titled this painting Chandra As The Next President.
Amazigh Gothic (Algerian-American)
2008
acrylic on panel
30 x 25 inches
(For more information about the making of this painting, visit this post.)
This one could have been Taous And Cherif As American Gothic.
I And Cosmonaut Neil Armstrong (Russian-American)
2008
acrylic on canvas
42 x 42 inches
(For more information about the making of this painting, visit this post.)
And finally, this one might have been titled Alex As Neil Armstrong.
These three paintings all come from Apple Pie, a series in allegorical portraiture. I’m following those British artists’ lead and helping portraiture to stake its rightful claim in a new hierarchy of genres!
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*The Art academies of 17th century Europe considered the genre of history painting the highest intellectual achievement for an artist since he was giving mythology and history a visual presence instead of simply translating nature into paint. For more information about the Art Academies, their hierarchy of genres, and allegorical portraiture, see Gender And Art, edited by Gill Perry, 1999.
**It’s implied in the subtitle of the book: Milestones In Twentieth-Century British Portraiture.
***The models of allegorical portraits tended to be women, since ladies didn’t have careers or personalities back then, making it difficult for an artist to produce an interesting portrait without adding a layer of meaning.
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