Validating a mimetic art
I first caught a glimpse of portraiture’s questioned status at university, in a painting class. Having observed my propensity for portraiture, the professor suggested that I instead use a face as a “happening” for my paintings, a departure point and no more. It was irrelevant whether or not I managed to create a faithful likeness: the finished piece needed only to be a solid work of art. At the time, I couldn’t see why it had to be either a portrait or art, instead of both, but I soon discovered what my professor meant.
The hierarchy of genres was explicitly established in the 17th century, but, before the various Art Academies of Europe had named history painting top genre, portraiture (along with landscape and still life) was relegated to a lower status. According to the logic of the time, an artist had to be a visionary in order to create a history painting. His* intellectual achievement was in imagining mythology and history in a visual way—no small task. Meanwhile, the mimetic genres (portraiture, landscape, and still life) did not require the artist to be creative. All she-he had to do was copy from nature.**
In point of fact, this aspect portraiture—referentiality—was and is believed to restrict the artist. Art historian Jean Alazard says in his 1948 book The Florentine Portrait, “the personality of the painter is limited to a certain extent by the very existence of the model whose essential features at least must be rendered.” It was this bias against painting a proper likeness that my professor was trying to warn me about. Clearly, he failed!
I think it unfortunate that Alazard and my professor, among many others, view the challenges of actually capturing a likeness in a negative light. When I look at figurative work, as opposed to the portrait of an individual, I’m usually disappointed by its unfinished, flat humanity. I feel like the artist hasn’t pushed her-him self enough because she-he didn’t have anything to strive towards—like, for example, an individual likeness. Then again, maybe I’m just a sucker for a promise of truth…but, if that’s the case, I’m not the only one!
We’ve recently suffered a rash of faux memoirs, where fiction writers are bribed by their publishers to put their stories forward as real-life experiences. The publishers are anxious to capitalize on that certain je-ne-sais-quoi which also leads filmmakers to introduce their movies with the phrase “based on a true story.” And it’s the same quality that differentiates a painted portrait from a figurative work: the power of a real person’s self.
Patern Kervinio
2001
acrylic on canvas
30 x 24 inches
(detail below)
While my professor was telling me to give up likeness, I was busy painting and drawing portraits like the one above of my grandfather. When I showed this particular one in an exhibition of student work, the same university vice president who, two years later, bought out my thesis exhibit wanted to purchase it for his personal collection. I’d already promised the painting to my mother, so there was no question of selling it, but I was intrigued by this stranger’s desire to possess a painting of my grandfather. He said he saw his own grandfather in it, not in the likeness but in the mood and feel. That’s when I learned that the intimately individual can be universal.
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*Women were forbidden from creating in this taxing genre.
**For more information about the Art Academies and their hierarchy of genres, see Gender And Art, edited by Gill Perry, 1999.
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