The Evolution of Portrait Painting - II

The approach to portraiture in the 19th century began to pose different problems than it had been before, reaching the point where the very notion of portraiture was being challenged. With the advent of photography, which did nothing more than mark the need to preserve the image of each person in all social strata. The portrait is now also conditioned by the technical development of painting. For all the trends of the 20th century, the profound deformation and dismemberment of human forms, the annihilation of the integral human face, became characteristic.

In the 20th century, we witnessed a veritable avalanche of styles, which followed one another with dizzying rapidity.

After Romanticism, realism emerged, which, however, had few consequences on the art of portraiture, creating a vacuum in this regard at the time, but we can still speak of the portraits of Ingres (1780-1867) and Courbet (1819-1877).
Impressionism marked the birth of subjective art. The individuality or originality of the subject no longer mattered, but the personality of the artist, who put his unique and specific mark on the work. Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) treated the portrait as a support for the imagination and not as something directly transferable onto canvas. His nudes became disturbing for his contemporaries, the shape of the body being as if negated by the alternation of spots of light and shadow projected onto the female bust through the dense screen of foliage.

Portrait of Jeanne Samary – Renoire

The pictorial creation of Gauguin (1848-1903) leads us to an analysis of symbolism, whose poetics imposed a new vision on art and the world. He chose to represent rather his own spirit, a rather symbolic representation of his own destiny, remaining conservative in terms of form. Gauguin thus creates a new tradition by using as a permanent support any figurative representation of line and surface. Gauguin understood the beauty of primitive myth and the exotic.

Portrait of Aline Gauguin

Through his passion for portraiture, Modigliani (1884-1920) manages to give the work a psychological character through a few simplifications and accents, components of a simple and personal style: the body, bust, facial features are elongated in an unnatural but elegant way, and the eyes are almond-shaped, the orbits empty, like black holes with a blind, classic gaze, evoking the attire of ancient statues and busts.

Portrait of a Polish Woman – Modigliani

Vincent Van Gogh (1853 –1890) will open wide the way for the artistic current of content, which is the modern expressionist current, with different continuations, some downright contradictory. The language of his painting is shaped by feelings and sensations. In the last period of his life he is tried by a terrible disorder, a kind of drunkenness of work, and restlessness and ardor lead his hand to the canvas during this time. Through his inner agitation, the reality of external things is deformed. Thus in that violent, psychological use of color, lies one of the keys to modern subjectivism, the law of naturalistic color of the Impressionists has fallen.

Van Gogh - (The Last) Self-Portrait

One of the principles of expressionism was that, in his figures, the painter expresses not only their interior, but also expresses himself. In The Scream (1893) by Edvard Munch (1863-1944) human deformation reached an unknown limit for that period, being filled with shocks and terror. Munch represents that of the inspired clairvoyant who foresees the tragic destiny, the inevitable fall of society.

The Scream – Edvard Munch

Cubism treats the human body or portrait, compartmentalizing it, faceting it, now reaching a division of the surface that no longer allowed the distinction between "figure" and "background".
In the works of Juan Gris (1887-1927) the human subject is not even present, only the proportional structure of the space of colored planes is rendered, so that the objects or the human figure assume a symbolic, emblematic character in relation to the space. The element that produces the synthesis is light, revealing the objects and giving the measure of the chromatic values, as tone.

JuanGris -Portrait of Picasso

In Rene Magritte (1898-1967), the surrealist painter, the characters are not constituted as the subject themselves, but as participants in the imaginary of the entire painting. In his work, the portrait is constituted as a means of reflection on representation. Inspired by a photograph by Man Ray, Magritte brings to the fore the idea of ​​the "lack of the portrait".

Rene Magritte-Decal

An example of the uniqueness of Francis Bacon's (1902-1992) painting would be the portraits. They retain the resemblance, but they have nothing in common with what we could call the illustrative aspect of the image. It is about what the painter calls the otherness of form, its ability to change during its composition. From the images emerges an inertia of flesh that seems to descend from the bones, while the vast surfaces of color seem to envelop the figures.

Study for the portrait of George Dyer-Francis Bacon

Jean Fautrier (1898-1964) has a special way of approaching the portrait, in painting it being made up of different "lumps of matter, inert and broken". The artist did not give a specific connotation to the painted faces, he did not identify the subject, simply calling them "hostage", often followed by a number, just like the hostages without identity. He was one of the first to use the "thick paste" technique.

Jean Fautrier – Hostage

Hyperrealism is a combination of painting, sculpture and high-resolution photography. Chuck Close (b.1940) creates large-scale portraits with great technical perfection and attention to detail. He constructs the portraits in such a way that they seem to be a mixture of fine art and photography. Everything is reduced, however, to a free act, of which only the technical mechanism of execution is preserved, a copy of a pre-existing image, through a meticulous and emotionless action.

Giant Self Portrait - Chuck Close

Andy Warhol (1930-1987), the Pop artist, represents in his works series of portraits of famous people, such as those of Elvis Prestley, Marilyn Monroe, but also with a cycle dedicated to Mao. With the work Gold Marilyn Monroe (1962 -New York, Museum of Modern Art) Andy Warhol exploited the image of Hollywood personalities and stars to the maximum and raised it to the level of idol.

Gold Marilyn Monroe - Andy Warhol

I conclude this journey into the history of portrait painting with an American artist Jenny Saville (b. 1970) who illustrates in her paintings the trend of today's society, often obsessed with physical appearance. She creates raw and intimate images of the human body. Her paintings are expressive and honest, often depicting obese women, disfigured faces, women giving birth, etc.

Rosetta – Jenny Saville