Portraiture Portrayed – Ivan Gaskell – Chapter 1 - Portraits and Philosophies

· Starts with Mimetic Resemblance to create a likeness between the sitter and their portrayal to confirm their identity.

· Connects the character of the sitter to being interpreted through the artist and is a negotiation between the sitter and the artist.

· Moves into connecting the portrayal of a patron of the artist with a particular saint.

· The portrayal is then treated as a proxy for the original, such as the presence of a family member or members of a corporate body and becomes a projection of their power. This is to address the purpose of the portrait.

· Draws a connection between the depiction of early saints not containing verisimilitude (the appearance of being true or real) and the step away from mimetic depiction in the beginning of the 20th century with the onset of modernism.

· Returns to mimetic resemblance and discusses about producing an Expressive Head (also called a Tromie in Dutch). This is most suited to the History Painting genre and is influenced by Le Bron.

· Mentions that the genre of portraiture is an open genre as images can enter and leave the genre – similar to Richard Brilliant asserting a portrait can stop being a portrait when the identity of the sitter is unknown.

· Discusses the portrait needing to be posed and the relationship between the sitter and the artist. Freeland also makes the same requirement of portraiture. His is culminated in the life mask of Abraham Lincoln being on the edge of portraiture because it was produced 21 years after his death and so no relation between the sitter and artist existed but it is a mimetic copy of Lincoln’s on features.

· Asserts that the term Metaphorical Portrait can be used to cover artworks that fall outside of the boundaries of mimetic resemblance. Lists examples of images that are of animals and then expands this boundary to cover inanimate objects such as ships, with the example of a portrait of French Ship Courtisan.

· Lastly, Gaskell explores the tradition of naming a piece of artwork. He gives the example of Robert Rauschenberg telegram stating THIS IS A PORTRAIT OF IRIS CLERT IF I SAY SO / ROBERT RAUSHCENBERG. This is portraits in a conceptual art rather than a physical depiction, relying on the statement from the artist to be the formal proposition of the artwork. (The transfiguration of the commonplace – Arthur Danto)

· Gaskell summarises portraiture “not as things that exhibit a set of definite properties, but as an open kind, united, if at all, first by family resemblance; second, by making; third by use… and fourth, by metaphorical extension to include catachresis.”

In the beginning of Portraiture Portrayed, Gaskell starts with a quote from Peter Paul Rubens. Essentially Gaskell uses the quote to open the discussion about a portrait being a mimetic resemblance of the sitter, an expression of their character and lastly a negotiation between the artist and the sitter of how they will be portrayed. The quote Gaskell uses is:

The portrait of your Lordship has given the greatest pleasure to me and to those gentlemen who have seen it and who are entirely satisfies with the resemblance. I confess, however, that I do not see shining in this face that indefinable spiritedness and a certain vigour of expression which seem to me to belong to the genius of your lordship, but which it is not easy for anyone to recapture in a picture.

(Rooses and Ruelens, 1907, p312)

The quote itself has come from correspondence between Rubens and Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Pieres in 1629 and is probably the first instance of three requirements in portraiture: firstly, a resemblance between the image and the sitter, secondly an expression of character and thirdly the artist painting the sitter. I doubt that Rubens was the first person to think along these lines but was probably reflecting the dominant train of thought of the time. However, what is interesting is of how this definition of portraiture has remained dominant throughout the ages and that the portrait becomes a balancing act between the main two elements (the depiction and the character) with the third issue being more contentious.

Most of the thesis concentrates on mimetic resemblance. For instance, Gaskell notes how the depiction of saintly figures did not need to rely upon accuracy, but instead could act as stylised representations of them. As long as their representation fitted the expectations of the viewer, then this rendition would suffice, such Mary wearing a blue cloak and holding a child.

However, Gaskell seems to connect the second and third parts of the Rubens quote, the expression of character and the interpretation of the artist. He does mention how Picasso and Kirchner both interpret a portrait more heavily with the definition of character and virtually abandon the mimetic resemblance of a portrait and concentrate on their interpretation of the sitter. Indeed, the impression is given that the third definition is more powerful than the second, the interpretation of the sitter by the artist has more weight than the expression of a character and it is not long before the second criteria is dropped in favour of the third. This leads to Gaskell raising the point that there needs to be some level of contact between the sitter and the artist for the expression of character.

With this being the case, Gaskell then discusses artworks made after the sitter has dies. For this he uses the example of the Life Mask of Abraham Lincoln made by Leonard Wells Volk in 1860 and then cast in bronze by Augustus Saint-Gaudens in 1886. In this Gaskell is saying that there was no contact between Saint-Gaudens and Lincoln and so consequently no implicit contract to guide the expression of character. This seems to be a little confused, mainly because the original contact was through Volk and then Saint-Gaudens just literally copied the life mask. So the original artist did have contact with the subject, and as this is where the copy by Volk originated from, then it would of copied the sense of expression.

Gaskell now feels that he is in a position of where he has disproved the claims of Rubens and the classical approach to portraiture. To a certain extent I think he is right, but not entirely. For some thing to represent the sitter is definitely feasible as there is only an implied connection between representation and the object. For instance, it is possible for Mr Blobby to represent Boris Johnson for the purpose of humour and this works because of the implicit, not explicit, representation. When it comes to having a resemblance, then the connection is explicit because a resemblance is reflective between the depiction and the sitter and so consequently the need for mimetic reproduction is needed.

Gaskell then leans heavily on Wittgenstein’s principle of family resemblance, though offers no explanation as to what this is. This I find frustrating because Gaskell is asserting a condition for the portrait but does not offer an explanation of what that condition is and so the reader cannot tell if Gaskell’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s is correct and how closely Gaskell’s interpretation follows Wittgenstein’s principle.

Next, Gaskell moves onto discussing the metaphorical use of portraiture and “the metaphorical use can be stretched further still to the point of catachresis” (p18). Gaskell asserts that, for instance, a drawing of a ship could be considered as Ships’ Portraits as they depict a ship and through using catachresis (Using a word incorrectly) the image can be called a portrait. Again, I am not convinced as this could mean that any image could be a portrait, such as a photograph of a crash helmet could be crash helmet portrait and will make the entire genre of portraiture meaningless.

Lastly, Gaskell offers a definition of portraiture that fulfils three criteria. These are:

· Family resemblance.

· Making a portrait.

· The way the portrait is used.

· Metaphorical extension to include catachresis.

Of these 4 criteria, I think that the second criteria is the strongest. The first criteria remains unexplained by Gaskell and so we cannot tell whether his interpretation of Wittgenstein’s is correct. The third criteria can seem a bit back to front. I can’t help but think that the circumstances and context would determine what image would be suitable to be used rather than the portrait creating that context of use. For instance, an image of a boat probably would not be used at a memorial for a person but an image of that person would be used and the image of the boat would not suddenly become a portrait because of that context. Lastly, the fourth criteria seems to open the flood gates and dissolves the meaning of portraiture. As mentioned above, anything could become a portrait, and to a certain degree it can because the representation of the person is independent of the person, but to have, for instance, a portrait of a water bottle seems non-sensical and completely steps outside of the genre of portraiture.