Shearer West – Portraiture – Chapter 1 – What is a portrait?

Shearer West – Portraiture – Chapter 1 – What is a portrait?

Shearer West begins the chapter by exploring the likeness of the portrayal of the sitter and the type of category, usually a socially defined group, they could fit into. Initially West explores how much of a mimetic quality the image contains when compared to the sitter and draws on the origin of the word portraiture by stating “the etymology of the term ‘portraiture’ indicates the genre’s association with likeness and mimesis.” (p21). However, West quickly raises the point that likeness contains no stability to build upon and is more related to how the artist portrayed the sitter within the portrait. Indeed, likeness, or to use another word for the concept of mimetic duplication, resemblance, exists on a sliding scale and is unable to reach 100% resemblance of the sitter because “resemblance, unlike representation, is reflexive… resemblance is symmetric” (Goodman, languages of art, 1976). This basically means that a portrait cannot resemble the sitter 100% because the only thing that can resemble the sitter 100% is the sitter, and so points towards the instability of using resemblance as a measuring tool for success.

West then compares 2 portraits by different artists of the same person to prove the point. These are depictions of Chancellor Rolin by Jan Van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, both in the same pose of kneeling in front of an altar. Both clearly depict the same person but in the first painting Rolin looks rather stern whereas in the second he appears to have a softer and less severe expression. This rather proves West’s argument that “likeness is not a stable concept” (p23) as it can be open to interpretation as to how much the depiction is like the person.

From this position, West progresses onto the issues created by the types of people being depicted. For this, West discusses the work of August Sander as “generic qualities attributed to a sitter could be conveyed through gesture, expression or role-play” (p25). This means there is a reliance on the pose or the gestures within the portrait to ascertain the characteristics of the sitter, such as King Charles being portrayed with the robes of state and with wearing a crown. It would help to point towards the sitter’s social status, their place in society and the their role within that culture forming a large part of the person’s identity.

Building upon this theme of social hierarchy through the roles within that culture, West then considers the work of August Sander his project of People of the Twentieth Century. Sander’s project evolved around recording people performing various roles within the German culture “within the new aesthetic of Nue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity… it was characterized by a desire to represent reality in a sober and detached manner” (p27) With this project, Sander arranged the portraits into various groups, which were Farmers, Workers, Women, Occupations, Artists, The Big City, The Last People. Also, within this work, Sander does not identify any of the sitters, but instead relies upon their role within society to determine which group they belong to.

Interestingly, within this work there is a mixture of people being portrayed performing their roles and people without that level of identification. For instance, there is the portrait of the pastry chef and a portrait of a butcher’s assistant, with the pastry chef being easy to identify because of his attire and the task he is performing, whereas the butcher’s assistant has no visible clues to his status in society. Indeed, it is easy to imagine that if the images were untitled then the butcher’s assistant could be classified as being of a high status because of his lack of visual cues to his profession and so the assumption is made that he is above general labour and the working class.

Moving on from Likeness and type, West then covers is titled Body and Soul. West starts by tracking the changes from the 17th century through to the 19th century, which marks important changes in the way the soul was investigated on a philosophical basis, through to “the idea that portraits should communicate something about their sitter’s psychological state or personality is a concept that evolves gradually and became common only after 19th century Romanticism fuelled the idea of a personality cult.” (p29)

The main thrust of this section is the change from using symbolism to communicate qualities of the sitter through to those qualities being suggested through pose and expression. With the use of symbolism to express characteristics of the sitter can lead to the interpretation being more accurate than through using expression. This is because the use of the symbol is pre-defined and can only be interpreted one way by the viewer, whereas by using a facial expression there is always the chance that the expression could be misinterpreted. This is noted by West when she states “there is also the problem that viewers tend to respond to the faces in portraits as they would to faces in real life, and therefore any reading of character or personality in a portrait tends to be highly subjective.” (p31). To highlight this West discusses Laughing Self-Portrait by Richard Gerstl as it is difficult to ascertain if the laughter is through genuine humour or through mania.

But it is this expression that gives the impression of the sitter having what West describes as an Inner Life. By using the face to express emotion helps the viewer to read an emotional element into the depiction instead of having a calm or neutral expression with an object to denote a characteristic. By doing so the portrait can seem to almost be alive, to communicate directly with the viewer and so helps to resonate with the viewer. It leads to a more personal impression because of its level of subjectivity as this makes it easier to be communicated and internalised by the viewer.