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The portrait has historically been understood as an artistic representation of a human subject. Its purpose was to provide a visual or psychological likenesses or an expression of personal, familial or social identity; it was typically associated with the privileged individual subject of Western modernity. Recent scholarship in the humanities and social sciences however has responded to the complex nature of twenty-first century subjectivity and proffered fresh conceptual models and theories to analyse it.
The contributors to
Anti-Portraiture examine subjectivity via a range of media including sculpture, photography and installation, and make a convincing case for an expanded definition of portraiture. By offering a timely reappraisal of the terms through which this genre is approached, the chapter authors volunteer new paradigms in which to consider selfhood, embodiment and representation. In doing so they further this exciting academic debate and challenge the curatorial practices and acquisition policies of museums and galleries.
Sommario
List of Images
Notes on the Contributors
Acknowledgements
1. Introducing the anti-portrait
Fiona Johnstone and Kirstie Imber
2. Decapitations: the portrait, the anti-portrait ... and what comes after?
of portraiture
Michael Newman
3. An Anti-Portraitist in the Realm of Letters: Gertrude Stein's Theory of Seeing
Ery Shin
4. ‘A whole man, made of all men’: Giacometti, Existentialism, and the ‘Singular Universal’
Véronique Wiesinger
5. ‘Closeness, or the Appearance of Closeness’: Robert Morris’s Critical Self-Portraits and the Expanding Artworld of 1960s America
David Hodge
6. Subjects Unknown: Found Images and the Depersonalization of Portraiture
Ella Mudie
7. Subject/Object: seeking the self in Susan Aldworth’s portraits of schizophrenia
Julia Beaumont-Jonesvii
8.Hiding in Plain Sight: Gazing at Laura Swanson’s Anti-Self-Portraits
Kristen Lindgren
9. Filling the Narrative Void: Material Portraits in the Chilean Post-Dictatorship
Megan Corbin
10. Relics, Remains and Other Objects: Non-Mimetic Portraiture in the Age of AIDS
Fiona Johnstone
Index
Info autore
Fiona Johnstone is Assistant Professor in the Institute for Medical Humanities at Durham University, UK.Kirstie Imber is Sessional Lecturer in the History of Art & Screen Media at Birkbeck, University of London, UK, where she was previously Associate Research Fellow. Her research interests include the censorship of art, the intersection of law and cultural practices in the UK, and contemporary Iranian art.
Riassunto
The portrait has historically been understood as an artistic representation of a human subject. Its purpose was to provide a visual or psychological likenesses or an expression of personal, familial or social identity; it was typically associated with the privileged individual subject of Western modernity. Recent scholarship in the humanities and social sciences however has responded to the complex nature of twenty-first century subjectivity and proffered fresh conceptual models and theories to analyse it.
The contributors to Anti-Portraiture examine subjectivity via a range of media including sculpture, photography and installation, and make a convincing case for an expanded definition of portraiture. By offering a timely reappraisal of the terms through which this genre is approached, the chapter authors volunteer new paradigms in which to consider selfhood, embodiment and representation. In doing so they further this exciting academic debate and challenge the curatorial practices and acquisition policies of museums and galleries.
Prefazione
This book argues for an extended definition of portraiture, outlining ways in which the reinvigorated genre offers fresh paradigms for thinking about subjectivity, embodiment and representation.
Testo aggiuntivo
Modern and contemporary artists have for some time been challenging conventions of figurative portraiture by representing their subjects in unusual ways – using, for instance, evocative objects, indexical traces or words. Factors that have contributed to this movement include the impact of psychoanalytic and post-structuralist theories that have called into question notions of a singular personal identity, the rise of photography, as well as artists’ efforts to reveal something that eludes figurative depiction. This book offers an engaging overview of ‘anti-portraiture’ with a wide-ranging general introduction and a number of excellent more sharply focused chapters by experts in the field.
