Last night I watched the artist Grayson Perry’s new series ‘Who are you?’ documenting his creative process as he makes portraits. I use the word ‘makes’ instead of the more familiar ‘paints’ as although he starts by sketching the individual first, only one of the finished artworks was a traditional painting. Together with a painted miniature he produced portraits that were a Benin style bronze, a pot and a silk scarf (a hijab). ‘Who are you’ as the title suggests is a series about identity. That is identity as perceived in our 21st-century lives and mediated through visual culture.
Alex by Grayson Perry Bronze in Benin style. (Photograph National Portrait Gallery Twitter)It was a fascinating programme as he chatted to and quizzed each sitter in an attempt to understand the multiple layers that they melded together in forming their identity. Grayson commented that when an artist works on a portrait he is part detective and part psychologist in his quest to capture the sitter in a single image. He opines that if successful a portrait “tells you something a 1000 selfies never could”. Now, we have a problem here with the format. I hugely admire Grayson Perry, I think he is a gifted visual interpreter and an extremely intelligent and astute individual, but the moment he as the artist starts to work with a camera crew on his shoulder his subjects begin to morph into a hybrid TV version of themselves. I know we are getting into a philosophical area, but if we are considering the nature of identity then surely we have to acknowledge the effect of being observed. Isn’t one of the points of a selfie that it is a version of you by you at a given moment and not you knowingly mediated by Grayson Perry, by a cameraman, by the TV production company and Channel 4?
Chris Huhne – Grayson Perry. Ceramic pot with Kintsugi restoration.Interestingly, the one sitter that was most resistant to revealing any other aspect of himself other than his public image was the disgraced politician, Chris Huhne. I thought that his obviously posed and considered domestic styling contrasted so sentimentally with the roadside cafe shots after his release from prison that it had me reaching for the sick bucket. In his response to Huhne’s incredible self regard, Grayson constructs him as a beautiful, slickly glazed pot. Then in a grand, dramatic televisual moment he purposefully smashes the pot into pieces. The finished portrait is actually the reconstructed pot restored in the Kintsugi tradition where restoration is overtly visible displaying the gold repair/fracture lines. Flawed – need we say more!
Of course, a portrait is acknowledged as a construction of the artist usually in collaboration with the sitter. A multiplicity of choices concerning materials, format, lighting, clothing, setting, pose, full-length etc are considered before the first brush stroke marks the canvas. Additionally, there is the interpretation of self by the sitter whether they are aware or unaware of what they are projecting and then how this is recorded by the artist. Will it be a ‘warts and all’ representation? Any cursory glance at the output of a class of art students all producing a portrait of the same sitter will see as many different versions as there are artists in the class.
Oliver Cromwell by Samuel Cooper. Photograph: Philip Mould Gallery
We have Grayson’s portraits of his subjects and you can go and see them at the National Portrait Gallery in London. The works will now have a life of their own detached from the television and now installed into a prestigious gallery setting. Identity and portraiture has a long history since the Roman emperors had their ‘heads’ stamped on coins. Our portrait formally rendered as an image of us may capture more than a selfie, but our identity is fluid and even the best portrait does not tell the whole story of our identity.
Art Historians are fascinated by Dürer for many different reasons and one of them is this woodcut. He constructed his image of a rhino not from his own direct visual encounter, but from secondhand reports sent to him in Germany. The first living rhinoceros to be seen in Europe for over 1000 years was a gift sent from India and had arrived in Lisbon in 1515 amid much interest and curiosity. I think we can say it was an opportunity not to be missed and Dürer set to work and produced his high quality prints. A woodcut and drawing of Dürer’s rhino is held by the British Museum.
Apart from offering to his public his contemporary theory of art and reinvigorating the medium of print, Dürer also left us a short series of self portraits as a visual record of his ideas and confident imagination. This is one of my favourite self portraits as he presents us with a dramatic, intense, almost 21st-century celebrity style version of self. There is much art historical discussion about his choice to portray himself in such a Christ-like manner, but I think the general consensus is that he is idealising and promoting the role of the artist as opposed to himself. Well, he certainly makes himself look attractive and appealing in a very human way. One day I hope to travel to Germany to see the original hanging in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, but for now here it is.
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) Self-portrait with fur-trimmed robe (1500) Limewood 67.1 x 48.9 cm
“Thus I, Albrecht Dürer from Nuremberg, portrayed myself with characteristic colours in my 28th year.” Translation of the Latin inscription.
Last night I watched the artist Grayson Perry’s new series ‘Who are you?’ documenting his creative process as he makes portraits. I use the word ‘makes’ instead of the more familiar ‘paints’ as although he starts by sketching the individual first, only one of the finished artworks was a traditional painting. Together with a painted miniature he produced portraits that were a Benin style bronze, a pot and a silk scarf (a hijab). ‘Who are you’ as the title suggests is a series about identity. That is identity as perceived in our 21st-century lives and mediated through visual culture.
Agnes Ashe 