Gallery Visits 21 September continued

National Portrait Gallery – Jonathan Yeo

I picked up on this exhibition after watching a BBC2 Culture Show programme (not on iplayer but clips below):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bgb77

As always, it is fascinating to get a glimpse into artist’s studios and to actually see them working and seeing the process of a portrait in the making.  It was also interesting to see how worried all the sitters were about how they would be portrayed!  While we did not get to see a complete “start to finish” of the portrait he was making (actor Tom Hollander), we did get an insight into how he approaches his work.  He also discussed how some of his famous sitters wanted to be portrayed (such as fellow artists Damian Hirst and Grayson Perry (as his alter ego Claire)). 

The exhibition itself is in two rooms of the NPG.  I did not make any notes at the exhibition itself as it was very busy and while some of the larger portraits were more widely spaced in the first room, the second (smaller) room had all the portraits grouped together on one wall.  While this is very effective in terms of the display, it is not so easy to be able to have a good look at each portrait!

The portrait which has probably got the most interest in the press was the painting of Malala Yousafzai.  Personally, I liked the way he portrayed her; a neutral background, a very realistic, soft face and loosely painted headscarf with the ground and gridding shown.  However, a lot of the press reports (Telegraph and Metro below) reported this image and other images as being too saccharine and not inquiring of the subject enough. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/10298388/Malala-Yousafzai-Jonathan-Yeo-Portraits-National-Portrait-Gallery-review.html

http://metro.co.uk/2013/09/13/the-jonathan-yeo-portraits-exhibition-plays-safe-with-family-friendly-content-3986359/

Mark Hudson from the Telegraph writes: “These are strangely quaint images, not so much in their technique, which varies from image to image, as in their apparently artless flattering idealisation of their subjects. Nowadays we expect portraits to dig a bit deeper, to act out a kind of confrontation with the sitter. Yeo doesn’t do that. His large portraits are reminiscent of Annie Leibovitz’s super-glossy photographic portraits for Vanity Fair, images that exist in a slightly queasy middle ground between portraiture and fashion photography, with the sitter’s ‘attributes’ lending a narrative dimension in a way a Renaissance portrait painter would readily have understood.”

The quote that stood out for me there was “we expect portraits to dig a bit deeper, to act out a kind of confrontation with the sitter” which I don’t necessarily agree with.  While it may not be hugely fashionable to say so in the contemporary art world, most people do actually want a portrait that looks like them! And I would imagine it would be quite difficult to get famous sitters (who, after all, depend on their image for their livelihood), or even your average person on the street, if the artist were trying to show a confrontational image.  Throughout history, portrait subjects have, to a greater or lesser degree, had a level of control over their own image for their own purposes, whether that be flattery, political power or a sense of superiority.

In the case of Malala, I don’t think you need anything else to understand the image and the reason her portrait is important.  Everyone knows about her shooting by the Taliban just because she wanted to get an education, thus becoming the symbol for young muslim girls under repressive regimes.

My other favourite portrait was of Helena Bonham Carter, the actress, portrayed in one of her very eccentric outfits in front of a house.  The whole portrait is comprised of pink shades, with the background and her outfit very loosely underpainted, leaving the textures and drips of the ground showing through.  The link above shows the painting in the making, and the photograph which he partly used in its making.  You can clearly see from this how much he has taken from personal sittings, and the overall feel of the portrait captured from the photograph.

Many of Yeo’s portraits have an unfinished element to them; sometimes being a blank canvas (as in Erin O’Connor / Sienna Miller), or allowing the ground and the underpainting to show through (Malala / Helena Bonham Carter).  When I was in the NPG gallery, I was listening to a conversation behind me pointing out the unfinished nature of many of the works and why an artist chooses to do this. 

I considered this further.  From my point of view, especially in portraiture, having the contrast between a very polished, finished face (and sometimes hands/arms) and a very sketchy, painterly background really does focus the view onto the face of the sitter.  And from a student’s point of view, seeing how an artist has constructed his work is very interesting; Yeo’s backgrounds are often gridded, with a very loose, sketchy coat of paint which often looks as if it’s pearlescent. 

May have to revisit this exhibition to have a closer look (but not on a Saturday afternoon – far too busy!)