We looked at how the use of light and shade (chiaroscuro) concentrates the viewer's attention purely on the face, and even then only half the face is illuminated. The sitter seems to be looking confidently out towards the viewer, but also seems distracted, as though he will turn back to his painting in a moment. We are told nothing about him apart from his face, no information about dress, location, etc. It is a very concentrated portrait.
Other images we considered included this deep and meaningful portrait of Princess Diana, by Mario Testino in March 1997, 5 months before the car accident in Paris.
We all thought this was a lovely portrait of Diana, but also that it was carefully managed to project her intended new image as a single woman, no wedding ring, no fancy background, just a very nice dress.
In looking up the image, I found that it was actually a cropped down version of a slightly bigger image, shown here...
This shows Diana a lounging in a slightly more relaxed pose. Does this change our assessment of the picture? I think not really, although there is slightly less simplicity in the bigger picture.
Another dramatic portrait was this one by Martin Schoeller of Barack Obama tank in 2004, well before Obama won the Democratic nomination for the US presidency election in 2008.
I found this image very negative, but some of us thought it was strong and carefully presented to show Obama as a powerful potential presidential candidate. There is something strange about the focus (the ears and the neck are out of focus) and the lighting (the lack of shadows, and the reflected light source in the eyes) and also the camera position seems to exaggerate the nose.
Later I looked up more of Martin Schoeller's portraits - The Google Image search results are available here. Seeing so many, all rather odd, portraits, put the Obama one into a better context. He seems to have come out relatively well. Some of the images are really strange, like this one of Paris Hilton
Then, rummaging through other images of portraits by Schoeller, I came across these, done for an article in the January 2012 edition of National Geographic on identical twins. A really interesting, and less distorted, set of images of pairs of twins, showing how his 'up close and personal' portraiture can help distinguish the fine detail of differences between otherwise very similar faces.
We all liked the interesting and unusual 3D construction portrait of J K Rowling, made by Stuart Pearson Wright in 2005 for the National Portrait Gallery. The only images I could find online showed only the painting/construction, and not the surroundings which show the 'box' like room in which the images are located. So this doesn't show quite the 3D impact of the whole. I'm not are where Jo found the bigger image she showed us today.
There is something almost dolls-house like about the way the portrait is mounted within a "room" depicting the simple writing requirements of Rowling in her early, unpublished years in Edinburgh, , and her still very private life.
We looked at several other images, including Sam taylor-Wood's video portrait of David Beckham sleeping, which I have seen at the NPG, and a rather unpleasant (deliberately so?) newspaper portrait of Damien Hirst in 1997. We also looked briefly at four ancient busts of Roman Emperors - two of which looked to me just like former senior civil servant colleagues of mine...who shall be nameless. The point of all this was to make us see what we could perceive of character from an un-named portrait, and how we ascribe attributes and personality on the basis of presentation. Also, a brief discussion about who commissions portraits, who controls the page, how much leverage the sitter has, or not, over the pose, tone, style, etc. All very interesting, and food for thought at future exhibitions.
