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Here is an extract from the Intimate Portraits catalogue
essay by Andrew Sayers. Catalogue details appear below.
True portraits
Henri Matisse, perhaps the purest painter of the twentieth
century, wrote in his 1954 essay on portraiture, 'True portraits,
that is to say those in which the features as well as the
feelings seem to come from the model, are rather rare'.
Of course, Matisse's definition of truth in portraiture is
a singular view and characteristic of the artist's philosophy,
yet his observation on portraiture in France in the twentieth
century could also be made of portraiture in Australia at
the beginning of the 21st century - true portraits are rather
rare. Perhaps, though, it is a question of how rarely we see
true portraits, rather than how infrequently they are made.
In Australia we are exposed regularly to only a small fraction
of the vast field of portrait practice. The Archibald and
Moran Prize exhibitions continue to be the most conspicuous
portrait salons in Australia, yet they generally attract a
type of portraiture that hardly fits the Matissean definition
of true portraiture. Furthermore, the commissioned portrait
- the portrait in which artist and subject have been brought
together in a temporary or commercial relationship - is customarily
a portrait in which it would be inappropriate to search for
either depth of feeling or intimacy.
Because feeling and memory were so central to Matisse's portraiture,
it was inevitable that his portrait practice revolved around
an intimate relationship with his subject. True portraiture,
in his sense, is most likely to be discovered in portraits
expressing a relationship between the artist and his friends
or fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters,
lovers and long-term acquaintances.
Intimate Portraits is devoted to Australian artists who have
made this territory their own. The painters in this exhibition
are linked by the way in which their art emerges from an intimate
relationship with each of their sitters. In these portraits,
the identity of each sitter - as embodied in a name or a life
story or a CV - does not matter; what matters is the relationship
with the artist.
Although this exhibition is entitled Intimate Portraits it
could as validly have been entitled Portraits without style.
By which I mean; the pretensions of style evaporate in the
relationship between the artist and the intimate.
Andrew Sayers
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