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Indepth Arts News:
"Portrait/Self Portrait: Prints and Drawings from the Museum's Collections"
2001-05-05 until 2001-10-04
Carnegie Museum of Art
Pittsburgh, PA,
USA
A unique survey exhibition of portraits and self-portraits
by artists of the last five centuries will be on view at Carnegie Museum of Art. Portrait/Self Portrait: Prints and Drawings from the Museums Collections, presents important works on paper
from Carnegie Museum of Arts extensive collections; some have not been
shown previously.
Dating from the Renaissance to the mid-twentieth century, the show
features works by Dürer, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Cézanne, Degas, Matisse,
Toulouse-Lautrec, Klimt, and Picasso, as well as American artists such as
Mary Cassatt, John James Audubon, Winslow Homer, James McNeill Whistler,
David Gilmour Blythe, and others. A wide variety of media used to create
portraits on paper are represented in the exhibition-including pencil
sketches, lithographs, engravings, etchings, watercolor paintings, and
charcoal drawings.
Linda Batis, Carnegie Museum of Arts associate curator of fine arts
and exhibition organizer, says that Portrait/Self-Portrait provides valuable
perspectives on the meaning of portraiture and fame. According to Batis,
Sometimes, a persons ideas are so important that we forget that a real
person formulated them. This exhibition is a chance to look at those famous
people, but it is also a look at fame and how it fades. It seems that our
modern obsession with celebrity is really not so modern after all.
Traditionally, portraits and self-portraits captured details of the
personal and emotional life of the subject and often showed people in
settings that revealed the sitters vocation and status. These works are
valued not simply for the skill of the artist, but also as priceless records
of the appearance and character of persons whose importance has lasted into
the present era.
The exhibition has many such examples. Albrecht Dürer, for example,
captured in his engraving Erasmus (1526), the famous philosopher and writer
surrounded by books and hard at work at his desk. Dürers Phillip
Melancthon (1526), an engraving of the Protestant theologian and theorist of
Lutheranism, shows the subject not indoors among books, but against the sky,
an allusion perhaps to his calling and his stature.
However, in some cases, artists preserved likenesses of persons whose
renown was fleeting. An example of such a portrait in the exhibition is
Pierre Imbert Drevets engraving, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Bishop of Maux
(1723). Based on a famous painting by Hyacinth Rigaud, who also created the
initial drawing for Drevets engraving, this print is one of the most famous
French portrait engravings of the eighteenth century. The bishop, adorned
in silk, ermine, and lace, stands surrounded by elegant furnishings and
books. Every surface is richly detailed, proof of both the engravers skill
and the stature of the subject. Today, however, the eminent bishop and
orator is little known to most of us.
Other works in the exhibition declare the subjects status using fewer
exterior details. One such work is Rembrandt van Rijns, Self-Portrait
Leaning on a Stone Sill, an etching done in 1639. This etching draws
inspiration from paintings by Titian and Raphael in a private collection in
Amsterdam during Rembrandts lifetime. Imitating the style and trappings
used in those paintings, Rembrandt dressed himself in flowing robes and cap.
His relaxed pose, with an arm draped over the sill of a low stone wall, and
his intent expression are the focus of the work. In this self-portrait
details are minimal, but the message is clear-Rembrandt exudes the
confidence of a painter aware of his stature among his peers and the people
of Amsterdam.
A work that records the appearance of an identifiable person yet is not
a portrait in the traditional sense is Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The
Paintings Gallery (1879-80) by Edgar Degas. This soft ground etching,
employing aquatint and dry-point techniques,
though clearly identifying Cassatt in the title, shows her with her back to
the viewer, capturing no details of her face. Similarly, Odalisque in
Striped Pantaloons (1925) by Henri Matisse, was intended to be s study of a
female nude in an Oriental setting rather than a portrait. Yet we know the
woman in the work was Matisses sensual model Henriette Darricarrere, and
this lithograph preserves a record of her appearance.
Often portraits witness an artists changing personal life. For
example, Pablo Picasso used his wives and mistresses as models, and each
inspired him in different ways. The likeness of each of these new
influences appeared in Picassos work, challenging the artist to capture
each womans unique emotional makeup. Francoise Gilot, the mother of two of
Picassos children, served as a model for many of his major works at
mid-century, including a series of lithographs and an aquatint, Torse de
Femme--LEgyptienne, completed in 1953, which appears in the exhibition.
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