Lucian Freud Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery
Our eyes can get bored and our sense of the unusual can become lame when we look to a tradition so established within art: the portrait. Even with the less habitual nude (we see people more often clothed, than not) – our sensitivities can become tamed. What I believe Freud introduces is quite rare to … Continue reading
BP Portrait Award 2011 at the National Portrait Gallery
I’ve been enjoying the annual BP Portrait Award for some years now (see previous blogs). Knowing what the exhibition is about, and what kinds of works it often celebrates, and so from this, I also ought to be able to identify what was distinctively 2011, new and groundbreaking, about this year’s selection… Entering the usual … Continue reading
Cradle
I always feel doubly enlivened by a creator discussing his creation. Last Summer I wrote about Dryden Goodwin’s Jubilee line portraits from the series entitled ‘Linear’ (see On My Travels – June 2010.) This evening I heard the multi-media portraitist speak on his work in discussion with the writer Geoff Dyer and the curator-come-chairman Camilla … Continue reading
The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010, at the National Portrait Gallery
The more I go to photographic portraiture exhibitions, the more the boundary before me of portraiture and documentary photography is blurred. From a very good selection of photographs, five winners were highlighted, of which most had on analysis little more than an interesting story, or exciting location to reason their renown. Naturally, subjective as it … Continue reading
The BP Portrait Award 2010 at the National Portrait Gallery
My opinion is that portraits have the greatest potential of all the genres to be masterpieces. This is a visceral view of mine, yet for Kenneth Clark it is easily theorised, ‘[certain] portraits are masterpieces because in them a human being is recreated and presented to us as an embodiment, almost a symbol, of all … Continue reading
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