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Portraits in painting and photography

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Abstract

This article addresses the portrait as a philosophical form of art. Portraits seek to render the subjective objectively visible. In portraiture two fundamental aims come into conflict: the revelatory aim of faithfulness to the subject, and the creative aim of artistic expression. In the first part of my paper, studying works by Rembrandt, I develop a typology of four different things that can be meant when speaking of an image’s power to show a person: accuracy, testimony of presence, emotional characterization, or revelation of the essential “air” (to use Roland Barthes’ term). In the second half of my paper this typology is applied to examples from painting and photography to explore how the two media might differ. I argue that, despite photography’s alleged ‘realism’ and ‘transparency,’ it allows for artistic portraiture and presents the same basic conflict between portraiture’s two aims, the revelatory and the expressive.

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Notes

  1. Ricahrd (1991) On another duality, between the portrait as likeness and as idealization, see West (2004).

  2. See Matisse, Henri (1954). Quoted in Klein (2001).

  3. See Matisse, quoted in Klein, p. 23.

  4. Walker (1995).

  5. Schneider (2002).

  6. Schneider (2002 p. 6).

  7. Schneider (2002, p.10).

  8. Schneider (2002, p.15).

  9. Podro (1998).

  10. Schneider (2002 p. 104).

  11. See Platzman (2001).

  12. Pioch (2002).

  13. Platzman (2001 p. 181).

  14. Quoted by Merleau-Ponty (1945).

  15. Currin, John. Quoted in Rosenblum (2003).

  16. Podro (1998 p.106).

  17. See Schneider (2002 pp. 25–27) on how settings and props provided symbolic access to information about a subject’s interests, moral beliefs, and notions of virtue.

  18. Podro (1998 p. 106).

  19. Schama (1999).

  20. See Schama (1999 p. 474).

  21. Schama (1999 p. 341).

  22. See Schama (1999 p. 480).

  23. Schama (1999 p. 337).

  24. Schama (1999 p. 339).

  25. Barry (2004). Barry explains that contrary to popular belief, figurative art was common in medieval Islam, 159.

  26. Barry (2004 p. 41).

  27. Bellion (1999).

  28. Schama (1999 p. 338).

  29. Sidén (2001).

  30. West (2004 pp. 59–62).

  31. Quoted from Countess de Gasparin (1869).

  32. Barthes (1985).

  33. Barthes (1985 p. 107).

  34. Barthes (1985 p.109).

  35. Barthes (1985 109–110).

  36. Tagg, John (1988).

  37. Santayana (1981).

  38. Nadar, Felix (1900). “My Life as a Photographer,” In Goldberg, 127.

  39. See Cavell (1979), Walton (1984, 1986, 1990). For criticisms, see Martin (1986), also Gregory (1995). See also Maynard (1997).

  40. See Sontag (1997); See also Maynard (1997 p. 232).

  41. Walton (1984 p. 241).

  42. Walton (1984 p. 261).

  43. Walton’s emphasis (1984 p. 253).

  44. Walton (1997).

  45. Maynard (1997 p. 247).

  46. Ruskin, John (1865). From “The Cestus of Agalia.” (In Goldberg, 153).

  47. See Brilliant, 56–8.

  48. Van Alphen (1997).

  49. Brilliant, 67.

  50. Brilliant, 74, quoting from R. Bernheimer, see 180, note 37.

  51. A recent book in which the author was, I believe, swept off to sea is (Mitchell 2005).

  52. Dewey (2005).

  53. Merleau-Ponty (1960).

  54. Quoted by Merleau-Ponty (1960 p. 125).

  55. Quoted by Dewey (2005 p. 106).

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Houston, 513 Agnes Arnold Hall, Houston, TX, 77204-3004, USA

    Cynthia Freeland

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Freeland, C. Portraits in painting and photography. Philos Stud 135, 95–109 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9099-7

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