In the early days of when portraiture began, portraits were
used to as a way of showing power and importance, the kind of people that had
portraits done of themselves would have had to be very wealthy and important,
for example King Henry the 8th had many portraits done of himself. Some
portraits were created even after the subject had passed away, the painter
would have been given photographs and information about the person’s appearance
and the painter would then have had to create the portrait going off what they
were given. However, portraits were not just used on canvases or framed, they
could be put on coins, vases, jars and even sculptures were made. But obviously,
if your face was going to be on a coin you would have to have real power. In
fact, back then the reason for most portraits were to show people that you have
lots of money and are important people, but the portraits didn’t always show
what you really look like, the painter would have been told to paint the
portrait in a flattering way so most painted portraits weren’t very ‘real’, the
background of the portrait would have also been changed, things that show
something about the sitter would have been added into the background to tell a
story about the sitter and what they do, and show how powerful they are.
This is a portrait painting of Queen Elizabeth 1 in the
1500’s. Almost every little detail in this portrait states something about Queen Elizabeth. The obvious being she is wearing a big dress that is a golden yellow
colour and clearly a lot of fabric would have been used to make this dress, the
golden yellow colours symbolize success and power and the fact there’s a lot of
fabric in them days shown how wealthy and successful the person is. She is also
shown wearing a lot of pearls, in the days she was around Eastern cultures
believed that pearls symbolize purity. The other things in the picture that
show her power and importance include the windows in the background. In the right window, it shows a disaster at sea and boats being pushed into rocks, this window is located behind the Queen's back, she has her back facing these disasters because she is confident in herself. The more smaller details include the carved mermaid near to her arm, in the middle ages mermaids represented dangerous possibilities, they were known to test sailors self-discipline by seductively singing to them and showing them their beauty, then the weakest sailor would jump into the ocean and then drowned. However, Queen Elizabeth has her back shown to the mermaid, this could indicate that she is showing she is honest, and there is nothing deceiving about her.
Photography and the Portrait
I read a part of text taken from a book called ‘Camera
Lucida’ written by Roland Barthes, the text that I wrote was about a photograph
that he had recently found after the death of his mother, the photo was not in
the book, he chosen not to publish the photograph, just talk about it. The
photo was an old photo taken in 1898 of his mother when she was 5 years old;
she was with her brother who was 7 years old at the time. The print was faded
because it was old but it shown two children (his mother and her brother)
standing together at the end of a little wooden bridge in a conservatory, in
those days it was known as a ‘Winter Garden’. Whilst talking about the
photograph of his mother, I got the impression that Roland Barthes was trying
to say that some photographs aren’t easily understood if you don’t know the
story behind it, when he’s talking about the photograph he talks about things
that were happening around the time the photograph was taken. In the text it
says “The brother and sister, united, as I knew, by the discord of their
parents, who were soon to divorce, had posed side by side, alone, under the
palms of the winter garden”. I think that he wrote this so that people, even
though they can’t see the photograph, would understand a bit more about it and
can imagine what it was like at the time it was taken. When many people see the
same photograph, they’ll all have different views on it and think of different
reasons or stories about it, they will just see it as a picture, whereas when people
who have relations to the image will see it as more personal to them. Until
someone has heard or read about the photograph they won’t fully understand it
or notice certain details in it, but after they’ve heard or read about it they
will view it in a different way. The fact that Roland didn’t include the
photograph in the text I believe is to get the point across that they won’t
understand it until they’ve heard about it.
The Alternative Portrait
Orlan
The Alternative Portrait
Orlan
Orlan is a French artist, after she
uses her work as a way of highlighting some problems there may be in society,
she is best known for using her own body and face in her work, and also having
plastic surgery for a project called ‘The Reincarnation of Saint-Orlan’ which
included a series where she got plastic surgery to ‘transform’ herself into
elements from famous paintings and sculptures including the mona lisa.
The fact that Orlan did not just
provide her fans and the public with before and after pictures of the
operations, but she invited them to view her actually getting the procedure
done, this adds much more shock and interest to her work, I think if she had just
shown before and after pictures her work wouldn’t have as much effect on
people. The idea that started these
lives operations came from an experience Orlan went through, she collapsed and
nearly died from an ectopic pregnancy, and she had the life saving operation
filmed.
Some other work that she creates that
don’t involve plastic surgery include digital photographs in which she merged
her face with Pre Columbian and African masks.
She stated
‘’with cosmetic surgery, you can look like a Barbie doll, or some big star, or
you can try to create you own inner portrait.”
Not everyone agrees with Orlans
work, some people have described her as ‘mad’ and ‘anti – feminist’ and even
said that the implants put in her forehead are demon horns. Orlan says that people only think this
because of what they see, if they actually met her and spoke to her about what
she wanted to achieve by having these procedure’s, their opinion would change.
Orlan appreciates people’s opinions and says that she aimed to introduce a
difference and see how it was viewed.
My Own Distressed Portrait
This is the distressed image that I created for my college work, the inspiration for this started off with looking at some of Damien Blottiere's fashion photos, he used a cutting out process to create his pictures, he put 2 or more images together and cut parts of them away so that you can see the other images underneath, and all together it looked unusual and unique. I tired a similar process but I wasn't impressed by how they turned out, I don't think I had enough creativity to pull it off, but I really wanted to use this process. Then i was watching Example's Kickstarts music video and theres parts of the video where theres peoples faces are all put together in horizontal strips, and this gave me an idea to cut pictures into strips and put them together. I then took 2 images, one of a mother and one of her son, at first I cut both pictures up and mixed them together, that didn't really work so I cut out strips of the mothers face and lined up the features with her sons, then scanned the picture, the picture was originally in black and white so I decided to add some colour in photoshop, I don't know why I chose to give it a yellow gold coloured tint but I thought it made the picture stand out a bit more.
I am happy with how my distressed image turned out, by first looking at it it looks quite unusual, then you notice that the eyes are lined up correctly and they look the same, this is because both people used are related and it shows the similarities of their features, the main one being the eyes. I left half of the son's right eye, so that it is comparable with the other one.
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