Portraits and self-portraiture in the arts Books

Book SynopsisFace to Face presents a selection of portraits of artists by three of the most prominent portrait artists of our time. Bringing together the diverse and distinctive work of Tacita Dean, Brigitte Lacombe, and Catherine Opie, this book forms an investigation into the charged genre of portraiture and its various approaches, navigating tensions between intimacy and publicity. While the three artists collected here share a wide set of historical touchstones, each deploys the camera differently: Dean exploits cinema's capacity for duration; Lacombe takes her cameras out on assignment; Opie works in the tradition of the studio photograph. Often overlapping in the subjects depicted, Face to Face offers an opportunity to look closely at bracing, intimate, and resonant portraits of the seminal thinkers and makers that these artists have encountered across the fields of music, painting, photography, film, and literature, among them Hilton Als, Maya Angelou, Richard Avedon, Joan Didion, David Hockney, Joan Jonas, Fran Lebowitz Patti Smith, Kara Walker, and many others. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the International Center of Photography (ICP), New York, the book includes essays by the exhibition's curator, Helen Molesworth, and the artist and writer Jarrett Earnest

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Book SynopsisNew Orleans-based self-taught pop artist Ashley Longshore, known for her bold fashionista portraits and larger-than-life personality, has a massive art-cult following. I Do Not Cook, I Do Not Clean, I Do Not Fly Commercial highlights Ashley's colorful life story and showcases her bejeweled vibrant pop art.Ashley Longshore delivers exactly what her fans are clamoring for: a look at Ashley's big life, her audacious aphorisms, and of course her sumptuous, glittering art in sublime detail. Ashley Longshore's pop-art paintings are always daring; her art makes noise. On any given day, you may catch her in her New Orleans gallery painting with Blake Lively, talking art and fashion with Dapper Dan in New York, or on a remote island in Hawaii painting.A prolific artist, she has been compared to Andy Warhol for her passion with pop-culture figures; but it's her infectious personality and humorous real talk that has captured the hearts of and inspired her devoted fanTrade Review"The New Orleans-based, self-taught pop artist Ashley Longshore is known for so much more than her bold fashion portraits—this book also captures her larger-than-life personality. With contributors like Linda Fargo, Blake Lively, Diane von Furstenberg and Tommy Hilfiger, it's the perfect gift for your fashion-obsessed sister." —PUREWOW.COM

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Book SynopsisAmerica's greatest living portrait artist presents his favourite subjects.

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Book SynopsisAIDS & Representation explores portraits and self-portraits made in response to the AIDS epidemic in America in the 1980s and 1990s. Addressing the work of artists including Mark Morrisroe, Robert Blanchon and Felix Gonzalez-Torres through the interrelated themes of sickness and mortality, desire and sexual identity, love and loss, Fiona Johnstone shows how the self-representational practices of artists with HIV and AIDS offered a richly imaginative response to the limitations of early AIDS imagery. Johnstone argues that the AIDS epidemic changed the very nature of visual representation and artistic practice, necessitating a radical new approach to conceptualising and visualising the human form. An extended epilogue considers the ongoing art historicization of the epidemic, re-contextualising the book’s themes in relation to contemporary photographic works. More than just a historical discussion of the art of the AIDS crisis, AIDS and Representation contributes to an emergent body of scholarship on the visual representation of illness. Expanding the established genre of the autopathography or illness narrative beyond the predominantly textual, this important contribution to art history and health humanities sensitively unpicks the entanglements between aesthetic form and the expression of lived experiences of critical and chronic ill health.Trade ReviewJohnstone’s book provides excellent context for the emergence of visual art in the time of crisis – and during the emergency years of the AIDS crisis in particular. AIDS changed art, this book argues, showing us how to develop a complex appreciation and understanding of these crucial portraits. * Monica Pearl, Senior Lecturer, Twentieth Century American Literature and Film, University of Manchester, UK *Arguing for a more expansive understanding of self-portraiture in its revisiting and queering of AIDS portraiture in the 1980s and 1990s, this book offers a critical reappraisal of the significance of portraiture as an aesthetic and activist response to crisis. * Lisa Diedrich. Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University, USA *Enjoyable and accessible, this book bears witness to Mark Morrisroe, Robert Blanchon, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ queer tactics of portraiture, meanwhile locating their work within well researched and fascinating contexts that illuminate a kinship of ideas, connections, and tensions across disciplines and timelines. * Theodore (ted) Kerr, co-author of We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production (2022) *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Introduction 1. A Crisis of Representation: constructing an epidemic 2. Putting a face to AIDS: critiquing documentary portrait photography 3. Mark Morrisroe: a grandiose aesthetic encounter 4. Robert Blanchon: abjection, ‘absence’ and autobiography 5. Felix Gonzalez-Torres: falling out of time Epilogue: In/visible: picturing HIV in ‘endemic time' Endnotes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis beautifully illustrated volume showcases over 70 exquisite pieces from the Cleveland Museum of Art's internationally important collection of British portrait miniatures which range in date from the 17th to the 19th century. It features the work of leading miniaturists, including Nicholas Hilliard, Isaac Oliver, Samuel Cooper, as well as an extensive collection of miniatures by Richard Cosway, much of it shown here for the first time. Author Cory Korkow includes new research about the artists, sitters and owners of these precious miniatures. Each is accompanied by a detailed catalogue entry including notes on both the work and biographical information on the artist, as well as a dramatic full-page colour plate. Supplementary illustrations show the front and back of the miniatures to scale, which, along with numerous conservation photographs, index of artists allows this stunning collection to be studied in detail for the first time. The volume also includes an index of artists.Table of ContentsContents: Foreword; Acknowledgements; Essay; Main catalogue: entries for up to 73 objects plus up to 262 comparative images - including a front and back to scale shot of each object; Documentation; Further reading; Index of artists.

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Book SynopsisExplores new approaches to portraying identity and the human face and figure, through works from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery's collections and other institutions. Is there more to portraiture than eyes meeting eyes? Beyond the Face: New Perspectives on Portraiture presents sixteen essays by leading scholars who explore the subtle means by which artists - and subjects - convey a sense of identity and reveal historical context. Examining a wide range of topics, from early caricature and political vandalism of portraits to contemporary selfies and performance art, these studies challenge our traditional assumptions about portraiture. By probing the diversity and complexity of portrayal, Beyond the Face fills a gap in current scholarship and offers a resource for teaching art history, subjectivity, and the construction of identity. AUTHOR: Wendy Wick Reaves is senior curator of prints and drawings, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. SELLING POINTS: . A general guide to the portraiture genre . Introduces the reader to fresh methodologies and modern studies . Explores new approaches to portraying the human face and figure 132 colour images

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Book SynopsisIllustrated with 167 full colour images, this landmark book charts Alexander Moffat’s career from student days at Edinburgh College of Art in the 1960s to the recent Scotland’s Voices. Iconic portraits of major figures in literature and the other arts are represented. The cultural significance of the visual chronicle Moffat has created lies in his approach to portraiture. He aims not only to capture a sitter’s appearance but also to convey something of their inner character, reaching ‘a balance between emotional expression and compositional order’.Trade Review'illuminating, lavishly illustrated and long overdue retrospective of Moffat's work' -- ALAN TAYLORTable of ContentsForeword by Duncan Thomson 7 PERSONAL, PARTICULAR, PUBLICThe Portraits of Alexander Moffat 11 A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A PORTRAITIST Bill Hare in Conversation with Alexander Moffat 89 Alexander Moffat Chronology 175 List of Images 183 Acknowledgements 191

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Book Synopsis In 1904, Saxon artist Oskar Zwintscher painted the portrait of a lady smoking a cigarette. Today, the work has cult status at the Albertinum in Dresden. Her hair loose, a burning cigarette held casually in her hand, the sitter in a black reform dress is sitting in front of a black curtain. But who is behind the young woman who looks out of the picture so confidently? Andreas Dehmer and Susanna Partsch embark on a fascinating search for clues to the identity of the lady smoking. They find emancipated women who earned their living as artists, actors or writers, preferred reform dress to the corset, and regarded smoking as a symbol of independence. They follow them to metropolises like Berlin, Dresden or Munich, where they lived as part of the bohemian scene. A captivating picture of the way art and life intertwined around 1900 emerges in this search for the unknown.

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Book SynopsisThe 300th birthday of Empress Maria Theresia provides an opportunity to examine her outstanding interest in the fine arts. At the invitation of the reforming monarch a large number of painters, sculptors and other artists in Austria and abroad found a wealth of work opportunities. Correspondingly, this era has left its mark on the countries of the former Habsburg monarchy to this day. Maria Theresia pursued an individual approach with regard to cultural policy. She was interested in reform not only in education, but also in the field of art. She commissioned contemporary artists and helped portrait painting to a new upswing, leading not least to the international consolidation of the newly formed House of Habsburg-Lorraine. This was the function also fulfilled by the allegorical paintings and ceiling frescoes for which impressive cartoons have survived. Landscape painting was highly esteemed, and finally outstanding masterpieces were produced in sculpture and three-dimensional works, for example by Balthasar Ferdinand Moll and Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.

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Book SynopsisThis richly illustrated book features an introduction by the National Portrait Gallery’s chief curator and nearly 150 insightful entries on key self-portraits in the museum’s collection. Eye to I provides readers with an overview of self-portraiture while revealing the intersections that exist between art, life, and self-representation. Drawing primarily from the museum’s collection, Eye to I explores how American artists have portrayed themselves over the past two centuries. The book shows that while each individual approaches self-portraiture under unique circumstances, all of their representations raise important questions about self-perception and self-reflection. Sometimes artists choose to reveal intimate details of their inner lives. Other times they use the genre to obfuscate their true selves or invent alter egos. Today, with the proliferation of selfies and the contemporary focus on identity, it is time to reassess the significance of the self-portrait.

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