FAMS Speaker Series - Portraiture and Portrait-Seeing: From Caravaggio to Digital Selfies

Portraiture as a visual arts genre is best defined by reference to the distinctive kind of experience portraits, essentially, foster—what I dub “portrait-seeing.” A proper understanding of such an experience also facilitates the identification of the additional features portraits typically exhibit, hence leading to a fuller elucidation of the genre.  Such an experience-based account proves superior to the prevalent, nowadays, content-based theories (defended by Cynthia Freeland, Paolo Spinicci, and Hans Maes), for avoiding a number of conceptual confusions; having the appropriate connection to the practices of art interpretation and evaluation; and possessing greater explanatory power.  Examples discussed are mostly from film, painting, and photography.  Yet, I apply my theory also to such ordinary images as tourism mementos and digital selfies.  Artists referred to include Caravaggio, Paolo Uccello, Rubens, Ingres, and Chardin; photographers Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Emmett Gowin, and Jacques Lowe; filmmakers Nora Ephron and Stan Brakhage; and visual artists Marina Amaral and Shepard Fairey.