Exercise: Analyse a Formal Portrait - Part 4, Project 1

Tony Blair (2012) by Alastair Adams, Oil on Canvas

The portrait I have chosen for this exercise is a fairly recent one of ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair, painted in 2012 while the Olympic Games were going on, and on show to the public for the first time at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London from May 8-22, 2014. As it is owned by the artist, Alastair Adams, and has never been shown publicly before, there is little written about it. Adams states that he painted it with Blair's cooperation when he was doing an official portrait for the National Portrait Gallery, and wanted to catch the more informal side of the international statesman that he had come to know. I had the chance to see if for myself at the Mall Galleries exhibition, thought it was striking, and felt it would be a good idea to attempt to analyse a portrait without the help of the experts.

Tony Blair (2011) 4' x 3'

The style is quite different from the official portrait Adams did (opp.) which can be seen in the National Portrait Gallery, and has no props in it. In Adams' informal version above, the eye is  drawn immediately to Blair's relaxed face, framed by the slightly pop version of the flag around his head, and the militant slogan above it. It is painted in the realist style and is, technically, very good, with lots of background detail that can be interpreted both literally and figuratively. For me, living through the years of the Troubles, massacres in Africa, genocide in Bosnia and the ever-present threat of Middle East crises, the painting is strangely discordant. On the one hand the subject is relaxed, but the background seems to be saying Be Wary. There are a lot of threats in the world to peace.

It shows a youthful-looking hands-in-pockets Mr Blair at home in his house in Buckinghamshire, wearing jeans, an open-necked shirt and a jacket that looks slightly like the sort of bomber jacket that his friend George “Dubbya” Bush favours. There is a strong white uneven mark on the right side of the jacket which looks like a paint splatter, but is possibly a logo or a printed map of some area. Perhaps the jacket was given as a memento to those who took part in a conference he was attending. (It looks very like the collection of t-shirts, baseball caps, baseball jackets, pens  and knick-knacks that my husband amassed in attending conferences as part of his career in international business .) Blair is standing in front of his office desk, a traditional mahogany one with brass rosette drawer handles, which holds two phones and some family photographs; the former suggesting that he is a busy man who sees himself as a communicator (he is Britain's Middle East Peace Envoy after all), and the latter suggesting that his family are just one of his priorities. A blue electrical cord crosses the desk, perhaps attached to a lap-top or tablet computer.

But it is the painting behind him on the wall with a Union Jack in the centre of it that makes this portrait so powerful for me. As it is in Mr Blair's private collection (bought in 2008 for £26,250 from Christie's) and located in his study, it gives the first impression of him being very patriotic. However, this painting on the wall is not quite what it seems at first glance. Painted by Ken Howard R.A., who was appointed official artist of the Imperial War Museum in 1973, and spent time documenting the Troubles in Northern Ireland. it shows a Loyalist mural bearing the slogan "NO SURRENDER". What are we to make of this? No-one who lived in the UK from the late sixties could avoid knowing about the Troubles. Tony Blair worked hard on the peace process in Northern Ireland in the 1990's. Later, in his work in the Middle East, he said, "To bring people together you have to understand in a genuine sense why they feel as strongly as they do. This is not a matter of reason but of emotion."  "Many of the hundreds of hours I spent in discussion with the parties were not simply about specific blockages or details of the negotiation, but rather about absorbing and trying to comprehend why they felt as they did and communicating that feeling to the other side. In this way, they became my friends, because I then had inside me something of the passions they felt inside them." I notice here he makes no mention of Mo Mowlam or John Major - a huge oversight!

Was his purchase of the Howard painting part of his attempt to understand the depth of emotion felt by the Loyalists and resulting in so many acts of terrorism? Did he believe both sides were right? Is he somehow disloyal to Britain by owning a painting like this? Or is Alastair Adams showing us that Tony Blair believes deeply that, with mediation, conflicts can be resolved. Does Blair believe he is the only one who can solve them (the much-written-about-Messiah-complex) or does Blair the pragmatist believe that people create conflicts and people will solve them; the key being understanding?

I am in the latter category. No matter what history will make of Tony Blair the politician, I believe the man is deeply committed to the idea of world peace, even if he does manage to put himself at the forefront a lot of the time and take a disproportionate amount of credit when things go well;  and I also believe that Alastair Adams has captured this dedication beautifully in this portrait.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/24/tony-blair-northern-ireland-peace-process
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tony-blair-portrait-britpop-union-3496713
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/474072/Commissioned-portrait-by-Alastair-Adams-reveals-Tony-Blair-s-Loyalist-painting

Gallery Visit: Visit a Portrait Gallery - Part 4, Project 1

I was glad that this exercise came up at the time of year when the Royal Society of Portrait Painters holds its annual exhibition at the Mall Galleries. I like the Mall Galleries – the space is so understated and welcoming, and it's easier to imagine the works on show hanging in one's own home than in more grand spaces like the National Portrait Gallery. The portraits on show often include a range of poses that you don't see at the national galleries, where the subjects are usually famous and the portraits formal. (This is a slight deviation from the instructions for this exercise but  is a good way of seeing over 200 examples of contemporary portraiture before the arrival of the annual BP Portrait Awards exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.) A significant proportion of the paintings in this annual exhibition are done by Members of the Society, who are, naturally, looking for commissions, and have portrayed their subjects in fairly flattering light.

Three paintings were of particular interest to me when I read the advance publicity for the exhibition:- the first of Cambridge economics don Dr Victoria Bateman; the second of ex-prime minister Tony Blair; and the third of Sir Roger Bannister and his wife.

The first gained a fair amount of advance publicity because of the fact that Dr Bateman had commissioned the painting herself to take a snapshot of how she looked just after her thirtieth  birthday, and wanted to be painted in the nude in an unflattering pose to say “something about body image and our culture” because she feels “we have come to a point in society where we associate the female body with just one thing – sex”. She paid £9000 for the work, by Anthony Connolly, and plans to hang it in her living room when the exhibition is over. So it was with some interest that I went along to see if her aim of provoking people into realising that behind a nude can be an intelligent woman had been achieved. 

Anthony Connolly is a Member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and usually completes preliminary sketches (right) before embarking on the final work. These preliminary sketches are, to me, more powerful than the finished pose, which has Dr Bateman looking somewhat defiantly at the viewer. The artist has portrayed the subject in a very relaxed, unselfconscious way, as if she is leaning on a wall waiting for a bus, with her weight shifting from one leg to the other. 

 

 

                                                      The paintings in this gallery have all been commissioned by organisations, and they have often been intended for semi-public display. This one was intended only for the subject, her family and her friends, to be hung in the living-room of her home. I think the artist has shown a very non-frivolous, almost severe looking Dr Bateman, who seems to be daring us as viewers to criticise her stance. I wonder about the significance of the lily-of-the-valley flower in the bottom left foreground. Is it a favourite flower, or could it be a reminder for herself and her partner that this is as she was at 30? when I looked up the meaning of the this flower, I found that it could mean: 

"Return of happiness, purity of heart, sweetness, tears of the Virgin Mary, you've made my life complete, humility, happiness, love's good fortune. The legend of the lily of the valley is that it sprang from Eve's tears when she was kicked out of the Garden of Eden. It is also believed that this flower protects gardens from evil spirits. Also known as the flower of May."

Curiously, her hands are almost hidden. Is this on purpose, to draw attention to the fact that this lady is all about intellect and brains, I wonder?  I like the choice of the blue shower-like background, as it brings out the warm tones of the skin, which is beautifully painted and reminds me a bit of the range of skin-tones in Egon Schiele's The Family (below).

 Dr Bateman says she hopes the portrait  "will provide a talking point for her friends and family for many years to come". To me, the pose looks contrived and unnatural, and I can't get away from my initial reaction to it as a veiled attempt at something slightly daring from a woman who is taking a very traditional path in life.

The second portrait I wanted to concentrate on was of ex-Prime-Minister Tony Blair, which I have chosen as the subject for the next exercise in Project 1, Exercise 4 - Analyse a Formal Portrait (see Friday 23rd May 2014). The main attraction here is that this is the first time it has been shown in public, as it is owned by the artist. But I am also intrigued by the vitriol surrounding this man, and the anger he can provoke for distancing the Labour Party from its socialist roots and embracing capitalism; and for his position as staunch ally of the Bush Administration in its War on Terror and invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. We don't hear much about Blair's Faith Foundation, or the fact that he is on record as saying that religious extremism is the cause of most of the conflict in the the world today; or the fact that he himself is a deeply religious man who converted to Catholicism six months after resigning as Prime Minister. Perhaps he had always felt a Catholic at heart - his wife and children have always been - but the UK has never had a Catholic Prime Minister. Was his public religious affiliation a political strategy? Who is the real Tony Blair? 

I wanted to find out if the artist, Alastair Adams, managed to find the real man in his candid informal portrait done with Blair's approval while he sat for the formal portrait of Blair that had been commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery. As Adams owns the portrait, it has been in his private collection, but is soon to go on public display in Belfast, Northern Ireland. 

This is a very symmetrical painting, with little variation in tone or colour, and painted in oil with fine brushstrokes. A casually dressed Blair stands in front of his desk in his home study with various objects arranged on top, and a large painting on the wall behind. It gives the impression of order, discipline and clarity - there is no clutter in this study. Perhaps Adams was trying to capture the essence of Blair as a straightforward, stalwart man. Was he trying to portray the view that one can disagree with his views, but he is not duplicitous? Adams has painted him in such a way that Blair looks like someone who does not shy away from controversy and is not afraid to voice his principles. Perhaps his departure from national politics and his role as international peace-seeker has freed him from the need to court support from the voting public. There is lots of symbolism in this painting, which at first glance looks like a typical domestic scene, but that is misleading when we look more closely at the objects depicted.  (See the full analysis of this painting in the next post).

 

Lastly, is a pencil and charcoal portrait of one of my first sporting heroes, Roger Bannister, who was the first man to run a mile in under four minutes, with his wife Moyra. At 76 x 102cm, it is quite a large drawing by the famously well-established Philip Noakes who has known the couple for many years. When interviewed, Noakes said that he wanted to emphasize different aspects of both their achievements - Sir Roger's as a famous athlete celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of his record-breaking run and also his long career as a distinguished research neurologist and Master of Pembroke College, Oxford - and Lady Moyra as his lifetime companion and a  painter/ceramicist, who has recorded in words and illustrations their lifetime of travel.

This portrait will hang in Pembroke College, Oxford. I can't fault the drawing of the two main figures, but my first impression of this portrait is that it is just too busy. The rather ghostly-looking head on Sir Roger's left shoulder looks particularly redundant, and the two drawings of Lady Moyra  (above her and to her left) look too repetitive. The same can be said about the numerous plates/plaques/trophies/framed pictures surrounding the couple. It is clear that the painting in the top left is of a race, possibly Bannister's record-breaking mile, but the various other objects (which might well represent awards and achievements) merge into clutter with the display-shelf-unit floating between them like a wayward satellite. What is Sir Roger holding in this left hand? It looks like a giant glass shard, but the meaning is not clear to the viewer. And the two little bovine-like creatures galloping in from the right - are they samples of Lady Moyra's painting or his ceramics? Whatever they are or represent, the portrait would have been improved by their ommission in my opinion. The longer I looked at this portrait, the more I felt that Noakes had started out with some preliminary sketches on a large piece of paper and decided to make it into the finished work by adding things here and there.  Looking at his some of his previous works (many of which hang in the National Portrait Gallery) I can see his eye for detail, but nowhere can I find evidence of the cluttered approach he uses here. Although his technical skill is evident, Noakes has not shown the achievements of this couple at all well, and I find the portrait very unnatractive.

Exercise: Annotate a Portrait - Part 4, Project 1

The portrait I have chosen for this exercise is one that I have seen for myself in the Tate (London), by one of my favourite painters, David Hockney. Called simply "My Parents" it is a large canvas, almost square, with the two subjects portrayed almost life-size.

The Tate describes Hockney's style in this painting as changing towards a "closer study of human behaviour". The question I would like to address in this annotation is "Whose behaviour - Hockney's or his parents'?" as the painting is not of the personal space inhabited by Mr and Mrs Hockney but that of Hockney himself.

"My Parents" (1977), David Hockney, 183 x 183cm Oil on Canvas,

• The first things that strikes me about “My Parents” is that portraits are normally of the subject's own surroundings, in their study or in their formal sitting-room, but this is a portrait of a couple on their son's turf, with their son's furniture and books and not their own.
  
  
• It seems like quite a calm scene, yet I feel a bit of tension. The parents are quite far apart, one reading intently and the other being very well-behaved and co-operative. Did they get along? Are we to read differences in their personality here – one being placid and the other not?
  
  
• The colours used in “My Parents” are mostly on the cool spectrum, blues, greens and lilacs with touches of reds in his father's clothes and in the areas of flesh on both of them; as well as the vivid yellows and pinks of the tulips. This helps the painting feel calm, quiet and orderly. There is a similarity with the background colours of “Oath of the Horatii (1784) by David.
  
  
• David Hockney is on record as saying that he believes, like Picasso, “you can't have art without play”. He believes a sense of playfulness is essential to all activities, as he equates it with curiosity. In an interview after his father's death, he said, “In a certain sense, one only makes pictures for oneself. I work on the assumption that if something I am doing interests me it might interest someone else; but I can't be bothered too much if it doesn't, as long as it interests me.” 
   
• What does this painting say about Hockney's sense of playfulness, his curiosity? Certainly there are plenty of clues. The vase of tulips, as in a traditional vanitas painting, may be an acceptance that life is finite; that his parents were coming to the end of their lives. (He wasn't to know that his father would be dead within six months of this sitting), or it could have been placed there to tell us something about his mother's love of flowers and home life, in an homage to Dutch Still Life paintings. 
   
• The books on the shelf of the artist's studio table could signify that he likes to keep these books on hand (the table is on castors and can be moved around). By including all the volumes of Proust's “Remembrance of Things Past”, is Hockney remembering all his own memories of life with his parents, or is the placement of this book an acknowledgement that his parents have many happy memories of a life they have described as “rich”, I wonder. Proust was also interested in descriptive space. He viewed the study of the things we surround ourselves with as the way to understanding our inner life. The book on Chardin, famous for his depictions of people in their intimate spaces rather than the usual-for-the-time narrative allegories may be there to show that Hockney wanted this portrait to say more about how he viewed painting than about being an intimate one of his parents in their own space. Was the use of precise measurement and geometry in the painting also emphasised by the choice of the painting hanging on the studio wall and visible in the reflection from the mirror – Piero della Francesca's “Baptism of Christ” (right).
  
  Piero della Francesca was known to be an authority on perspective and geometry in his time, but he was also noted for being one of the first artists to paint descriptive space rather than pictorial space.
  
  
  
• The book being read by Hockney's father is also significant ( Aaron Scharf's “Art and Photography”) as Hockney made his own views on the subject clear in his 2001 book, “Secret Knowledge”. He makes the connection between the development of optics and the development of representational painting, and stresses that it was not so much a connection as a condition.
   
• In conclusion I feel that this portrait of his parents says much more about what David Hockney thinks about art and painting than it does about his parents; because it is his space that his parents are inhabiting, his studio with his books, his paintings on the studio wall and his chairs. It is Hockney's inner life that we learn about here, what is important to him, not an intimate look at the behaviour of his parents.

Research: Portrait Sculpture - Part 4, Project 1

The exercise asked for research into the techniques sculptors can use to comment on the status and achievements of their subjects, so I decided to begin this research into portrait sculpture by taking a walk from my own front door in London, in an area that owes its character to Sir Thomas Cubitt (1788-1855).

Sir Thomas Cubitt, Denbigh St. Pimlico

Born in 1788, in Buxton, near Norwich, he trained as a builder, becoming a master builder responsible for South Belgravia, as Pimlico was once called. He was also responsible, in 1847, for the east front of Buckingham Palace which lasted until redesigned by Aston Webb in 1913.  This statue was unveiled in 1995 by the Duke of Westminster.  It shows Cubitt with a set of plans in front of him and a measuring stick - both tools of the trade. Although he is not recognisable by his facial features, most people can guess that he has something to do with construction because of the props. (Interesting fact:  One of his great great grand daughters is Camila Parker-Bowles.)

Walking towards Tate Britain from Pimlico, the next portrait

"Jete" Enzo Plazotta, 46-57 Millbank, Westminster

sculpture I come across is of a dynamic ballet pose - the jete, by famous English Ballet dancer, David Wall.

(1946-2013). Wall became, at 21, the youngest principal dancer that the national ballet had ever had. He frequently partnered Dame Margot Fonteyn. The sculpture is by Enzo Plazzotta, an Italian-born British sculptor who has many bronzes dotted about London (including the charming "Young Dancer" opposite the Royal Opera House). I had never heard of David Hall when I first saw this sculpture, but I knew right away it was of a ballet dancer. So the second technique a sculptor can use to comment on the subject's status and achievements is to show her/him  performing a perfect example of her/his art.

Off to Trafalgar Square now to see one of the most famous portrait sculptures in London - Admiral Lord Nelson on top of his column, by Edward Hodges Baily). In this case, the sculpture is way off the ground and looked up to by everyone. So, if we want to recognise the figure, we must be able to recognise physical attributes or characteristics we always associate with him - in this case, his sleeve tucked inside his jacket, noting the loss of his right arm; and that famous hat. By placing the statue atop an enormous Corinthian column, everyone recognises that this man deserves enormous respect. The closer we get, the more we have to crane our necks to see him. Embellishment, in the form of four lions (by Landseer, an English artist specialising in wildlife) guarding the base of the statue and four relief panels on the sides of the base help in the aggrandisement of this iconic sculpture.

Admiral Lord Nelson, Trafalgar Square

On New Bond Street, the home of ultra-expensive shops, sits one of my favourite sculptures - that of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) on a bench in conversation with Sir Winston Churchill. Called "Allies", and unveiled in 1995 by the Bond Street Association to mark 50 years of peace, this statue is by Lawrence Holofcener. After their cooperative stand against Nazism, the two men helped found the United Nations. Churchill's mother was American and he and Churchill were distant cousins. What is interesting for me in this piece of sculpture is its informality. Churchill looks happy and relaxed in conversation with Roosevelt.  The body language of both men is warm and welcoming - Roosevelt has his arm along the back of the bench towards Churchill, who is leaning in towards his ally, with his left hand holding his signature Cuban cigar. Churchill is also recognisable by his bow tie, but Roosevelt is perhaps less obviously known to us without his wheel-chair (although he had taught himself to walk short distances using leg braces). In any case, the two are very life-like (and provide endless photo opportunities for tourists to be seated between them). In this case, I would say that posing the subject convincingly is the way the sculptor has achieved readily recognisable meaning; as well as showing their habits (Churchill's ubiquitous Cuban cigar); and dressing them in their usual recognisable clothes (Churchill's waistcoat and bow-tie and Roosevelt's double-breasted suit jacket.

"Allies" in New Bond Street.

Shackleton - RGS, London

The next two statues are to be found at the north end of Exhibition Road, at the Royal Geographical Society headquarters. If you want to take a taxi to see them, just ask for "hot and cold corner" as their location is called by London cabbies, presumably because of the opposing climates associated with each of them. They are Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton (left) and African explorer/missionary Sir David Livingstone (below right).

There is nothing frivolous about these statues. Both men look serious, resolved and deserving of their heroic status. Shackleton appears to be staring straight ahead, perhaps in the direction of the South Pole, while a more frail-looking Livingstone (below), with bible in hand, looks ahead as he perhaps surveys Victoria Falls. The location of these two statues, embedded in the walls of the National Geographical Society, and the clothes they wear plus the things they hold onto (like Livingstone's walking stick and his bible) help give us clues about their status and achievements and the geographical areas they mapped.

Livingstone

 



 

Albert Memorial from Kensington Gore

Gilded statue of seated Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort.

But perhaps the most striking technique a sculptor can use to comment on the status or achievement of the subject is to use the most expensive materials and surround the statue with a tall and ornate monument. A wonderful example of this technique is the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens (above left), just along the road from the statues of Shackleton and Livingstone.  (Scott Monument in Edinburgh's Princes Street is another good example and pre-dated this one.) Made from bronze and gilded, the memorial took ten years to complete and cost the equivalent of £10,000,000 in today's money. At 54m (176') tall, this statue can be seen from quite a distance, and if the sun is shining, it can be a dazzling sight. This man must have been loved indeed!

Exercise: Looking at Cartoons, Part 4, Project 1

 

With an upcoming referendum vote in Scotland about independence from the rest of the UK, it is not surprising that Alex Salmond has come under a lot of criticism; especially  for his lack of information on exactly what independence would mean.

In the cartoon above,  he has been portrayed as a jovial, isn't-this-fun Loch Ness Monster, rising up from the Loch to "rock the boat" of the United Kingdom, with Prime Minister David Cameron and Labour Leader Ed Milliband looking quite shocked by the tartan monster's size and threat. David Cameron has the last word, indicating that he is the more powerful of the two in the boat.

 David Cameron himself is often the subject of satire in the newspapers, as can be seen from this recent comment by Dave Brown in the Independent on Cameron's attempt to placate the eurosceptics in his party and stop the voters from going over to UKIP by promising a yes/no vote if he is re-elected in 21015. The cartoon below is a metaphor of what might happen if Cameron's plan doesn't work - i.e. the UK could be left out in the cold with no hope of re-admittance. Nigel Farange (UKIP leader) is represented here by a toad, while the British bulldog represents the eurosceptics.

 

The Royal Family are often the subject of profile cartoons, especially Prince Charles, who is instantly recognisable by his large ears, close-together eyes and receding chin. In this cartoon below, the addition of the ceremonial jacket with epaulets makes it obvious who is being lampooned. The cartoon shows the difference between a sketch of someone and a cartoon, as it is the exaggeration of the features that makes all the difference.

 

Another figure who is often the subject of cartoons currently is Mayor Boris Johnson, who is instantly recognisable by his blonde, slightly unkempt thatch. After the 2012 Olympics, Boris was seen as trying to be a crowd-pleaser and the subject of many gentle jibes. 

His plain speaking is also commented on, though and in the cartoon on the right, he is being likened to the dog that features in the advertisements for Dulux paint because they are both shaggy, but his forthrightness in using a certain word is alluded to in the changed name on the can. This is a very simple but clever mechanism that is also very economical. The picture says it all.