Beyond Brushstrokes
By Maria Victoria Rufino
Sir Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister and writer, painted landscapes rather than portraits. “Because no tree has ever complained about its likeness,” he remarked.
The artist’s greatest challenge is to depict a subject in a particular medium — oil, pastel, charcoal or watercolor on canvas, paper, a carving on wood, an etching on metal or a sculpture in marble. Unlike the stark and accurate objectivity of a digital or film photograph, a painting is a subjective interpretation by the artist. In most cases, his own personality is projected onto and blended with the image. The portrait reveals facets of the painter’s personality together with the likeness of the subject.
In portraiture, the artist is required to capture the expression and character of the subject. When a portrait is commissioned, the painter is often asked to enhance the best features and downplay or erase the irregular flaws. It is, in a sense, the manual equivalent of Photoshop. It is amusing to hear stories about portrait sittings and how the commissioners, subjects, models give the painters a hard time — demands, suggestions, unsolicited remarks on the skill and accuracy of the artist. This practice creates expectations of perfection.
Specific requirements limit and dampen the creative process. Sometimes, the truth is embellished and it becomes an inflated illusion of grandeur, narcissism, and fantasy.
After all, who wants to pay for a portrait that shows one’s real physical limitations and flaws?
The British Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell once remarked to the portraitist of King Charles I’s court, “Mr. Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughness, pimples, warts and everything as you see me. Otherwise, I will never pay a farthing for it.”
An art collector once asked the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali if it was hard to paint a picture. He replied, “No. It’s either easy or impossible.”
The lay observer might wonder, “why do some portraits appear distorted, cubist, or surreal?”
It is the artist’s vision, expression of and statement on life as interpreted on canvas. When people ask why a portrait cannot look exactly like the subject, the stock reply would be, “Take a photograph if you want reality.”
For centuries, artists have painted their variations of still life and landscapes. They are free to expand their expression beyond the limits of representational and figurative art.
The impressionists of the early 20th century (Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas) were fascinated with light and its effect of nature. They painted wonderful shimmering impressions of landscapes well as glimmering portraits of women, children, and ballerinas. The images appeared as though they were seen through raindrop-splattered windowpanes.
Claude Monet painted the same romantic scenes of the Seine of Paris and Thames in London. He painted the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Rouen in varying stages of daylight and sunset through different seasons. He did the same at his water lily pond with the Japanese bridge in his garden in Giverny.
For the Surrealists, landscape was the favorite metaphor for inner worlds of the mind and imagination. They depicted a dreamlike world “without boundaries between the self and material reality.” The subjective and objective are mingled as in one’s imagination.
Artists depict their own valid facets of truth and reality. It is up to the viewer to relate positively or negatively to the version of the truth.
Here are some quotes on truth. Enlightened individuals wrote these gems.
“Truth is the object of philosophy, but not always of philosophers.” — John Churton Collins (1848–1908), British writer and scholar
“La vérité existe. On n’invente que le mensonge.” (Truth exists. Only lies are invented.”) Georges Braque (1882–1963), French Cubist painter
“A truth that’s told with bad intent / Beats all the lies you can invent.” William Blake (1757–1827), English poet, artist, mystic, in Auguries of innocence.
Maria Victoria Rufino is an artist, writer and businesswoman. She is president and executive producer of Maverick Productions.
