![]() Becoming familiar with her images is like having something I missed and wanted in childhood delivered to me now, as an adult. As Smith said: “I know her art will have a tremendous effect on young people because I’m a grown-ass woman and it’s had a tremendous effect on me. It’s also the first work by Toyin to enter a British public collection. Zadie Smith is one of the greatest literary voices of our time and Toyin Ojih Odutola is one of the most exciting artists, so this work is the perfect pairing. Sadie (Zadie Smith) by Toyin Ojih Odutola, 2018-19 This new commission will be shown for the first time at the National Portrait Gallery when it reopens on 22 June. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York The perfect pairing … Sadie by Toyin Ojih Odutola. Alison Smith, National Portrait Gallery chief curator We watch comedian Sid James on TV in Hancock’s Half Hour, but also see what looks like an invitation to the opening of a Henry Moore exhibition, a CND flyer, as well as adverts for remedies for colds, flu and rheumatism on the coffee table. Sid James by Ruskin Spear, 1962 This collage captures both the funny and sad: how life is made up of grand aspirations and messy little domestic settings. Portraits at the precipice of melancholy or mania are the most attractive to me. The hair is manic but orderly, coiled and framing deep, endless concentric circles of eyes – searching, wondering and staring somehow both at us and into the abyss. I am reminded of the gaping mouth of Munch’s Scream, or the bull in Picasso’s Guernica, given the equine nature of the face. El-Salahi’s work has often delved into the personal and here we see him in a confused, uncertain state of mind. But portrait painting continues to flourish.Self-Portrait of Suffering by Ibrahim El-Salahi, 1961 The African modernist El-Salahi studied at the Slade in London in the 1950s and western modernism clearly influenced him. Since the 1990s artists have also used video to create living portraits. At the same time, photography became the most important medium of traditional portraiture, bringing what was formerly an expensive luxury product affordable for almost everyone. Most of Picasso’s pictures of women, for example, however bizarre, can be identified as portraits of his lovers. Instead artists painted their friends and lovers in whatever way they pleased. A notable exception was Francisco Goya in his apparently bluntly truthful portraits of the Spanish royal family.Īmong leading modern artists portrait painting on commission, that is to order, became increasingly rare. Portraits have almost always been flattering, and painters who refused to flatter, such as William Hogarth, tended to find their work rejected. They have been used to show the power, importance, virtue, beauty, wealth, taste, learning or other qualities of the sitter. ![]() Before the invention of photography, a painted, sculpted, or drawn portrait was the only way to record the appearance of someone.īut portraits have always been more than just a record. ![]() Portraiture is a very old art form going back at least to ancient Egypt, where it flourished from about 5,000 years ago.
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