"STRIKING RESEMBLANCE" BREAKS NEW GROUND IN PORTRAITURE
AT ZIMMERLI ART MUSEUM AT RUTGERS
New Brunswick, NJ -Spanning two centuries and surveying work by close to 80 artists from around the world, a new exhibition at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers presents an innovative exploration about an enduring subject: the portrait. "Striking Resemblance: The Changing Art of Portraiture," on view from January 25 through July 13, 2014, examines the genre as a historic tradition, as well as a continually evolving phenomenon.
Organized in sections devoted to the single, double, and group portrait, this exhibition presents a fundamentally new and exciting account of how people view themselves, their significant others, and their tribes. Included among some 130 works in many media are 50 from the Zimmerli's collection and 80 loans from private and public collections around the country. The Zirnmerli's rich holdings of American, European, Russian, and Soviet art give this exhibition a distinct character, while loans from public and private collections offer a global perspective. The diversity of subjects in age, ethnicity, gender, and class reflects the global village that we increasingly inhabit.
"Striking Resemblance' is part of an ambitious, multi-dimensional collaboration," explains Suzanne Delehanty, the Zimmerli's director. Exhibition organizers Donna Gustafson, the Zirnmerli's Andrew W. Mellon Liaison for Academic Programs and Curator, and Susan Sidlauskas, Professor and Graduate Director in the Department of Art History at Rutgers, began working on the project in 2011and co-taught an exhibition seminar and coordinated a colloquium for 13 graduate students in 2012. In early 2013, with contributions from these graduate students, the Zimmerli launched its first online publication, "Not About Face: Identity and Appearance, Past and Present." Delehanty continues, "This exhibition embodies new scholarship in art-as well as the university's commitment to excellence in teachlng, research, and public service -that we are delivering to a worldwide audience, near and far."
"Historically, portraiture is a popular genre and there have been many studies of the portrait and the self-portrait: as a phenomenon of class and power, a democratized art, and an expression of personal exploration," observes Gustafson.
"This exhibition takes a new approach to portraiture: through the lens of social engagement," adds Sidlauskas. "We focused on the portrait as a social medium to think about how we present ourselves, our significant relationships, and our communities."
Opening with a group of portraits of individuals, the exhibition focuses on the portrait as a means by which individuals are honored and remembered by their friends and families. Among the earliest works on view are oil paintings from the Zimmerli's collection. The portraits of "Lucretia Harris Holmes" (mid-late 1830s), attributed to Ammi Phillips, and "Portrait of Princess Ekaterina Nikolaevna Lopukhina (Portrait of a Lady)" from 1799, attributed to Russian artist Petr Levitsky, represent this traditional notion of the single portrait. Other early 19thcentury selections include English and American eye portrait miniatures, on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which were popularly carried as sentimental mementoes of family members or friends.
These early portrait traditions are updated by contemporary artists. Tabitha Vevers, with her own series of "Lover's Eyes" (2002-2012), nods to the tradition of the eye portrait miniature, incorporating such subjects as those painted by Bronzino, Manet, and Rosetti. "The Origins of Socialist Realism" (1983) represents an ironic "history portrait" by Russian artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid. A key painting of the Zimmerli's Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, this representation of Stalin incorporates the mythic origin of painting with the propaganda portrait to comment on how histories are written, as well as the relationship of art and power.
Throughout the exhibition, viewers are challenged to explore the very essence of identity, in particular with contemporary portraits that do not focus on the image of a person. Felix Gonzalez-Torres's "Untitled (Double Portrait)" from 1991, a stack of printed sheets with an interlocking double circle, invites visitors to interact with the portrait by taking a sheet with them. Janice Krasnow's "Portrait of Serena" (1999) portrays fellow artist and friend Serena Bocchino using a written description of her face on a white panel. Do Ho Suh's self-portrait "Uni-Form/s: Self Portrait/s: All My 39 Years" (2006) includes a series of school and military uniform jackets obediently lined up one behind the other, from smallest to largest.
Double portraits in the exhibition explore connections between pairs, including lovers, parents and children, and siblings; even the self, represented twice in the same image. These double portraits often reveal our most intimate encounters: twin portraits by Mary Ellen Mark suggest the strength of the bond between pairs of identical twins, while Catherin Opie' s portrait of "Melissa and Lake" (1998) or the nestled hands of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning focuses on the intimate love of a couple. Contemporary artists have explored a more fluid definition of identity in recent years to make political and humorous points. In Yuri Albert's "Self-portrait like Another Artist" (1991), the Russian artist's face assumes the mask of an American artist, Andy Warhol, known for his practice of sending doubles to appear in his place at events.
"Striking Resemblance" also compels us to consider our own relationships with groups of people. Whether portraits of family groups or people united by a common interest, we find ourselves wanting to both stand out from and fit in with the crowd. Photographers August Sander, Rineke Dijkstra, and Vladimir Kupriyanov create solutions to the particular problems raised by the group portrait with individuals that read as members of a social circle: lined up neatly in a row as in Sander's "Gymnastics Club"; clustered together through the ebb and flow of affection in Dijkstra's representation of adolescent girls on the beach "Castricum aan Zee, the Netherlands"; and divided up, framed as distinct parts, then reassembled as a group, as Kuprianov has done in "Cast Me Not Away from Your Presence." These images and other works in the exhibition remind us that we continually evaluate and adjust the ever-shifting relationships between ourselves and our friends, colleagues, and families.
Portraits are part of our everyday lives. Pictures of family and friends stir up memories and emotions. A biography that accompanies an image of a public figure, or even a stranger, may encourage us to recognize personal traits in the physical appearance. But when there is no information about the sitter or the artist, we often are left asking: Who? Where? When? Why?
In what may be one of the original "selfie" assemblages, "445 Portraits of a Man" (c. 1930s-1940s) captures an anonymous subject, by an unidentified artist. This extraordinary collection of photo booth images taken over many years - loaned from a private collection and never before publically exhibited - provokes many questions about the artist and the subject. Who is the artist, who was the subject, are they the same person? Why would this archive of an individual man have been produced and how was it saved for us to see?
How will future generations interpret the billions of online profile pictures - or, portraits - that eventually will become disconnected from their original contexts? Is each of our own archives of self-portraits destined to become an "Unknown Subject" or "Unidentified Artist" with a lost history?