Any work of art is in a sense autobiographical. It is an expression of a worldview held by the artist that will always be the ultimate subject. Portraiture, or more specifically, portrait painting, must be seen in the same way. As I pour through the work of a particular artist, I am struck by evidence of a continuum of sensibility – a continuum that makes each work significant to the individual. Though the object or sitter may change throughout a body of work, the subject is clearly that of the artist and could not be otherwise.
Every artist will have a different response to a work and, ideally, every viewer will have a different interpretation of a work based on his or her own sensibilities. That is to the success of the work. To the determent of the work is the approach that attempts to nail down one view over another. The quickest way to kill a work of art, religion, or any such transcendental phenomenon is to say, “This is the way it is.” A work of art must always only be a vehicle for individual experience or intuition.
Some works by Alberto Giacometti come to mind where the facture of the work becomes more true to the subject than does the object of the sitter. In these works, what is expressed, I think, is an active space in and around the figure that only hints at a likeness, in order to strip down the object to the essence of representation. The figure is clearly the central focus of the works but the head and its features are scaled down in such a way as to give a sense of being lost amidst its greater surroundings. His process leaves evidence of both addition and subtraction of material and so doing implies an active search for form that is Giacometti’s alone. The tension that is created between these elements of form and content does, however, open wider opportunities for intuition of the viewer. The work is less an attempt at the descriptive likeness of the sitter but more a stand in for the artist’s existential worldview.
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