Fayum portraits

If you haven't seen the latest issue of Smithsonian magazine (and really, how many people do get this rather light-weight but always interesting magazine of our own national museums in DC?), then you might not know about fayum portraits, those absolutely exquisite head portraits produced upon a person's death and fixed onto their coffin, or into their mummy wrappings.

See what a small section it is!

I would encourage you to go to the Smithsonian website and look at more examples, or if in New York City go to The Met where the young boy show in the middle above is currently on display in Gallery 38. They are also on display at the Louvre, British Museum and the small and often neglected Brooklyn Museum has one too!

The portraits seem to be largely produced in the 3rd Century AD in Egypt's Fayum region (see map to the left) and blend Greco-Roman portraiture style into their own technique of using beeswax and pigment. Analyses of the pieces have revealed the use of a plant-derived red pigment used for much of the clothing and a combination of a lead white and a blue pigment to create the striking eyes. Gold leaf can also be seen in the portrait above on the far right.

Having just seen the Renaissance portraiture show at the Met, I am amazed at how striking these portraits are. We tend to think of the Renaissance as the time of high-art. This is reasonable given some of the innovations (perspective, anatomy studies), the political support for the arts by the Church (Sistine Chapel) and families (the Medici), as well as the constant energy of the artists (Michelangelo, Botticelli). Nevertheless, these portraits remind us that powerful artistry is present even when least suspected.

Book as Art

Edmond de Goncourt had the first edition of his friends' works bound in parchment and a portrait of the writer painted on the cover by the artist he deemed most appropriate for each writer. Jean-Francois Raffaeli did the one of Zola; the image here is simply called Bohème since I do not have access to a book cover.

Carrière did the one of Daudet, but I have included here a study of Daudet with his daughter.

Paul Valéry, in Aesthetics, disdains this project as it entirely forgets the purpose of the book. The book can no longer be read but is mummified "to sit eternally in a glass case".

For collectors this would undoubtedly seem an entirely natural response. This particular book is not to be perused but worshipped, fetishized. For Goncourt, the book became an object for posterity through the additional artistic endeavor of the portrait. The knowledge contained within the book is no longer material to the book's value. The book's value now occurs through being contained first, in vellum and then, by art. In fact, the question becomes whether the object is valued as a book, or as a portrait. In what sense does it remain a book except as the foundation for its current state, transformed into an objet d'art by the portrait, by its wrapping, by its untouchability? I can easily dismiss the question by saying it is all of the above. But that dismissal does not acknowledge the complication caused by each additional step of time (first edition), wrapping (vellum), additional artistic endeavor (portrait done by known artist), fragility (parchment and art made it impossible to touch), and lastly its possession by Goncourt, whose reputation adds to the history and thus value as an object.

To complicate the matter further, the book would now be valued as a collector's item by virtue of being a first edition, that is book-to -be-read into book-as-historical-entity. Its historicity then alters it from a book-to-be-read into book-as-value-object. First editions are rarely read or handled precisely for being rare. But in this instance, the book can not be confirmed as a first edition without destroying its surrounding artifactuality. The book is known to be a first edition through its historicity.

If the book is uninteresting, trite, or simplistic, it no longer matters. The content of the book, in some sense what it is the book refers to in being a book, has become irrelevant. Its materiality has literally disappeared.

As a collector do you want the book because you are a fan of Zola? Edmond de Goncourt? Raffaeli? Or, simply for the conquest of collection? Do you want it because it is a book or a work of art?

Portraits

Given that today is President's Day, we are likely to see portraits of our famous presidents, especially Washington. We are likely to see painted portraits and I was thinking of the famous portraits of Washington when I remembered this fascinating documentary on portraiture, in which an artist looks at the way portraits and the painter's self-portraits, placed side-by-side, reveal an intentional, or not, resemblance.

This is sort of how we see ourselves in actors, singers, and other celebrities that we admire. In the case of the artist, it is an opportunity to project themselves onto the world stage, or at least in the permanent visual memory of a historical figure. Seems funny to me...

Portraits are a wonderful way to appreciate your life, not the events but the actual existence. I used to work for a woman who decided that she would have a full length portrait of herself done for her 60th birthday. She looked daunting from the high place above her mantle. A much younger woman had hers done after surviving her battle with cancer. The portrait affirms something. What though?

The National Portrait Gallery houses the nation's collection of important portraits. I have not gone there in many years, but the last time I remember being surprised that it was so empty. I think portraits can sometimes feel excessively historical as if they were merely documents of someone's life and not visual revelations of some aspect of a person. I am inclined to revisit it when I am in DC next and see how I respond now.

Good portraits reveal something, although I am smiling to think of some of the artists I have known to paint portraits. Indeed, the portrait does quite easily reveal the artists own designs, launched from the figure painted. The portrait is a vision of the sitter they could not have seen without the artist.