Portrait, where’s your likeness?

By J-Philippe

16 September 2024

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Only a narrow part of what’s per­­ceived is intel­li­gible.

Translated by Paisi.

The ques­­tion of resem­blance in a por­­trait is a del­i­­cate one. Coming from a gen­er­a­­tion born after more than a cen­­tury of Western de-con­struc­­tion, on all artistic, cul­­tural or lit­erary levels, it is becoming dif­­fi­cult for me today to name the points that make a por­­trait, a simple sketch of a few min­utes or a more elab­o­rate work, be said to resemble the model.

The artist’s quest for resem­blance during a live model ses­­sion, can take place on very dif­ferent levels, depending on the style or the way the work is done. However, resem­blance implies two par­allel inter­pre­­ta­­tions: first, that of the artist in front of his model, com­­paring his work with the model, and second, that of the spec­­tator in front of the artist’s work, also com­­paring with the model.

But let us leave aside the second inter­pre­­ta­­tion to try to under­­s­tand the first, that of the artist in front of his work.

Where indeed is this resem­blance that he is trying to tran­s­late? Looking in turn at the model and the devel­op­­ment of his work, adding lines and colors on the sup­­port, forcing a con­­trast here, erasing a “mis­­take” there, in short, he is working nimbly on a flat sur­­face. But there is no con­nec­­tion between this worked flat sur­­face and the living model. Nothing is sim­ilar: a face against graphite lines, light against an touch of gouache, a rhythm expressed by a few directed hatch­ings, a phys­ical color against a sur­­face of man­u­­fac­­tured pig­­ments. Nothing is com­­pa­rable. And yet it’s all there. The model is there, framed by the edges of the paper, and what’s more, it looks alike…

A paradox emerges: it is impos­sible to see the resem­blance inde­pen­­dently of the lines and colours that express it on paper, and at the same time, the resem­blance is not just this com­bi­­na­­tion of lines and colours. So where does it lie? We could say that the resem­blance lies in the artist’s inten­­tion, in what he saw of the invis­ible order and was able to tran­s­late: this char­acter, this accu­racy, this inde­fin­able "truth". What he saw was a space between his work and his model. And all his work con­­sists pre­­cisely in making vis­ible what is not, in making more explicit what is sensed without being able to express it, and which is hidden behind a face, a life, a model. This is why a por­­trait made by an artist can be felt more real and more true than the model itself. Through a kind of cre­a­tive alchemy, the por­­trait reveals the meaning hidden behind appear­ances.

On the level of the lan­guage of forms, many so-called “non-resem­bling" por­­traits are closer to felt reality as to the impres­­sion that emerges from the por­­trait, which is "more itself than the model". We can say of this por­­trait: That’s him! However, design-wise, not a single line or color con­­forms phys­i­­cally to the model. "Him", tran­s­­posed into the lan­guage of forms becomes "It’s him". Here the inter­­play of colors and shapes gives birth to life. Often even unknownn to the artist self. How can this life be cap­­tured? The artist’s tech­nical ability, suf­­fi­­ciently prac­­tised to avoid all sorts of clum­si­­ness, fail­ures or aes­­thetic errors, will be put aside, as if muted, to posi­­tion him­­self in a kind of pres­ence in the world, hovering over it or taking a step back, which becomes capable of cap­­turing and tran­s­lating this impres­­sion, as if without taking pos­s­es­­sion of it. The artist’s pres­ence in the world is a kind of absence from one­­self. A kind of dis­­­tracted pres­ence to one­­self that allows one to be pre­sent in the world…

This is the oppo­site of the scru­ti­nizing, pos­s­es­­sive gaze that is cap­­tured by the tools of objec­­tive anal­­ysis, more suited to dis­­­man­tling than to the search for meaning, giving us to see some­thing like the parts of an engine spread out on the floor of the mechanic’s work­shop. This dis­­­man­tling, whose nov­elty is often very attrac­­tive from an artistic point of view, very sim­ilar because of its dis­­­man­­tled and demon­s­trated parts, dis­­re­­gards all the links between the parts, all the artic­u­la­­tions of the vis­ible that give us in tran­s­­parency a view of a meaning that can finally be grasped by our intel­li­­gence. This dis­­­man­tling, from which our Western age has emerged, makes appear­ances dis­­ap­­pear, and con­se­quently, access to the invis­ible that the artist per­­ceives fleet­ingly. Appearance is the con­di­­tion of being of the invis­ible. What is intel­li­gible is never more than a tiny part of what’s sen­sible.

“For my taste, these modern Actaeons boast too soon of having dis­­­cov­­ered the secrets of Beauty: must it be, because we have ana­­lyzed the rainbow and stripped the moon of its oldest, most chaste mys­tery, that I, the last Endymion, should lose all hope, because imper­ti­­nent eyes have leered at my mistress through a tele­s­cope?” [1]»

It is only after the fact, or through the judg­­ment of another, that this work, often obscure during its exe­cu­­tion, will reveal itself to be “more itself than the model itself”, resem­bling, as for the impres­­sion that emanates from it, the in-between of reality, the space between the sheet and the model, cap­­tured and tran­s­lated as if by acci­­dent.

I remember an art teacher at the École Boulle, who, during a live model ses­­sion, told the stu­­dents we were then to: "never throw away a piece of work".

Today, I feel that among all these draw­ings piled up in a corner of the studio, is per­haps hiding the pos­si­­bility of that glance after­wards that could reveal an in-between, cap­­tured non­cha­lantly and ignored until now.

These might be lofty thoughts for just a few lines and colours on a sheet of paper. However, when this resem­blance becomes a research span­ning years and most likely never com­­pleted, it deserves a few lines that live up to its expec­­ta­­tions.

So,
I draw
You draw
He draws
We draw
By design.

Please note

[1Oscar Wilde, Le Jardin D’Eros. Traduction et Préface par Albert Savine.

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  J-Philippe, Bali Blog Portrait, where’s

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