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ANTHONY CURRAN 1147 1247 VPA415 Honours Studio Project Exegesis Portraiture Since the White Cube: Exegesis for Finding Arthur Wicks

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ANTHONY CURRAN

1147 1247

VPA415 Honours Studio Project Exegesis Portraiture Since the White Cube: Exegesis for Finding Arthur

Wicks

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Finding Arthur Wicks is an investigation into portraiture since the white cube gallery

emerged. The white cube is a type of gallery with blank walls diminishing all visual

distraction surrounding the art within it. It has proliferated to become the most

common gallery style affecting how artists produce work, in turn shaping how we

define art. The white cube has led to art practices, which involve more sophisticated

uses of space resulting in conceptual and installation practices - art that can be

entered.

Art practices since have expanded beyond the two-dimensional modes of art, into the

third and fourth dimensions transforming how we look at art and how we see. The

visual form of art has changed from flatness to depth changing the rules of figuration

and representation. It seems, however that almost all portraiture has stagnated,

continuing to copy the "look" of a person on a flat picture plane before being hung on

a wall. However, portraiture continues to be the artform with the sole responsibility

to explore the nature of the individual, in body and in mind.

This research project is an exploration into portraiture beyond its traditional two-

dimensional nature with the aim to develop it alongside other art practices informing

and being informed by them, maintaining the core elements of the genre: The

portrayal of a person, involving their face, body and inquiry into their character.

Arthur Wicks, the subject of the exhibition, is a contemporary artist living and

practicing in Wagga Wagga. Arthur has been making art since the 1960s and is one

of Australia’s leading artists in conceptual art, sculpture and performance. Wicks was

chosen as a subject based on a comment from Professor Richard Goodwin to Tony

Curran in 2010:

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If you’re moving to Wagga Wagga, you have to find a guy named Arthur

Wicks. – 2010

In 1967 John Berger wrote a paper condemning the practice of portraiture. 1 In

Berger's essay he says the portrait has lost its relevance because of the rise of

photography - a technology which captured the look of things quickly and cheaply; as

well as portraiture's failure you get to the essence of its subject; the decline in the

value people today place on social roles; the modern conception of the individual and

identity; and the static nature of two-dimensional representation are all attributed to

the decline of portraiture. These criticisms explain the nature of the demise of the

pre-modern style of portrait, but don’t rule out the opportunities for the portrait to

develop. Nor does it discount any value such developments could offer.

Berger's account also states that portraiture fails to get to the essence of the subject it

targets. In saying this he states that "ninety-nine percent" of portraits lack a

"psychological insight".2 Though the number seems exaggerated and made-up it

reflects a problem within the majority of portrait painting and drawing. However,

implicit with this line of thought is that some portraits, one percent, contain a

psychological insight. The methods and processes of these psychological insights can

be studied to develop the artform.

The term “psychological insight” immediately highlights a bias of Berger's, and

largely the modern world's, toward a psychological view of the person. This is a

contrast from a religious or superstitious view of a person and pertains to a scientific

view with a tradition in medicine, psychoanalysis and experimental psychology.

1 Berger, John "The Changing View of Man in the Portrait" in John Berger: Selected Essays. Ed Geoff Dyer (London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2001) 98. 2 Ibid.

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Berger mentions that modern culture has moved toward a theory of self which favors

the individual over the social role played by that individual seen in older portraits

painted in more feudal pre-modern times.3

So long as the portrait is viewed as requiring a psychological insight, rather than a

physiological, spiritual, or philosophical insight this claim is a worthy criticism.

However, if modern culture moves or has moved away from a psychological

paradigm of the self toward another paradigm of self, then portrait practices can adapt

and probably will. Investigating how society defines and represents the person will

stabilize the portrait’s place in art history.

Berger also criticizes the two-dimensional nature of the portrait because audiences are

unable to accept that an individual can be justly represented from one angle and

through their looks alone:

We can no longer accept that the identity of a man can be adequately

established by preserving and fixing what he looks like from a single

viewpoint in one place....... It seems the demands of modern vision are

incompatible with the singularity of viewpoint which is the prerequisite for a

static painted 'likeness'.4

Since Berger wrote this paper the art world has seen an expansion in art practices

since the proliferation of the white cube gallery space. Although the white cube

gallery was art world mainstream in the early 1960s, artists continue to develop

according to the influence the white cube has had on their art practices. There is a

3 Ibid, 101 4 Ibid, 102

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gap between the portrait – a traditionally aristocratic art form - and the radical

renovations of the art world since the white cube.

As defined by Shearer West, a portrait depicts a particular person, with particular

attention to their face and body as well as their social role, their soul and a record of

the engagement between subject and artist.5 The soul according to West varies across

cultures and in a western culture the soul could be defined as the persons’

subjectivity, identity, psychology or character – whatever the culture deems to be the

essence of the person. The face, body, social role and essence of the subject are

expressed alongside a record of the sitting, to convey some description of the

relationship between the artist and the sitter at the time of the sitting. In West's

definition there is sufficient flexibility for variations in cultural beliefs, fashions and

artistic media for the portrait to continue to be a portrayal of a person as long as these

qualities are addressed.

The pre-white-cube gallery tradition is now best known as a Salon gallery, which has

been defined by Brian O’Doherty as “a place with a wall, which is covered with a

wall of pictures”. 6 The white cube gallery has fundamentally changed the way

people view art and the art exhibition. Portraiture as an art form has been left behind

as the white cube proliferated incorporating more spatial considerations beyond the

two-dimensional picture plane.

The white cube gallery is a space where a work can be exhibited and where all cues

that interfere with the object’s legitimacy as art are removed. 7 It is a sterile

environment providing versatility for a range of different styles and disciplines of art

5 Shearer West “Portraiture” (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004) 21 6 Ibid, 15 7 Brian O’Doherty “Inside the White Cube” (USA: The Lapis Press, 1986) 14

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making, breaking away from traditional modes of art making such as drawing,

painting and sculpture, allowing the emergence of avant-garde art practices.

According to Brian O’Doherty the white cube was born when Gustav Courbet’s

paintings were refused exhibition at the Salon Exposition in Paris in1855, after which

Courbet staged a one-man Salon des Refuses on the outside wall of the gallery.

According to O’Doherty for the first time it became the artists’ role to consider how

his work would be hung. Over the course of the white cube development, artists like

Marcel Duchamp challenged the nature of the art object with ready-made art objects

such as The Fountain (1917) (Figure 1). 8 Avant-garde practices redefined the idea of

the gallery space by challenging notions of the art object along with traditional

practices of drawing and painting. The way an artwork is presented in the white cube

has become a crucial factor in its production and the exhibition context has become as

much a part of the art object as the medium by which it was produced.9

The white cube has changed the grammar of art by changing the constraints and

function of the art object, allowing artists to create entire environments allowing a

freedom in how artists explore human nature. Olafur Eliasson’s non-figurative work

explores light, space and nature, creating minimalist environments in gallery spaces.

Eliasson’s The Weather Project (2003) (Figure 2) features an artificial sunset in the

turbine hall of the Tate Modern in London, calling on audiences to participate in the

work, incorporating the audience as a performative element. Eliasson says through

his art we can:

8 Ibid, 57 9 Ibid 24

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Not let nature tell us who we are, let’s use nature to see who we are for

ourselves.10

Eliasson explores human nature by reflecting on how we engage with our

environment. While his practice does not involve a portrayal or depiction it probes

questions about what we are and how we inhabit the world. The Weather Project is

made of simple technology on a grand scale. Mirrors, lamps and fog accentuate and

amplify the experience of light and space in the work. Practices such as Eliasson’s

are not examples of portraiture but by incorporating contemporary art practices that

explore human nature, the portrait has the potential to become an engaging and

insightful art form for contemporary audiences. The departure from directly working

in the portrait genre is explained by Sally O’Reilly:

Contemporary artists tend to shun the idealizing nature, completedness and

singularity of traditional portraiture in favour of vulnerability, inconstancy and

multiplicity.11

In contemporary Australian painting, portraiture maintains its status as a high art,

however the criticisms of John Berger ring true. The Archibald Prize and Moran

Prize are two of Australia’s most sought after art awards because of their large prize

sum of $50,000 and $75,000 respectively. Both attract substantial attention in the

media and interest from the broader art world. Both prizes have strict stipulations

about what they consider a portrait painting to be. The attraction of the prizes and the

10 Olafur Eliasson: Notion Motion, DVD, directed by Jan Schmidt-Garre, (2005; Germany: Parsmedia, 2005). 11 Sally O’Reilly “The Body in Contemporary Art” (London: Thames and Hudson, 2009) 49

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traditional notions of portraiture they perpetuate is a discouraging force for artists to

experiment with new forms of portraiture. In 1982 Maggie Gilchrist and the Art

Gallery of New South Wales proclaimed that the Archibald prize needed to

contemporize or else it would disappear. This was exacerbated in 1985 when the

Archibald bequest risked being reallocated to the Australian Journalists’ Association

as the bequest stated in the event that the prize had become irrelevant and was no

longer a “good and charitable bequest”.12 As an art form portraiture, particularly in

Australia has hardly expanded beyond its two-dimensional picture plane.

However, Mike Parr’s practice of self-portraiture, involving drawing, printmaking,

painting and performance incorporates modern theories of the person from

psychology while incorporating less traditional practices. Mike Parr's self-portraits

are a trace of his physical presence and are documentations of performance works or

as aids for his performative work. His process exposes the "broader realms of the

human psyche and cultural memory".13 His etchings such as Untitled Self Portrait

No. 4: From a series of 6 (1989) (Figure 3) involve the process of Parr attacking the

plate as he hastily produces drawings allowing for his subconscious to hold control.

Parr’s work has developed along conceptual and performative art practices in

Australia, which have emerged since the white cube phenomenon.14

Parr’s work shows that the portrait is a legitimate path to explore the nature of the

individual and to investigate the constitution of that individual in pictorial form. Parr

explores the consciousness and subconsciousness to an individual, a psyche and a

body raising questions about mind and body, which continue to be unresolved. By 12 Peter Ross. "Let's Face It: The history of the Archibald Prize” (NSW: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1999) 88. 13 Deborah Hart "Mike Parr: The Absence of Memory" Art and Australia, 32 No.2 (1994): 206. 14 Ibid, 208

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investigating portraiture in this way he produces an aesthetic knowledge base around

the nature of a person and the nature of representation and distortion of the figure.

The issue of representation and distortion is controversial. Since the Archibald’s first

year it has attracted controversy, due to differing definitions of portraiture among the

artists, critics and audiences in Australia. William Dobell’s winning painting Portrait

of an Artist (Joshua Smith) (1943) (Figure 4) led to a court case where competing

artists sought an injunction against Dobell taking the prize money based on the belief

that Dobell had produced a caricature and not a portrait. The judge ruled in favour of

Dobell setting a precedent for techniques of distortion within the Archibald Prize’s

definition of portraiture. In Dobell's defence he stated in court, as a witness, that he

had distorted the face but that all portraitists distort the face to flatter the sitter - this

was the first time flattery was seen as distortion.15 Dobell won.

According to art historian, Ernst Gombrich, likeness does not translate to realism.16

What we see in images comes from our expectations of the object, which we develop

over years of seeing representational art. Gombrich calls this schema but in layman’s

terms it is a kind of artistic vocabulary.17 Nadia Tscherny has written about the

changing artistic vocabulary since romantic portraiture – incorporating interplay

between likeness and distortion.

Romantic art changed the face of portraiture by presenting individual's thoughts,

feelings and subjectivity through their expressions, gestures and poses rather than the

15 Ibid, p38 16 Ernst Gombrich “The Mask and the Face: The Perception of Physiognomic Likeness in Life and Art” in Art Perception and Reality. Ed Maurice Mandelbaum (London, UK: The John Hopkins University Press, 1972) 1 17 Ernst Gombrich. “Art and Illusion” in Critical Theory Since Plato, ed. Hazard Adams. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992) 1084.

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previous tradition of costume and dress serving as the subjects’ character notes.18 Sir

Joshua Reynolds’ portrait Samuel Johnson (1770) (Figure 5) is a good example of the

transition. The painting includes a psychological element - Johnson's intensely

gesticulating hands. In this image Reynolds depicts grotesqueness in his subject pre-

empting much portraiture of the years to follow. This was a step away from the

"discreet and general" towards the "intimate and detailed" in portraiture.19 Of this

transition Nadia Tscherny says:

The notions of what constitutes a satisfying likeness are constantly redefined

by the prevailing understanding of the nature of the object of portraiture - the

sitter - and the means for its portrayal. 20

The development of the psychological insight in Australian portraiture was

documented in early 2011 at the National Portrait Gallery of Australia’s exhibition

Inner Worlds: Psychology and Portraiture. Inner Worlds traced the relationship

between psychology and portraiture in Australian painting looking at the influence of

the psycho-expressionists such as Albert Tucker (Figure 6) and Joy Hester (Figure

7).21 Their work is characterised by a raw naïveté, exaggerating the facial features of

the figure for intense emotional effect, with often-grotesque results.

18 Nadia Tscherny “Likeness in Early Romantic Portraiture” Art Journal, Fall (1987): 193 19 Ibid, 195 20 Ibid, 193 21 Damousi, Joy. "War Trauma, Psychology and Portraiture" in Inner Worlds: Portraits and Psychology ed. Christopher Chapman. (ACT: National Portrait Gallery, 2011) 115

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Szabolcs Veres is a contemporary example of this distorted grotesque form of

portraiture taken to the extreme. His work Porthunt 16 (2010) (Figure 8) is a good

example of how far the form of portraiture can be pushed in the direction of distortion

and the grotesque, often horrifying visual imagery, while still holding the portrait

composition of head and shoulders with a form clearly recognizable as a face, but a

vague sinister face.22 Where the absence of a recognizable form creates a strong

psychological presence of a different kind.

Marlene Dumas’ provokes the imagination of the viewer by producing vague

understated and accidental features. Her work Rorshach Woman (1998) (Figure 9)

directly references the psychological concept of projection by the reference to the

Rorschach inkblot allowing the viewer an opportunity to project his or her own

desires and fantasies onto the work. A process that Ernst Gombrich calls the faculty

of projection:

What we read into these accidental shapes depends on our capacity to

recognize in them images we find stored in our mind. To interpret such a

blot as, say, a bat or a butterfly means some act of perceptual

classification – in the filing system of my mind I pigeonhole it with

butterflies I have seen or dreamed of.23

22Steve Lopes. "EMERGE Szabolcs Veres" Artist Profile, Issue 16 (2011): 54

23 Ernst Gombrich. “Art and Illusion” (London, UK: Phaidon Press, 1960) 155.

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Allowing the viewer the freedom to psychologically explore the work provides a

personal engagement between them and the work that a mimetic or overly descriptive

image can’t.

In addition to concepts of likeness, distortion and the psychological insight of the

sitter, a personal engagement between the artist and sitter enhances the validity of the

portrait by making it dependent on the event of the sitting. Max Black has written

about the causal history of the image as an indicator of representative power.24

Incorporating the process of getting to know Wicks was important for this reason.

While an exhaustive portrayal of the subject may be impossible, given the time

constraints of the project and the requirements of the subject, a portrayal of the

engagement provides a microcosmic truth.

In contrast to forms of semi-abstracted figurative art, Sophie Calle’s conceptual

practice highlights a non-depictive form of portrayal relying on her engagement with

the subject. Calle’s Address Book (1983) (Figure 10) is an example of detecting

information covertly. The subject has no control of and is unable to manage, distort

or sabotage how they are seen. Address Book documents the process of Calle

studying a man whose address book she found. The artist telephoned people listed in

the book and interviewed them about the owner constructing a written portrait of the

individual.25 Calle’s practice reflects that of a detective – looking for clues about

their target providing a different perspective about the qualities of the individual

under investigation with a journalistic edge.

24 Max Black “How do Pictures Represent” Art Perception and Reality. Ed Maurice Mandelbaum (London, UK: The John Hopkins University Press, 1972) 95 25 Janet Hand “Sophie Calle’s Art of Following and Seduction” Cultural Geographies, 12 (2005): 464

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There is sufficient freedom with regard to distorting, abstracting and deforming the

figure through pictorial as well conceptual practices stretching the portrait beyond the

kind of art John Berger critiques. The portrait is an art form with the capacity to

explore the idea of the individual and is not necessarily restricted to any discipline or

material of art. As a genre its requirements are perfectly accessible to drawing,

painting, sculpture, installation and video and any other representational form.

The absence of a personal engagement between artist and subject can be controversial

as can be seen in the Archibald Prize of 1975. John Bloomfield’s winning portrait of

musician Tim Burstall (Figure 11) was discovered to have been appropriated from a

magazine with no personal engagement between Bloomfield and Burstall. This led to

the prize being rescinded, as it wasn’t painted from life as per the entry

requirements.26

Not all portrait practices require the work to be done from life. Increasingly portraits

are produced from photographs with no personal engagement with the sitter.

Elizabeth Peyton is a famous example of a portraitist, whose early work primarily

came out of celebrity magazines and history books, referencing photographs of people

who were deceased. However Peyton has since moved on to painting people close to

her.27

The trajectory of my art practice has been an inquiry about personhood, sensation,

perception and the limits between the self and other, mind and body, informed by

previous research during my Bachelor of Science (Psychology). Previous work 26 Peter Ross. "Let's Face It: The history of the Archibald Prize” (NSW: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1999) 70. 27 Nadia Tscherny “Elizabeth Peyton: Beautiful People” Art in America, 99 (2008): 100

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involved anatomical projects such as AuralDynamics (2010) (Figure 8), as well as

experiments in drawing installations suspended figures such as Leap (2008) (Figure

9). Both were two distinct works leading to the area of Portraiture Since the White

Cube.

AuralDynamics was a three-month residency project at Fraser Studios in Sydney

where people were invited to have their ear drawn. The project was an exploration

into the way the sensory architecture of the body shapes the information it re-

transmits to the mind, uniquely affecting each individual’s relationship with the

sensory world. AuralDynamics sought to understand the person through the

relationship between mind and body –an investigation into what makes a person what

they are.

Leap was an exploration into pushing drawing beyond the picture plane so that it

would interact with the viewers embodied perception, breaking up and reforming

depending on the viewer’s angle of vision and movement around the work.

Common to both works and the broader practice is an inquiry into the idea of the

person. The portrait stood out as an appropriate art form to engage with because

portraits focus on the individual. The expansion of drawing into the three-

dimensional space was informed by contemporary installation practice, requiring

large neutral and customizable spaces to work with.

Finding Arthur Wicks combines grammar of the portrait with that of contemporary

white cube practice. It questions the place of the portrait since the white cube

phenomenon. It tests how an exploration of one individual can be produced in a way

that satisfies the requirements of the portrait while pushing it into a contemporary

white cube vernacular.

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Scrutiny (2011) (Figure 13) is a direct response to the static single point of view that

Berger critiques portraiture for. Utilizing the traditional materials of paint on canvas

mounted on the wall it is an exhaustive study of the head in a full rotation at

seventeen different angles of view. Scrutiny critically probes traditional modes of

portrayal by providing the viewer an object to scrutinize but only the physical

appearance of the object. Scrutiny is more about a sense of space than it is about the

subject. Although there are parallels to the use of the panorama and Wicks’ own art

practice in his Solstice Voyeur panoramas (Figure 14). Two mirrors either side of the

work allows the rotation to continue ad infinitum into the visual space, the mirrors

extend the visual space of the gallery infinitely.

Reflection is used differently in the work Looking At You From All Sides (2011)

(Figure 15) to reflect a distorted image creating the opposite engagement to Scrutiny.

Here the viewer is scrutinized by the work as it envelops them looking around them at

every angle of view. This effect is achieved by using silver foil with bends and folds

compressing light and space into micro reflections as can be seen in figure 16. The

video is a constantly distorting image of Arthur’s head morphing in and out of

perspective locking into correct view at different spaces around and within the room.

The reflections around the room create an environment where the image looks at the

viewer sometimes from the side or behind them. The viewer becomes the centre of

the work. Looking At You From All Sides changes the subject of the portrait. No

longer is Wicks gazed upon by the audience, who looks to see some kind of insight

about the man, but the work responds to their presence, avoiding and darting around

their gaze changing the expectations of how one uses a portrait.

The anamorphic studies (Figure 17) of Arthur’s bust continue the theme of the gaze

throughout the exhibition requiring the viewers to orient themselves to see it properly

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altering their height, causing them to stand on their toes or lean down. Some people

will be at the right height naturally and with each viewer a personal engagement with

the work will be read according to how they orient their body to view it.

Watching Over You, (2011) (Figure 18) is an animated projection angled in such a

way that it’s prime viewing point is below the image, looking up. It is an animation

of the drawings that make up Scrutiny, elevated and anamorphed. Watching Over You

proposes a type of moving painting with a continuous loop in one apprehendable

gesture. It combines the tradition of portraiture with the luminosity of digital media

demonstrating time-based possibilities of portraiture.

Finding Arthur Wicks, Portrait Miniatures, (2011) (Figure 19) developed through

chance encounters. The process of following Wick’s social circle reflects the

conceptual platform used by Sophie Calle – the process of following. The subjects in

the miniatures were drawn from life and re-painted in miniature both as memento and

record of Arthur’s social history. Although this process produced a considerable

amount of stories and anecdotal information, it was difficult to place this in the work

because of the non-narrative form of the project, but the people involved reflect

various parts of Arthur’s life – former colleagues, current friends and collaborators,

former students and peers.

There was only one sitting with Arthur in which I produced three sketches (Figure

19). They were not included in the final exhibition. Initially they were studies for a

centerpiece but upon later consideration were abandoned, because they were overly

representational, pensive, and looked too much like a life drawing study to make any

significant contribution to the body of work in development which was already

exploring issues of distortion, likeness, and spatiality. In the end the only visual

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reference to Arthur’s physiognomy was made through the bust he loaned me – his

personality was reflected through the experimental nature of the exhibition, its

esoteric qualities, and the engagement I had with him and his associates.

There is enough precedent in the contemporary artistic vocabulary to produce

portraits, which contain an aesthetic experience, insight, a theory of the individual,

while considering its method of representation more sensitively and less

conventionally.

Finding Arthur Wicks is an exploration into techniques for hybridizing the portrait

genre with contemporary art practices in the white cube. The white cube is only one

style of gallery currently in operation, although it continues to be the dominant style.

Other spaces for exhibition include site-specific locations such as exhibitions in the

public domain like Sydney’s Sculpture by the Sea. An exploration of portraiture in

public art would be an equally extensive investigation as this one and just as useful.

Choosing the white cube for this investigation was the ideal starting point for this area

because of the forgiving nature of the white cube space and because of the function of

the white cube as the central form of gallery in the contemporary art climate. Works

that function in public spaces have a more specialized form, which may still work in

the white cube because of the sacred status it gives objects within it.

As a path for the portrait into the contemporary art landscape has been explored but

further work needs to be directed toward the function of the portrait investigating how

people are viewed by today’s society through the arts, sciences, humanities and

industry, to assess what the nature of the person is and how best to represent what that

is. A contemporary theory of humanism will add significant depth to the practice of

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portraiture in the future making it a space to explore important ideas about whom we

are.

REFERENCES:

Berger, John "The Changing View of Man in the Portrait" in John Berger: Selected

Essays, edited by Geoff Dyer, 98-102. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2001.

Max Black “How do Pictures Represent” in Art Perception and Reality, edited by

Maurice Mandelbaum, 95-130. London, UK: The John Hopkins University Press,

1972.

Chapman, Christopher "The Art of Inner Worlds" in Inner Worlds: Portraits and

Psychology edited by Christopher Chapman. 203-218. ACT: National Portrait

Gallery, 2011.

Damousi, Joy. "War Trauma, Psychology and Portraiture" in Inner Worlds: Portraits

and Psychology edited by Christopher Chapman. 111-118. ACT: National Portrait

Gallery, 2011.

Olafur Eliasson: Notion Motion, DVD, directed by Jan Schmidt-Garre. 2005;

Germany: Parsmedia, 2005.

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Gombrich, Ernst “The Mask and the Face: The Perception of Physiognomic Likeness

in Life and Art” in Art Perception and Reality, edited by Maurice Mandelbaum 1-46.

London, UK: The John Hopkins University Press, 1972.

Gombrich, Ernst “Art and Illusion” in Critical Theory Since Plato [Revised Edition]

Edited by Hazard Adams 1082-89. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992.

Hand, Janet “Sophie Calle’s Art of Following and Seduction” Cultural Geographies,

12, (2005): 463-484.

Hart, Deborah. "Mike Parr: The Absence of Memory" in Art and Australia Volume

32 No.2 (1994): 206-217.

Lopes, Steve. "EMERGE Szabolcs Veres" Artist Profile 16 (2011): 53-55.

O’Doherty, Brian. Inside the White Cube. USA: The Lapis Press, 1986.

O’Reilly, Sally. The Body in Contemporary Art. London: Thames and Hudson,

2009.

Ross Peter. Let's Face It: The history of the Archibald Prize. NSW: Art Gallery of

New South Wales, 1999.

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Tscherny, Nadia. "Likeness in Early Romantic Portraiture" Art Journal Volume 46,

No 3 (1987): 193-199.

West, Shearer. Portraiture. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,. 2004.

ILLUSTRATIONS

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Figure 1

Marcel Duchamp

Fountain, 1917

Porcelain, 360 x 480 x 610 mm.

Tate Modern, London.

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Figure 2.

Olafur Eliasson

Weather Project, 2003

Mirrors, sodium lamps and fog in site specific installation.

Tate Modern, London.

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Figure 3.

Untitled Self Portrait No. 4: From a series of 6, 1989.

By Mike Parr

107.0 x 87.0cm dry-point etching on paper

Edition 5/8

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Gift of the artist and Veridian Press 2005.

Figure 4

William Dobell

Portrait of an Artist (Joshua Smith), 1943.

Oil on Canvas 107 x 76cm.

Private Collection.

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Figure 5

Samuel Johnson, 1770

by Joshua Reynolds

Oil on canvas 30" x 25 1/8"

Knole, Lord Sackville.

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Figure 6

Despairing Head 1942 by Albert Tucker (1914-1999).

Pastel on paper.

Australian War Memorial, Canberra.

Purchased 1990. Copyright Barbara Tucker.

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Figure 7

Face (with yellow background), 1947

by Joy Hester

Heide Museum of Modern Art

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Figure 8

Porthunt 16, 2010,

By Szabolcs Veres

Oil on canvas, 150 x 120 cm

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Figure 9

Rorschach Woman, 1998.

By Marlene Dumas

Watercolour on paper, 125 x 71cm

MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main

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Figure 10

Sophie Calle

The Address Book, 1983 (extract)

Museum of Modern Art, New York.

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Figure 11.

John Bloomfield

Tim Burstall, 1975

Synthetic polymer paint on canvas. 176 x 176cm.

Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Figure 12

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Tony Curran

AuralDynamics, 2010

153 pieces, acrylic ink on cellophane, draped over hand made mini coathangers with

ear muffs and cotton gloves. 300 x 150 cm.

Fraser Studios.

Figure 13

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Tony Curran

Leap, 2008

Acrylic ink on acetate. 150cm x 75cm x 50cm

Figure 14

Tony Curran

Scrutiny, 2011

Acrylic paint on unprimed canvas. 2 x pieces of 15 x 40cm, 15 x pieces of 30 x 40cm

with 2 x mirrors 120 x 90cm and mirror stands.

School of Communication and Creative Industries Gallery, Charles Sturt University,

Wagga Wagga NSW.

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Figure 14

Arthur Wicks

Alchemist Dreaming: ice = water, 2011

Image sourced from Arthur Wicks’ facebook profile.

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Figure 15

Tony Curran.

Looking at You From All Sides, 2011 (detail)

Looped video projection and silver foil. Site specific.

School of Communication and Creative Industries Gallery, Charles Sturt University,

Wagga Wagga NSW.

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Figure 16.

Tony Curran.

Looking at You From All Sides, 2011 (detail)

Looped video projection and silver foil. Site specific.

School of Communication and Creative Industries Gallery, Charles Sturt University,

Wagga Wagga NSW.

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Figure 17.

Tony Curran

Anamorph #6, 2011.

Acrylic paint on unprimed canvas. 50 x 30cm.

School of Communication and Creative Industries Gallery, Charles Sturt University,

Wagga Wagga NSW.

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Figure 18.

Tony Curran

Watching Over You, 2011.

DVD projected onto unprimed canvas. 58 x 82cm

School of Communication and Creative Industries Gallery, Charles Sturt University,

Wagga Wagga NSW.

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Figure 19

Tony Curran

Dennis O’Connor (Finding Arthur Wicks, Portrait Miniatures), 2011

Acrylic ink on glass. Four layers of 4 x 5cm glass held by magnets.

School of Communication and Creative Industries Gallery, Charles Sturt University,

Wagga Wagga NSW.

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Figure 20

Tony Curran

Arthur Wicks (studies), 2011

Acrylic on unprimed canvas 30” x 30”.

School of Communication and Creative Industries Gallery, Charles Sturt University,

Wagga Wagga NSW.