To illustrate the extreme poles of the ideal and the anti-ideal, I have chosen three artists, all of whom are venerated, represented in major museums, discussed and written about in great detail.
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres could paint a portrait that was a ringer, a personage whom no one would mistake for somebody else.
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres could paint a portrait that was a ringer, a personage whom no one would mistake for somebody else.
But he also painted figures and faces perfected, polished and purged of individuality. Not a brand-name product but a generic Ideal. His ideal.
Far from the ideal is this woman painted by George Rouault. Obviously not interested in representing conventional beauty, he sought instead for a powerful effect, and achieved it. This woman looks to have been roughly handled, not only by the artist but by her experience of life.
Willem De Kooning has gone all the way, facing us with this savagely painted figure which has nothing of the ideal about it, not even the humanity of Rouault's tragically misused woman.
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