Ideals Part 4

Here are some non-controversial, un-idealized faces of women from my own files.

Out of the myriad details and shadings presented to an artist by his model, only a tiny fraction of them appear in the drawing, like a hundred-odd senators representing a society of millions.  What has been included and what has been left out, as well as the character or style of the presentment, reflects the artist's values as much as the likeness reflects the sitter's personality.

My drawings probably exemplify a middle-of-the-road approach, neither glorifying nor demeaning the subjects.  I include them as a sort of bland chaser to follow the strong flavor of the pictures in my previous post.

Ideals Part 3

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.





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.



Ideals Part 2

To further illustrate idealization and the lack of it, I have chosen two contrasting examples separated by time, culture, medium, approach and gender.

This bronze statue of a Grecian athlete, whose complexion was damaged from lying in pieces on the bottom of the sea for over a thousand years, is not overly idealized, but he was probably a splendid looking young man when the sculpture was made.  The face is not that of a vapid, formulaic pretty-boy, but an individual whose likeness would be recognized by his family and friends.  A living soul seems to be there behind his eyes.  Nothing, however, was done to mar his natural good looks.

The celebrated Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was a striking beauty, as indicated by this photograph:

Yet when she painted this self portrait, at the same period as the photograph was made, she not only didn't idealize her features, she deliberately downplayed her allure.  She represented her intelligence, exoticism, fire and seriousness of purpose, but flattened her exquisite cheekbone, exaggerated her facial hair and even gave herself an unflattering hairline.  Those are my observations; I am not qualified to suggest why she chose to play down her feminine attractiveness, but it wasn't the result of a lack of ability.

Ideals Part 1

One way for artists to express their values is through idealization or the lack of it.  The examples I have chosen are both masterpieces of art, though they illustrate opposing approaches.  In the first, Leonardo Da Vinci has undertaken to paint an angel as part of an altarpiece.  An angel should be beautiful, manifestly pure and blameless, with no trace of the commonplace.  He evidently began by enlisting a model who was as close to these angelic ideals as he could find, and then made an exquisite drawing of her:

Even so, there is a hint of the flirtatious in her glance; a little more idealization is called for.  By the time the painting was finished, the artist had largely banished the earthy from his angel:

Francisco Goya, given the task of painting the king of Spain, did not make the slightest attempt to glorify his subject.  Though he portrayed his king adorned with the rich fabrics and aristocratic accessories of a great monarch, he gave him the face of a petty, dangerous and mean-spirited tyrant: