Great exploration
Andrew Lambirth
Making Faces Sunley Room, National Gallery, until 26 September
Witty titles for exhibitions about portraiture are the order of the day. Over at the Hayward Gallery is About Face (reviewed 24 July), and now after a brief tour around the country is Making Faces at the National Gallery. But whereas About Face is subtitled Photography and the Death of the Portrait, and is almost entirely negative in tone, the National's show is an exploration of the range and richness of portraiture, and how faces have been used in different ways for different ends throughout the history of art. The earliest work on display is 15th-century Florentine, 'Portrait of a Lady in Red', and the most recent is Julian Opie's `Nantra, Pool Attendant' from 2002. It's a small, wellselected show (there are only 27 works in total) with a compelling breadth of interest.
The first section of the show is filled with egos competing for attention. Joan Collins, luscious-lipped and extravagantly lashed, is portrayed in full Dynasty mode by Andy Warhol. Opposite is Wyndham Lewis's splendid self-portrait as a Tyro: blade nose, hatchet jaw, teeth like chisels, armoured with arrogance and ignorance. There's a striking disembodied head of Napoleon depicted as the Sun God, wreathed in laurel. Lucas Cranach the Elder's stubbly portrait of Martin Luther is shown against a gorgeous otherworldly green, while Cardinal Richelieu gives us both profiles and his full-face appearance in a painting designed to supply the sculptor Francesco Mochi with enough information to make a bust of him without actually
laying eyes on the living man. In such exalted company, the flat, uninflected insignia of Julian Opie's un-portrait (made, predictably enough, by compute rmanipulating a photograph) looks the cipher it is. The future of portraiture does not lie here.
The past is better represented. An inspired bit of hanging has Goya's luminous `Dona Isabel de Porcel' placed next to Sargent's 'The Misses Vickers', with Hogarth's 'Shrimp Girl' on the other side. At once the whole issue of the portrait as psychological study is effortlessly raised. Was Dona Isabel just that little bit proud (verging on the haughty)? Or was it her innate sensuality that Goya wished to emphasise with the suggestive pose and the sexily painted black lace mantilla which adds so much to the vitality of the composition? It's impossible to miss Sargent's virtuoso handling — just look at the cup and saucer and cream jug on the table at back left — but were the dancing brushwork and carefully placed colour accents simply an expression of restlessness in the artist or the sitters? By contrast, Hogarth's rapid minimalism captures in brilliant notation the 'living presence' of a good-humoured working girl. Perhaps it's as simple as that.
Among the other treats are the spectacle of Rembrandt setting himself the difficult task of showing terror when only employing the profile of Belshazzar (the one eye certainly pops), Ruskin Spear being surprisingly painterly when satirising haute couture (look at the ready-to-be-dropped masks of these bored women), and Bacon going for broke with textures. I liked the loose effective handling of Forain's 'The Unwed Mother', but it would have made more sense to hang it next to Auerbach's painted equivalent of his wife Julia, thus illuminating both. The one painting that comes off badly is Dujardin's 'Portrait of a Young Man', which looks feeble beside Moroni's masterly lawyer looking down his nose at us. Has the Dujardin been overcleaned perhaps?
The exhibition, like the brochure accompanying it, has been curiously subdivided into related themes — Likeness, Living Presences, Truth and Lies, and, lastly, Emotions. This urge to categorise should be resisted, particularly when the categories overlap and are in some cases interchangeable. The visitor does not want a lot of confusing sub-classification. Most don't pause long enough to read the wall panels; they've come to browse among good pictures. Although contextual information and exegesis can be extremely helpful to the museum-going public, it should nevertheless be kept to a minimum. How helpful is it to be told that Annibale Carracci's painting of the 'Dead Christ Mourned' is about emotion?
If you must have categories, then make them tell. At Tate Britain at the moment is a display of 1930s documentary art, leaning heavily on Mass Observation and the artists involved with that project. One of the exhibits is a rather fine portrait by William Coldstream, dated 1939, and simply called 'Man with a Beard'. It depicts an old man, in working clothes and a hat, and though it is painted in a deadpan descriptive way it yet manages to convey a human warmth and liveliness, a sympathy which makes it a successful portrait, and not just a painted record of a type.
It would be fascinating to know how the selection of Making Faces was done. The bulk of the exhibits comes from the National Gallery's own holdings, but other items are borrowed from different museums, and even, in one case, from a commercial gallery. (Julian Opie's portrait is lent by his dealer, the Lisson Gallery. I'm not sure about the ethics of that — a painting that is effectively for sale is exhibited in our national museum, thus in some way validating it and inevitably increasing its worth. Perhaps loans should come exclusively from other public collections?) The Forain and Cranach come from Bristol Museums and Art Gallery, which was the first venue for this exhibition (January to April), before it moved to the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne (April to July). The Auerbach comes from the Laing's own collection but provenance for the other paintings is quite widely spread. The Wyndham Lewis hails from the Ferens in Hull, the Sargent from Sheffield. The National Portrait Gallery, Tate and Exeter City Museums have all lent. Were there no restrictions then on sourcing and securing loans? With such freedom of choice, which curator could go wrong? (Well, I can think of a few.) Thankfully, despite too much evidence of the fashionable itch to subdivide and categorise, Making Faces is a triumph.
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