Category: Reading Responses (Page 8 of 11)

“Every portrait exposes a truth that rides on the inherent lies.” This frightening truth revealed by Debra Brehmer in her article “Every Portrait Tells a Lie,” is something I think about quite often. This year in particular was my senior prom and high school graduation. My parents probably took upwards of 5000 photos, trying very hard to document these moments that could never be repeated. By the 5000^th photo, I may have finally gotten the picture perfect smile plastered across my face, yet I did not feel any joy; my eyes were practically screaming for help with the flash going off every three seconds, and my back was on the verge of giving out after pretending to have perfect posture for several hours.

Although not displayed in the article “John Singer Sargent” by Sarah Churchwell, Churchwell does mention Madame X, one of Sargent’s portraits that I had interpreted yesterday. The portrait sparked major controversy among the French Public over her pose and Sargent’s apparent misuse of space.

Madame X

Sargent expressed his concern to his friend Vernon Lee that he was “struggling with the unpaintable beauty and hopeless laziness” of his model. However, Sargent overcame this obstacle by “fusing techniques from Velázquez, Titian and Manet, as well as [his] then fashionable interest in Japanese art.” With Brehmer’s notion that “every portrait tells a lie,” it made me curious; if he had no problem toying with the  artistic style of his portrait, I am convinced that he took certain liberties of adjusting the real position of his sitter’s pose. And if he did take these liberties, it was an amazing decision as Madame X became Sargent’s best and most famous work of all time.

Critics could argue that manipulating the reality of portraits or photographs like adjusting a pose, or smiling when you’re unhappy is tampering with the true beauty of reality. But so what if I smile in a picture when I had a miserable day? So what if I smile in a picture when I am dressed uncomfortably in suit at some formal event in which I don’t even know the host? I know the true story behind the photo, and to me, that is far more interesting than a fake smile. Besides, a fake smile puts the cherry on top of a captured memory; if “every portrait tells a lie,” then every story reveals the truth.

When I was reading yesterday’s articles on John Singer Sargent, I didn’t learn much about him or his life. I mainly learned about his paintings and his style, and that is what I focused on. This made today’s articles very interesting to me because I never would have guessed that Henry James and Sargent were such close friends. Then again, that is probably why James gave Sargent such a glowing review of his work in “Picture and Text”. The article “How John Singer Sargent Made a Scene” by Sarah Churchwell focused a lot on their friendship and how their lives intertwined. What truly surprised me was how the author was able to describe Sargent’s personality simply from his friends’ quotes. Even though Churchwell’s main focus seemed to be comparing the two friends, she deviated a bit from her focus in order to elaborate even further on Sargent’s lifestyle.

I thought that “Every Portrait Tells a Lie” by Debra Brehmer was very interesting to read. I think

that what she said about portraiture is true: it is indeed a lie. People always try to get the best shot in photography, even if it means messing with how candid a scene is. Many family pictures are staged memories. The viewer of the picture, however, doesn’t see what happens before or after the picture is taken. They see a memory that has been tampered with. I feel that this may have been the case with some of Sargent’s paintings. When Churchwell stated that it was possible that him and Charlotte Louise Burckhardt (Lady With the Rose– pictured right) were having an affair, I felt like her smug face in that painting seemed like it made more sense. Maybe they had a fight right before he decided to paint her face, and ended up painting her looking like she was annoyed or angry. She looks like she seemed very bored with the idea of being the subject of his painting, as if she had modeled for him in the past many times. I feel that it is also possible that she feared suspicion from people around her if she modeled for a painting. These are all essentially crackpot theories, but I feel as though these two articles opened my eyes even more to Sargent’s works as well as his private lifestyle. 

Honestly, reading Every Portrait Tells a  Lie by Debra Brehmer and How John Singer Sargent made a Scene by Sarah Churchwell interested me a lot more than the previous two articles. I was able to understand more and know a lot more general and personal information about John Singer Sargent.

In “Every Portrait tells a Lie”, Debra states outright that “every portrait tells a story and that story… (tells) a lie”. What one may see on a canvas or in a frame may not be the reality behind it when it was being painted or captured. All portraits, and many photographs, are staged of course. Sometimes, a portrait or a photograph may not represent the actual reality of what one sees.

This is why I like taking and being part of candid photos – they aren’t staged and they capture what really is happening at the moment – good or bad.

But even though Debra states her own opinions about how subjective portraits are because the artist paints what he or she sees in the model, the article praises John Singer Sargent for his mastery in painting portraits and does have many positive things to say about them.

“Portraiture is a sad art. It’s gone but it remains” – Richard Avedon. Portraits capture a moment – whether or staged or not – and remains forever even though the model of a person may pass away. John Singer Sargent has certainly captured a “life” in those paintings and preserved it throughout time.

The “How John Singer Sargent made a Scene” article is very detailed and gives a lot more personal information about Sargent. It contains many quotes from his contemporary colleagues and peers that praise him.  For example, Henry James has a lot to say about his best friend Sargent. He praises John Singer for “creating a realistic portrait”.

Even though many people praised John Singer Sargent for his portraits that were a picture of reality, many also criticized him.

For example, when Sargent painted Madame X , many criticized and “objected to Madame Gautreau’s appearance (some complaining at the powder-blue pallor of her skin, others at the depth of her décolletage or the shockingly wanton shoulder strap allowed to fall suggestively loose) or hailed the modernity of Sargent’s technique”

It’s hard to believe that back then, what Sargent painted was considered “modern”. Maybe, in the future, for example, everyone will fully accept Modern Art because some people criticize it as not art at all.

This article also answers some questions that my fellow classmates have asked before – Is John Singer Sargent American or European? Near the end of the article, it says, “Late in life, Sargent declined the honour of knighthood, because he was American” This answers the question – John Singer identifies himself as an American.

This article was very detailed about the personal life of the painter and musician John Singer Sargent that extends beyond his art – such as his alleged affair with one of his models, the questioning of his sexuality, and much more. Before we only knew about John Singer Sargent the painter and his influences in art; now, we know more about John Singer Sargent the person.

With two readings, “How John Singer Sargent Made a Scene” by Sarah Churchwell and “Every Portrait Tells a Lie” by Debra Brehmer, the artist John Singer Sargent became much more real to me. The way he enjoyed a break from painting by playing piano, talked to himself and paced while lost in the art, gifted a lady a painting and was rejected, felt apprehensive about the criticism his best work, Madame X, was receiving, and strived to keep his private life away from the public eye was all revealed in “How John Singer Sargent Made a Scene“.

In “Every Portrait Tells a Lie“, Brehmer argues that portraits depict whatever the subject presents (arguing kids facing the camera with smiles on their faces) and the artist wants to capture (Dad wanted a happy family Christmas photo). Famous earlier portraitists did the same; the subjects of paintings had to pose for extended periods of time and Picasso chose to immortalize Gertrude Stein with a distorted face.

With this idea in mind, it became clear to me that his portraits were altered to show what he wanted to immortalize and seemed more personal thereafter. With all the talk in class and in the previous essays on Sargent’s many influences, it didn’t seem that he had his own style – just a copy and blend of others’ styles. Now it is apparent that Sargent sought to immortalize his subjects in a form that put all the focus on them. The shadowing in the background and lighting on their faces drew attention to the subjects and left few distractions for the observer.

I also connected this idea of artists choosing how to display subjects and subjects choosing how to display themselves with Humans of NY, one of my favorite blogs. Subjects choose what to wear and how to behave every day, actions that attract the attention of the HONY photographer. Then during the interview, they choose what parts of themselves and their lives to reveal. But ultimately it’s up to the photographer to decide which quote becomes a caption and which picture gets posted. By having a diverse selection of subjects and stories, the photographer humanizes strangers to the world. But “Every Portrait Tells a Lie” immediately brought to mind this picture, where I recall several comments bringing to attention American ignorance toward the Middle East and not realizing they had malls just as shiny as ours when all we see on the news are refugees and wars in deserts. Just as the subjects can lie, so can the media.

The pieces “Every Portrait Tells a Lie”, and “How John Singer Sargent Made a Scene” seem to contradict each other in many ways. In Debra Brehmer’s “Every Portrait Tells a Lie”, she tells us just that, that portraits are always a false representation of a scene. In Sarah Churchwell’s “How John Singer Sargent made a scene”, Churchwell makes it seem that Sargent’s prized portraits were one hundred accurate, and even that Sargent as well as other artists struggle to make their portraits accurately represent the people involved. I believe both have a valid side to the argument. What I took from these two pieces is that painted portraits more accurately represent a scene then a photograph. When you take a photograph it can take less than a minute to set up and take the photo, whereas a painted portrait can take hours or days on end to create. Because of the very small amount of time required to take a photograph, someone or the group of people that want it can change their apparent mood so that it is pleasant to look at in the future. In the time it takes for an artist to paint a portrait, he/she is desperately trying to make the piece accurate and represent the subject’s actual emotions. I also believe that this is a generational difference, we see hundreds of selfies posted all over social media with fake smiles now. The overwhelming majority of the youngest generation has no interest in sitting for hours for a painting that will just hang on a wall and never get looked at. The self portrait has become a method of communication in the past few years. People use selfies to convey emotion that may be accurate or not, it has become so easy to fake a smile for a picture that it is now out of the ordinary to not put aside one’s feelings of sadness in order to have a nice picture. We have seen this for a few decades now with, as Brehmer tells us, the family portrait. I can guarantee you that if you have a sibling, that at one time or another you have also experienced her example with a family portrait of your own. You and your sibling might be at each others throats and ready to kill one another, but then out of the blue, mom wants a nice picture, so you are forced to put your quarrels to rest and pretend like you are the best of friends, and that portrait is definitely a lie.