New Portraitures

Portrait painting is back! The Obamas’ unusual presidential portraits by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, which were recently unveiled to great acclaim, signal an enthusiastic return to the supposedly outmoded form. Portraiture is becoming reenergized, writes Dushko Petrovich for the New York Times, and it’s becoming newly political.

“Representational figurative art was anachronistic, inert, crusty — a form of vanity exclusive to the rich. And yet portraiture — in the classic, realist sense — has become increasingly essential (and visible) in the last few years.”

The decision to include subjects not deemed worthy of traditional portraiture into the genre has long been a political act. And many contemporary artists continue to do this—expanding the focus of the gaze—as well as finding new ways to depict groups marginalized by their own representation. Petrovich believes this tendency is partly due to the warping of reality online and in the media, and the resulting difficulty in deciding what or who to believe. Perhaps in a fake news world, what art audiences crave most is craft, control, precision, and realism.