ART-PRESENTATION: Human Interest, Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection
Portraits are one of the richest veins of the Whitney’s collection, a result of the Museum’s longstanding commitment to the figurative tradition, which was championed by its founder. The intent to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of a person, its power and fascination, and the ingenious ways in which artists have been expanding the definition of portraiture over the past 100 years, are explored in “Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection”.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Whitney Museum of American Art Archive
Drawn entirely from the Museum’s collection, Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection”, features 300 works from 1900 to 2016 by 200 artists, roughly half of whom are living. The show is organized in 12 thematic sections, with works in all media installed side by side. In the 6th floor, 7th floor includes works from the first half of the 20th Century to the present day. Many iconic works from the collection are included by such artists as: Alexander Calder, Marsden Hartley, Edward Hopper, Jasper Johns, Alice Neel, Georgia O’Keeffe, Cindy Sherman, and Andy Warhol. In addition, a number of major new acquisitions is exhibited at the Whitney for the first time, including Barkley L. Hendricks, Urs Fischer, Joan Semmel, Henry Taylor, Deana Lawson and Rosalyn Drexler. In addition to the content of portraiture, attention is given to the evolution of the ways in which the portrait is executed and the impact of these different modes on the work. This is notable in the “Street Life” and “Starstruck” sections where authenticity is captured through paparazzi shots or improvised street photography. These sections reflect beautifully on many societal changes starting to take place in the country. The crudeness of the human body in all its prudishness, vulnerability, and insolence is also explored in the “Body Bared” section with Joan Semmel’s delicate body self-portrait against Robert Mapplethorpe’s more defiant one from 1978. Both, however, irreverently divert the classical nude subject, so dear to Western art. This irreverence is also picked up on in “Price of Fame” where Pop artists wallow sensibly in exaggerating an extra notch the contemporary mass media’s construction of the individual, and overtly amplify our inconspicuous internalization of glamour. “Self-Conscious” explores different psychological states experienced, or different etiquettes and personas attached to one single individual with works by artists such as Jean Michel Basquiat, Charles Ray, Rudolf Stingel, and notably a monumental lit wax candle by Urs Fischer depicting painter and filmmaker Julian Schnabel. Through their varied takes on the portrait, the artists in the exhibition demonstrate the vitality of this enduring genre, which serves as a compelling lens through which to view some of the most important social and artistic developments of the past century.
Info: Curators: Dana Miller and Scott Rothkopf, Curatorial Assistant: Mia Curran, Assistant Curator: Jennie Goldstein, Consulting Curator: Sasha Nicholas, Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, Duration: 26/416-12/2/17, Days & Hours: July-August: Mon-Thu & Sun 10:30-18:00, Fri-Sat 10:30-22:00, September-February: Mon, Wed-Thu & Sun 10:30-18:00, Fri-Sat 10:30-22:00, http://whitney.org
