The need to connect with others begins when a baby gazes up at its mother. We need to know and be known, and to be remembered. Portraits, by depicting another human being, seize our imagination and compel viewing in a way no other genre can. Portraits, Expanded is a multi-gallery exhibit featuring work by artists who extend the traditional concept of portraiture to include language, voice, time, history, community, and culture.
From Gibson Girls to cover girls, the faces of beautiful women have adorned product advertisements for more than a century. Paul Hunter, fascinated by these goddesses of glamour, photographs them on billboards and subway ads in and around New York City. He scales the images and screens them in black pigment with splashes of color (most notably, lipstick red) over aluminum or silver leaf. Heavily made up, air brushed, posed, and frozen, each siren is more icon than flesh and blood. The work can hardly be considered portraiture: no individual with personality, laugh lines, and an animated face is depicted. Rather, these are portraits of a particular segment of society, portraits of aspiration to synthetic beauty—a beauty designed and sold to women, and for that matter men, in cultures dominated by commerce.
—Mara Williams, Chief Curator
EXHIBITION
Portraits, Expanded by Paul Hunter
Through March 7th 2015
Brattleboro Museum & Art Center
10 Vernon Street
Brattleboro, VT 05301
USA
