Abstract
During 2017’s Conference on the Image in Venice, I reported on a global artworld trend that I designated “the un-selfie” – a proliferation of figurative portrait objects that obscured or undermined the identity of their subjects. Proceeding from formal-analytic foundations to broach priorities of relational aesthetics, I placed the phenomenon in historical context and suggested possible explanations for it. Eight years on, artists worldwide are still (or again) investigating the “glitch” portrait, sometimes approaching their subject from original stylistic starting points, and sometimes with conceptual emphasis in response to our post-pandemic age. Production within this area of current representational studio art continues to expand, making the proposed update timely, even necessary. New research identifies at least two recent variants. The first is the glitch inverted — a portrait or figure study that displays the same formal and stylistic characteristics of the dominant “un-selfie” genre while reversing the fields of obliterated content, in effect revealing the face and destroying surrounding areas of the surface image. (This position toward the making of the figurative art object has taken on particular relevance in the studio production of numerous artists who identify as participants in the worldwide Black art movement.) The second variant is what I am calling the “negated-affect” portrait that has taken on resonance in the context of recent feminist discourse. It is my hope to share progress made in identifying, categorizing and explaining the great and increasing variety and number of emerging artists working within this field.
Presenters
Andrew Kent-MarvickProfessor, Department of Filmmaking, Art and Design, Southern Utah University, Utah, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Portrait, Portraits, Portraiture, Representation, Representational, Selfie, Un-Selfie, Glitch, Contemporary
