Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Apr 2, 2016–Apr 2, 2017

All

2 / 15

Previous Next

Is likeness essential to portraiture? These works, spanning the past one hundred years, raise this question as they present alternate means for capturing an individual’s personality, values, and experiences. At the twentieth century’s outset, the rise of abstraction and advances in photography spurred many artists to devise new, non-figurative approaches to portraiture. In their paintings, American modernists such as Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Florine Stettheimer frequently adopted symbols—including abstract geometries, typographical characters, and natural forms—as surrogates for themselves and their closest companions.

Artists have continued to experiment with symbolic portraiture in the decades since World War II, whether hinting at private meanings by depicting intimate spaces and personal possessions or referencing themselves through the tools of their craft. When the face or the body does appear in the works featured here, it is shown at a remove, as a representation within a representation. Forgoing physical likeness in favor of allusion and enigma, all of these works expand the possibilities of what a portrait can be, while also acknowledging that the quest to depict others—and even ourselves—is elusive.

Below is a selection of works from Portraits Without People.

Back

11 / 17

Previous Next

Painting of various potted plants on and below a wooden table, with a dinosaur drawing and a floral-patterned vase in the foreground.

In Jonas Wood’s paintings, he often uses intricate decorative patterning to render ordinary objects that hold personal resonance for him. Some of the pots depicted here were made by Wood’s wife, artist Shio Kusaka. The painting thus is just as much a self or family portrait as it is a still life. “You could call it a visual diary or even a personal history,” the artist has said. This everyday quality, accentuated by flat planes of color and uniform detail, makes the spatial ambiguities in Wood’s work—such as the impossible perspective of the table—all the more disorienting.

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection

View 383 works

Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Portraits Without People

2

NIGHT BLOOM STILL LIFE, 2015

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection

On the Hour

Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Portraits Without People

2

NIGHT BLOOM STILL LIFE, 2015

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection