Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Apr 2, 2016–Apr 2, 2017

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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.

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Gerald Murphy belonged to a circle of avant-garde American artists and writers who lived in France during the 1920s. He was renowned for his sophisticated entertaining, especially his inventive cocktails; playwright Philip Barry remarked that Murphy mixed drinks “like a priest preparing Mass.” By celebrating a ritual that was a hallmark of his glamorous European lifestyle but illegal in Prohibition-era America, the painting casts Murphy as a worldly expatriate. Compositional details allude to the artist’s personal life: the bar accessories are based on memories of his father’s set; the five cigars represent the artist, his wife, and their three children; and the illusionistic cigar box cover—which took Murphy four months to paint—contains symbols that allude to the artist himself, including a boat (he was an avid sailor) and an artist’s palette.

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Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Portraits Without People

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COCKTAIL, 1927

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On the Hour

Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Portraits Without People

2

COCKTAIL, 1927

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection