SmArts

June 20-26, 2016

Portrait of an observation

By Molly Rector

One afternoon earlier this week, I had to be at the airport two towns away to pick up the poet Open Mouth Reading Series featured this month (Emma Bolden–she’s amazing, check her out!). A different friend asked for a ride to the airport that same morning, so my friend/ co-curator of the reading series and I decided to make a day of it. We dropped our friend off at 9, drove to Bentonville, and, finding Crystal Bridges closed, ended up at 21c, where the current exhibit in the main hall includes an impressive array of different kinds of portraiture.

I was especially impressed by the range of artist styles in the 6 pieces on display there: all portraits of public figures. The affiliated statements indicated that the artists were interested in exploring the power of portraiture – or the “official image” – in shaping public perception. The subjects included Madonna (a sculpture made mostly of tape), Frank Carlucci (3700 shots of a 22 long rifle on wood panel), Oprah Winfrey and Condoleezza Rice (rhinestones, acrylic and enamel on wood), Osama bin Laden (plaster sculptures), Abraham Lincoln (oil on canvas), and Barack Obama (parrafin wax and encaustic on canvas).

The thing that I was most taken by was precisely the array of materials used: the juxtaposition of a series of portraits in rhinestones right across from a portrait in bullet holes. I think a lot about the image – the end-result of a visual piece – but this display made me realize how easily I ignore the material (unless it’s very unusual or particularly symbolic, as in the Carlucci portrait). This despite the fact that material is such an important rhetorical feature of any artistic piece. For example, in another room, there was a series of photographs of young men in destructive (and self-destructive) poses printed on vinyl banners, like beer advertisements. The material here served to emphasize the mass-production and flimsiness of the culture from which these particular kinds of behaviors emerge.

This is what I think is so important about having unlike things near to one another: there are meaningful connections that only become clear in observing difference. I like how those observations branch.

Molly Rector is a staff writer for the Daily Record. Contact her at molly@dailydata.com. 

PHOTO PROVIDED