Portrait, where’s your likeness?

Translated by Paisi.

The ques­tion of resem­blance in a por­trait is a del­i­cate one. Coming from a gen­er­a­tion born after more than a cen­tury of Western de-con­struc­tion, on all artistic, cul­tural or lit­erary levels, it is becoming dif­fi­cult for me today to name the points that make a por­trait, a simple sketch of a few min­utes or a more elab­o­rate work, be said to resemble the model.

The artist’s quest for resem­blance during a live model ses­sion, can take place on very dif­ferent levels, depending on the style or the way the work is done. However, resem­blance implies two par­allel inter­pre­ta­tions: first, that of the artist in front of his model, com­paring his work with the model, and second, that of the spec­tator in front of the artist’s work, also com­paring with the model.

But let us leave aside the second inter­pre­ta­tion to try to under­stand the first, that of the artist in front of his work.

Where indeed is this resem­blance that he is trying to trans­late? Looking in turn at the model and the devel­op­ment of his work, adding lines and colors on the sup­port, forcing a con­trast here, erasing a “mis­take” there, in short, he is working nimbly on a flat sur­face. But there is no con­nec­tion between this worked flat sur­face and the living model. Nothing is sim­ilar: a face against graphite lines, light against an touch of gouache, a rhythm expressed by a few directed hatch­ings, a phys­ical color against a sur­face of man­u­fac­tured pig­ments. Nothing is com­pa­rable. And yet it’s all there. The model is there, framed by the edges of the paper, and what’s more, it looks alike…

A paradox emerges: it is impos­sible to see the resem­blance inde­pen­dently of the lines and colours that express it on paper, and at the same time, the resem­blance is not just this com­bi­na­tion of lines and colours. So where does it lie? We could say that the resem­blance lies in the artist’s inten­tion, in what he saw of the invis­ible order and was able to trans­late: this char­acter, this accu­racy, this inde­fin­able "truth". What he saw was a space between his work and his model. And all his work con­sists pre­cisely in making vis­ible what is not, in making more explicit what is sensed without being able to express it, and which is hidden behind a face, a life, a model. This is why a por­trait made by an artist can be felt more real and more true than the model itself. Through a kind of cre­ative alchemy, the por­trait reveals the meaning hidden behind appear­ances.

On the level of the lan­guage of forms, many so-called “non-resem­bling" por­traits are closer to felt reality as to the impres­sion that emerges from the por­trait, which is "more itself than the model". We can say of this por­trait: That’s him! However, design-wise, not a single line or color con­forms phys­i­cally to the model. "Him", trans­posed into the lan­guage of forms becomes "It’s him". Here the inter­play of colors and shapes gives birth to life. Often even unknownn to the artist self. How can this life be cap­tured? The artist’s tech­nical ability, suf­fi­ciently prac­tised to avoid all sorts of clum­si­ness, fail­ures or aes­thetic errors, will be put aside, as if muted, to posi­tion him­self in a kind of pres­ence in the world, hovering over it or taking a step back, which becomes capable of cap­turing and trans­lating this impres­sion, as if without taking pos­ses­sion of it. The artist’s pres­ence in the world is a kind of absence from one­self. A kind of dis­tracted pres­ence to one­self that allows one to be pre­sent in the world…

This is the oppo­site of the scru­ti­nizing, pos­ses­sive gaze that is cap­tured by the tools of objec­tive anal­ysis, more suited to dis­man­tling than to the search for meaning, giving us to see some­thing like the parts of an engine spread out on the floor of the mechanic’s work­shop. This dis­man­tling, whose nov­elty is often very attrac­tive from an artistic point of view, very sim­ilar because of its dis­man­tled and demon­strated parts, dis­re­gards all the links between the parts, all the artic­u­la­tions of the vis­ible that give us in trans­parency a view of a meaning that can finally be grasped by our intel­li­gence. This dis­man­tling, from which our Western age has emerged, makes appear­ances dis­ap­pear, and con­se­quently, access to the invis­ible that the artist per­ceives fleet­ingly. Appearance is the con­di­tion of being of the invis­ible. What is intel­li­gible is never more than a tiny part of what’s sen­sible.

“For my taste, these modern Actaeons boast too soon of having dis­cov­ered the secrets of Beauty: must it be, because we have ana­lyzed the rainbow and stripped the moon of its oldest, most chaste mys­tery, that I, the last Endymion, should lose all hope, because imper­ti­nent eyes have leered at my mistress through a tele­scope?” [1]»

It is only after the fact, or through the judg­ment of another, that this work, often obscure during its exe­cu­tion, will reveal itself to be “more itself than the model itself”, resem­bling, as for the impres­sion that emanates from it, the in-between of reality, the space between the sheet and the model, cap­tured and trans­lated as if by acci­dent.

I remember an art teacher at the École Boulle, who, during a live model ses­sion, told the stu­dents we were then to: "never throw away a piece of work".

Today, I feel that among all these draw­ings piled up in a corner of the studio, is per­haps hiding the pos­si­bility of that glance after­wards that could reveal an in-between, cap­tured non­cha­lantly and ignored until now.

These might be lofty thoughts for just a few lines and colours on a sheet of paper. However, when this resem­blance becomes a research span­ning years and most likely never com­pleted, it deserves a few lines that live up to its expec­ta­tions.

So,
I draw
You draw
He draws
We draw
By design.