Who is that Person? An Exercise in Close Observation and Speculative Interpretation

The entire assignment, and the 23 untitled portraits that you will choose from, are on blackboard, or e-learning as I am wont to call it. Tomorrow we will spend our time together with the illustrious and charming Jayme Jacobson. With J. Jacobson’s able instruction, you will each start your own UH280 blogs. You will send me your URL (by Jan 14 at 8 pm), I will link you to the class blog, and into the semester we will leap. Once again, I am hoping that this internet conversation will spawn and inspire fruitful classroom conversation.
Post your own response to your chosen portrait Jan 15 by 8 pm. Remember to cite the number designation for the image you write about. Read five of your classmates' responses to this exercise and come prepared for us to have a discussion on Jan 16. Write down the name of the people whose blogs you read. Come prepared to comment, question, and discuss your and others' interpretations of the group of untitled portraits.

In brief, for any outside (of the class) readers, here is the nub of our exercise:
Select one portrait. Speculate and write about the subject: who is that person, or in the case of the portraits with more than one figure, who are these people? Scrutinize and study the images carefully, jotting down (by hand) any ideas to our question: who is this person? Begin by brainstorming ideas, without censoring your notions. Carefully observe the visual cues, the visual information that the artist has decided to include in his or her image. After or as you observe, use your imagination! I am purposely not providing information about the artist or title. Instead, I am asking you study the image and creatively speculate on what the image tells you. What is this person’s personality? How do you read their character? What kind of life does the subject lead? If I provided titles and artist names, many of you would have the natural tendency to search the internet for information. With this first assignment, I would like to focus on imaginative speculation based on careful observation.

Introduction to UH280

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gustav_Klimt_020.jpg

Last year, in an honor’s seminar, a student projected Gustave Klimt’s The Three Ages of Women during her research project presentation. The women in the class were horrified at the older woman’s image. Granted, she has a pot belly and something of a Dowager’s hump. It is an unflattering portrayal of middle age. Yet, I was fascinating by the students’ reactions. I learned that the young women were horrified at the prospect of looking old, not growing old per se, but looking old. The class was comprised of women, all women. I wasn’t able to get a male point of view in our class discussion. I asked the class if any older woman had ever spoken to them about what it was like to grow old. None had. Why hadn’t anyone talked to these young women about what it was like to grow older? Is this topic taboo? We hear over and over again that we live in a youth culture. Do we all fear aging? What lies beyond youth? Do we hold any power to shape our image as we live and as we age?
I want to broaden our exploration to question the character of the portrait’s sitter, the character of the artist, and all the questions in between that might arise as we examine portraits from near and from times or places afar. This blog is a venue for your reflections to readings, assigned reflections, to conversation and discourse that will continue into our classroom. Let’s be open and honest in our discourse. Let’s ask a lot of questions and search for honest answers about the images and about our human existence.
Character is revealed by the face. Can we anticipate or shape our character, and thus the face we wear through life? We anticipate, consider, and expend considerable effort when planning our education, careers, families, material possessions, and financial portfolios. Can we look ahead and anticipate who we might be at fifty, sixty, or eighty? Or, are we simply batted about and patted into shape by family, economics, culture, by the vicissitudes of fate? Let’s ask these underlying questions as we encounter and explore the art of portraiture. Who is revealed in the portrait? What qualities of personality, emotional stance or character are revealed? What of the person’s face is shaped by fate, culture, or convention (societal convention or artistic convention)? Do we humans have self determinism in deciding the qualities that show through our faces? What role does the artist’s personality play in the portraits we investigate? If the portrait was commissioned, what factors might determine the portrait that we consider? What choices might be purely aesthetic or driven by the artist projecting his or her personality or artistic intentions on the subject? What is beauty? Is beauty only skin deep or does it reside in the eye of the beholder, as the old bromides suggest?