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OLFU Gallery


Phase II: Face
 

Today the Fatima University Gallery (FUG) presents its second installment of paintings and sculptures entitled PHASE II: Face, an exhibit of portraits by the country’s finest classical, modernist, and contemporary artists. 
 
Portraits from different schools of art, disparate expressions, and divergent settings come face to face with each other.
 
On the one hand, the appreciation of portraits is objective.  It is objective when the portrait, especially if it is a commissioned work, bears the striking resemblance to the patron/patroness.  On the other hand and for the most part, the appreciation of portraits is subjective when the personality and soul of the sitter, their idiosyncrasies notwithstanding, emanate from the canvas.

PHASE II: Faceis an invitation for the viewer to carefully read the portrait he/she is coming to contact with and judge the sitter’s body and soul.  It proposes to the viewer to feel the psychological manifestation being represented by the sitter.

This exhibit of the FUG aims to educate the learning community of Our Lady of Fatima University to the rich and insightful world of portraiture.

Portraits of women, generally, reflect their beauty and/or their ideal qualities.  Their mode of dressing may be a costume meant for the purpose of sitting or the true fashion of the times when the portrait was created.

 

Portraits of men oftentimes depict them having a commanding air, physical strength, and moral and social authority.
Since the Sixteenth Century, artists have employed models to pose for them in their ateliers.  Most of them posed in the nude.  Most of them have remained unknown, but even if they have been identified, their identity was irrelevant to the purpose they served the artist*.

 

 When we look at portraits, we see individuals who are now dead or are older than and different from the way they were represented, but portraits seem to transport us into an actual moment that existed in the past when the artist and sitter encountered each other in a real time and place*.

Whether or not a portrait was actually based on a sitting, the transaction between the artist and sitter is evoked in the imagination of the viewer*.

Self-portraits remain crucial in studying the technique of the artist.  As having a model or a patron is unnecessary in the artist’s creation of his/her self-portrait, the artist becomes more unrestricted in depicting himself/herself.

Truly, a self-portrait is an indication of the artist’s perception about himself/herself.  Whether the artist chooses to paint (or sculpt) his/her image as a person of standing, as an idealized impression, or an anxious and dismayed being, he/she is left at his/her volition.

 * Source: West, Shearer.  2004.  Portraiture.  United Kingdom.  Oxford University Press.