Two Answers about Portrait

(1)The changing relationship as the encoder and decoder
The subject person is translated into a portrait mediated by the artist, and the essence of a subject, which is interpreted by the artist, is transmitted to the audience mediated by the work of a portrait. The psychological distance between the artist and the subject person has to be intimate in order for the artist to engrave the essence of the subject person in a portrait. The essence of the subject person in a portrait is read through the audience’s view. The change of relationship can be explained by this encoding and decoding experience.

The audience’s experience of a static portrait, as opposed concept to the interactive portrait, is of the decoder. He reads the implied meaning out of the still portrait. The impression changes and it is re-processed over and over, as the context he confronts or recalls the portrait changes. The interactivity regarding appreciating the static portrait occurs only in the audience’s brain on a perceptual and cognitive level. But when the portrait becomes literally interactive, the interactivity in the audience’s brain seems to decrease, while the actual interactivity in a physical space increases. Because, as the responsive and interactive object gets more of the audience’s visual and auditory attention, the interactivity in a cognitive level gets more or less limited. However, the interactive portrait also opens the chance of the audience to participate or intervene the result of a portrait in a literal and obvious way, being the encoder and encoded himself, resulting in the alteration of other audience’s experience of the portrait as well. As a result, the audience becomes less a decoder and more a encoder.

The artist’s experience of a static portrait is of an encoder. He engraves the essence of the subject, which is closely read out of the subject person by the artist, onto the portrait. He holds the status as the only encoder, regardless of the various decodings and responses by the audience. The interactivity the artist experiences is the psychological association with the subject person before completing the work and the responses and critics after the releasing the work. When the portrait becomes interactive, the artist becomes less a encoder, because the audience gets the chance of intervening the work as an encoder. However, the role of artist as an encoder would not get much weaken because the artist comes to have another chance of being an encoder, the designer of the system. Once the artist makes the system, the system can be fairly open about the encoded(both the original subject and the following result). Whether the artist takes the portrait system as the generator of universal statement about the portraiture or he designs and uses the system for a specific purpose, completely remains as the artist’s intention. But the potential of the audience’s being the part of the encoder and the artist’s being the designer of the system seems to be appearing.




(2)The validation of the portrait
The function of the portrait differs depending on the era and the context, although it can be generally considered to be produced to convey a certain individual’s inner or outer quality to a larger or restricted audience. Since many artists produce the work inspired by themselves, the work of art such as “My Bed” by Tracey Emin can be included as a portrait in a broader sense. West especially argues that the portrait functions as a work of an art, a biography, a document, proxy and gift, and as a commemoration, while Brilliant emphasizes the historical challenges of the artistic statement of portraits among its functions as reference, representation, and symbol.

What the portrait tries to convey can be anything from the physical appearance and the mental character to the social status of a subject person. Also, regardless of what the portrait wants to convey, the form of portrait can relate either to the realistic imagery or to the abstract representation.

The portrait of realistic imagery can function better where its visual likeness is important. When the portrait is used as the mean of propaganda, the imagery has to be realistic not to be misunderstood about its denotational subject. The photographs in political campaign and the celebrity’s press photos are the examples. When the portrait is used as a symbol, it also tends to be realistic, because the meaning of the portrait is almost outside the portrait and the portrait itself has less room for its formal intervention.

When I see the example of Klee’s “A New Face,” the abstract portrait seems better in depicting the inner state of a subject itself such as the tension and irony. For Klee’s kind of abstract portrait, the abstract quality of human emotion can draw more attention by omitting out the concrete figure. Since this omission of figure results in the weaker presence of a specific person, the abstract quality becomes more or less free from the original subject person. So the abstract portrait tends to work better in conveying the universal sympathy about the inner personality regardless of the original subject.

Among the various types of the portraits, such as the audible and visible types, one character that can be induced from them is that the portrait delivers salient or ambiguous personality in a perceivable form, which is still not necessarily conceivable clearly. Because of its translation into perceivable form and the selective delivery, the artist becomes the interpreter of a personality. And, from a viewer’s point, passing through the artist’s interpretation and his/her own interpretation, appreciating the portrait becomes the experience of ambiguity and mystery about a person which can be decoded by multiple levels.

Thus the portrait without face can function as a portrait. The face is the most distinctive feature of a human appearance, so the portrait without face might not be suitable for propaganda purpose. However, because of the face’s distinctive feature, as we can see from the example of Paul Outerbridge’s “Self-Portrait,” losing face can work as re-contextualizing the portrait closer to the abstract one. The face is only a part of human quality indeed, and not having face enhances the richness and the mystery of its appreciation.

On the other hand, the functionality of genomic representation as a portrait seems to be more or less limited, because the scientific and social implication of the genome code is too strong for describing one specific individual, and the genomic code itself is too specific for depicting a person’s rich and ambiguous quality. It only describes the genome information which each person was borne with and has not changed since, but it cannot reflect the acquired quality of a person which dominates the overall personality of a person. Only when the personality of a subject person has specific relation to the genome code, such as Sir John Sulston, James D. Watson or a person who suffered from a rare genetic disease, the contextual balance between the genome code and a personality can occur. And the absoluteness and accuracy of the code makes the portrait less mystery.

Another limitation of genetic approach is that the genomic code is not very distinguishable among people(99.97% of genetic information is all the same). I wonder how much the fingerprints differ among the people and whether the difference is less than the genome’s case. I would imagine that portraying someone’s neuronal connection can be a better portraiture than the genomic code, because the pattern of neuronal connection is formed differently depending on the cognitive stimuli and the experience each person acquires.

But it does not mean that the genomic representation generally cannot be the meaningful way of portraying a person. Even when the genomic portrait uses the genomic information of a specific person, the point of genomic representation more evokes the question of what human is and where it comes from. It becomes the artistic statement rather than trying to represent the personality itself. And, despite the absolute and unique character of individual’s genome code, the genomic representation comes to locate within the social and artistic context. The relative quality such as the similarity as a human race, and the matter of heritage can be dealt with in a direct way, when using the genomic approach. And again, because of its ephemeral implication relating to the social context, the genomic representation may function the best when the genomic issue is huge around the society, just as other types of portrait also has flourished and disappeared as time goes by.