Portrait (pronounced pawr-trit, pawr-treyt, pohr-trit or pohr-treyt)
(1) A likeness of a person, especially of the face, as a
painting, drawing, or photograph (when used as a modifier: a portrait gallery).
(2) A verbal description of someone or something, especially
if pertaining to an individual’s character.
(3) Relating to or producing vertical, upright
orientation of computer or other digital output, with lines of data parallel to
the two shorter sides of a page or screen (as opposed “landscape” in which the
relationship is inverted). The use was formalized
in digital technology as applied to aspect ratios (page layouts, images,
monitors etc).
(4) In printing (of a publication or an illustration in a
publication), being of greater height than width.
1560–1570: From the Middle English portrait (a figure, drawn or painted), either a back formation from
portraiture or directly from the French portrait,
from the Middle French portraict &
pourtraict (a drawing, image, etc),
the noun use of the past participle of portraire
(to portray), from the thirteenth century Old French portret, from the Latin prōtrahō. Wherever used, the various forms were always applied
especially to pictures or representation of the head and face of a person drawn
from life. The spelling pourtraict is obsolete. Portrait is a noun, verb & adjective,
portraitist & portraiture are nouns and portraiting & portraited are
verbs and portraitlike & portraitesque are adjectives; the noun plural is
portraits.
An image of Lindsay Lohan, digitally rendered in the style of an oil on canvas portrait.
Artists painting their own image had been a part of art
for centuries but the term “self-portrait” entered English in 1821, a direct
translation of the German Selbstbildnis
(the construct being selbst + Bildnis). The portraiture
(the art of making portraits; a painting, picture, or drawing) emerged in the
late fourteenth century and was from the twelfth century Old French portraiture
(portrait, image, portrayal, resemblance).
The term Fayum (a city in Egypt, and the associated region) portrait
(also known as the "mummy portrait" or "Faiyum portrait"
describes the class of naturalistic portraits rendered on the wooden boards
attached to mummies from the Coptic period.
Produced between the first & third centuries AD, they were a sub-set
of the school of panel painting popular in late Antiquity and have been an
invaluable source of information for historians, revealing much about fashion,
social structures and aspects of religious beliefs and the associated
politics. Fayum was from the Arabic الفَيُّوم (al-fayyūm),
from the Coptic (ph̀iom) (the sea, Fayum), from the Egyptian pꜣ ym (Lake Moeris (literally “The Lake”), the construct being
pꜣ (the) + ym (lake). The term “swagger portrait” is one of the
informal terms used to describe a work (not of necessity a portrait as one is
now conventionally understood) which is rendered in a style deliberately to emphasize
their wealth, status or importance.
The portrait versus landscape aspect ratio was much discussed in the early days of televising live sport on television, the producers concluding there were "landscape sports" and "portrait sports". Human vision is naturally in a landscape aspect which is why the 16:9 (width x height) ratio works so well in computer monitors and it's said to explain why architecture which follows the dimensionality of the DL envelope is thought to be so pleasing; almost all the early television screens were in a landscape shape (typically 4:3 or 6:4). Thus, sports like most football codes (covered with cameras on the long sides and played on a rectangular field) were thought "landscape" and worked best on TV while the forms played on ovals involving much high kicking (such as Australian Rules) was inherently portrait. Some portrait sports were suitable however because of their small scale. Tennis was a portrait sport which had to be covered from the small ends but the rectangular courts were small and with attention to camera angles, could be made to work well. Cricket was (sort of the same) although much panning was involved to cover the rest of the ground when required.
“Portrait bust” in marble (circa 1895) of Otto von Bismarck (1815-1989; Chancellor of the German Empire 1871-1890) by the German Sculptor Reinhold Begas (1831-1911).
In
early 1939, during construction of the new Reich Chancellery in Berlin, workmen
dropped one of the Begas busts of Bismarck which had for decades stood in the
old Chancellery, breaking it at the neck.
The architect Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942;
Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945), knowing that the superstitious
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government
1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) regarded the Reich Eagle toppling from
the post-office building right at the beginning of World War I (1914-1918) as a
harbinger of doom, kept the accident secret and had architect and sculptor Arno
Breker (1900–1991) carve an exact copy.
To give the fake the necessary patina, it was soaked for a time in
strong, black tea, the porous quality of marble enabling the fluid to induce
some accelerated aging.
In sculpture, what was known as the “portrait statue” after the 1690s came to be known as the “portrait
bust”, both meaning “sculpture of upper torso and
head”. Bust was from the sixteenth
century French buste, from the Italian
busto (upper body), from the bustum (funeral monument, tomb (originally
“funeral pyre, place where corpses are burned”)) which may have been a shortened
form of ambustum, the neuter of ambustus (burned around) and past
participle of amburere (burn around,
scorch), the construct being ambi- (around)
+ urere (to burn). The alternative etymology suggests a link
with the Old Latin boro, the early
form of Classical Latin uro (to burn) and the sense development in Italian is thought
related to the Etruscan custom of keeping the ashes of the dead in an urn
shaped like the person when alive. After
the mind-1720s, it was used as a term to describe the “trunk of the human body
above the waist” and it’s for this reason it was in the 1880s adapted to mean “the
bosom; the measurement around a woman's body at the level of her breasts”.
The Supreme Leader presides over the Fifth Enlarged Meeting of the Eighth Central Military Commission of the WPK, 12 March 2023, the task of the generals & admirals being to write down his every word. The portraits behind the Supreme Leader (both in landscape aspect) are of the Great Leader (left) and the Dear Leader (right). Preserving the images of the photographers in the (portrait aspect) mirror was a nice, post-modern, touch.
In August 2023, with tropical storm Khanun bearing down
on the DPRK (North Korea) coast, the state media issued instructions that citizens
must “with urgency” and “at any cost” focus on “ensuring the
safety” of items depicting the three members of the Kim dynasty: Kim Il-sung
(Kim I, 1912–1994; Great Leader of DPRK 1948-1994); Kim Jong-il (Kim II,
1941-2011; Dear Leader of DPRK 1994-2011) and Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982;
Supreme Leader of DPRK since 2011).
Presumably because they would be more susceptible to the storm’s heavy
rain and strong winds than sturdier objects like statutes, the Rodong Sinmun (official
newspaper of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK)) emphasized citizens’ “foremost focus” must be ensuring the
preservation of portraits of the Kims although they did caution the need also to safeguard the large number of statues,
mosaics, murals and other monuments to the Kim dynasty which has ruled North
Korea since its foundation in 1948.
Meeting of the WPK to commemorate the Supreme Leader’s tenth anniversary of his assumption of leadership of the party, Pyongyang, April 2022. The Supreme Leader’s portrait is displayed in an oval which is not unusual in DPRK Kim iconography.
The order was an interesting insight into the way the
regime regards the symbolism of representational objects as a part of its legitimacy
but they have set the population an onerous task given the sheer volume of portraits
which exist. At least one each of the
Great Leader & Dear Leader are known to hang in every house, café, bus,
train carriage or shop and in public buildings there might literally be dozens. In recent years, it’s been noted portraits of
the Supreme Leader have also been more frequently seen and analysts have for
years regarded the Kim dynasty’s mode of operation as something like a
theocratic state in which the leader and his ancestors are worshiped. Implicit in that is that statues and
portraits are beyond being merely symbolic but are really sacred icons; just as
every citizen must be willing (anxious even) to die protecting the leader, so must
they be prepared to sacrifice themselves to save his portrait. It's never been revealed whether any of the Kims read
DPRK citizens during flooding in 2022 (left) & 2012 (centre & right), searching for portraits of the Great Leader, Dear Leader & Supreme Leader that they might be able to save.
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