Surrealist Portraiture

Surrealism was an important avant-garde fine art movement of the inter-war years. Andre Breton, its founder, declared that its aim was to create a 'super-reality' (surrealisme) by combining the conscious (visual and intellectual imagination) with the unconscious (dreams as well as random or chance-like images [frottage]). Other notable Surrealists include: the Spanish artists Salvador Dali and Joan Miro, and the Belgian painter Rene Magritte. Although most of the movement's artworks defy all traditional descriptions, more famous examples of what one might call Surrealist "portrait art" are: the distorted biomorphic form, Woman (1934) by Joan Miro - one of his peintures sauvages'; Dali's grotesquely dismembered figure in his masterpiece Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (1936); and Rene Magritte's transparent window canvas featuring a suspended hat - The Human Condition (1933).

Marilyn (1967) by Pop-Artist
Andy Warhol.

Pop-Art Portraiture

Pop Art was a modern art movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which grew up in New York and London. Largely eschewing traditional fine art painting, with its emphasis on precise figure drawing, the movement's aim was to make art engage with the real world, by utilizing modern forms of printmaking, and popular iconography.

As a self-styled democratic or 'popular' art form, its prints and other artworks comprised easily recognizable mass-market images. In short, it tried to make the everyday into something epic.

The leading figure of the Pop Art school was the American avant-garde printmaker Andy Warhol, whose New York 'factory' produced a number of celebrated Pop Art portrait images.

Drowning Girl (1963) by Pop-Artist
Roy Lichtenstein.

These portraits, which became world-famous iconic images of the 1960s, included works like: Twenty Marilyns [silk screen] (1962), Triple Elvis [silk screen and aluminium paint] (1962), Jacqueline Kennedy No 3 (1965), Liz (1964-5), Marilyn (1967), Mao-Tse-Tung (1973), as well as several self-portraits.

Other famous artists of the Pop-Art style included Wayne Thiebaud, and Edward Ruscha, as well as Roy Lichtenstein the comic strip style artist. Lichtenstein's tight control of black outline, Ben Day dot technique and meticulous attention to detail can be seen in portraits like: Anxious Girl [oil on canvas] (1964).

Supermarket Shopper (1970).
A hyper-realistic sculpture portrait by
Duane Hanson.

WORLD'S TOP PORTRAITURE
For the greatest portraitists
see: Best Portrait Artists.

Photorealist Portraiture

Photorealism, a development of Pop-Art, is a hyper-realistic art movement which originated in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. Photorealist paintings are meticulously copied photographs, the latter being projected onto a canvas by a projector, and then worked on. The term Photorealism was first used by Louis Meisel in 1968 and later in a Whitney Museum catalogue for the show: Twenty-two Realists. Notable Photorealist painters included: the self-portraitist Chuck Close, Richard Estes, Malcolm Morley, Ralph Goings, and Robert Cottingham. Photorealist sculptors - who utilized a variety of materials, such as hair, glass eyes, real clothing and accessories - included: John de Andrea, Duane Hanson and Nancy Graves. Photorealist pictures echo the precise exactitude of portraits, genre-works and still lifes from the Dutch Realist school, but arguably lack life. Photorealism declined after the 1970s when photography and video became accepted art forms.

The next article covers Portrait Art by other 20th Century Artists.

• For Renaissance portraiture, see: Renaissance portraits.
• For Baroque portraiture, see: Baroque portraits.
• For Neoclassicist portraiture, see: Neoclassical portraits.
• For 19th century portraiture, see: Nineteenth Century portraits.
• For Impressionist portraiture, see: Impressionist portraits.
• For Expressionist portraiture, see: Expressionist portraits.
• See also: Portraits by Picasso.
• For more about the different types of painting (portraits, landscapes, still-lifes etc) see: Painting Genres.
• For details of landscape and portraiture in Ireland, see: Irish Portrait Artists.
• For more about painters in Ireland, see: Irish Art Encyclopedia.

• To Update This Mini Review of Surrealist, Pop-Art and Photorealist Portraiture, click here.