The Second World War ended with the surrender of Germany and the atomic bombing of Japan and resulted in mass trauma and a redistribution power across the world. In the aftermath of the war, the world observed the rise of two radically opposed superpowers, the United States – embodying the spirit of capitalism – and its allies, and the Soviet Union - the communist state. Both parties took part in the Cold War, leading to the escalation of a military artillery build-up and several outbursts of armed violence, primarily the Vietnam War – the symbol of the antagonism between the capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union. Gradually, the Cold War led to the Détente in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, putting an end to communism as a global model. The wars changed the face of the world and imposed an evolution on the modern human psyche.
As men were mobilised to the front during Second World War, women became increasingly empowered throughout the century. Women fought for their advancement, producing feminist art and literature. The emancipation of women from the traditional patriarchal order of society brought a liberal mentality that promoted the freedom of social and sexual behaviour. Later, in all the different classes of society, a turning point occurred in the mid-twentieth century. In the United States, the Civil Rights Movement gave new rights to Blacks and gradually put an end to segregation in the United States. Globally, mentalities changed. The radical destruction of human lives and social structures throughout the century created a significant period of social alienation and reconstruction. Enlightenment notions about the perfectibility of humankind seemed radically misplaced and defunct alongside the horrors of mechanised warfare and genocide.
Artists, however, embraced these destabilizing notions and endeavored to overturn many classical ideals and take a more philosophical approach towards art. Contemporary portraiture acts as an effective lens to explore these innovative ideas. While modern artists take a more subjective approach towards portraiture, contemporary artists often utilize portraiture to convey a specific theory or to comment on pop culture and society. Post-modern portraiture experiments with universal symbols and icons, often exaggerating and deconstructing them to provide new meaning behind the visual subject itself.
Appropriation and imitation are commonly explored within contemporary portraits. Popular historical portraits are often reproduced as a form of satire or social criticism. Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, one of the most commonly reproduced images throughout history, epitomizes this idea. Marcel Duchamp laid the foundation for this concept with his revolutionary rendition of the Mona Lisa entitled L.H.O.O.Q. – a reproduction that depicts the Mona Lisa with a moustache. When the title of the painting read aloud in French it translates to “she has a hot ass” which blatantly degrades the Mona Lisa’s status as a model of humanist perfection. Andy Warhol builds off this idea with his portrayal of the Mona Lisa, a series of silk screen prints modelled after the original painting in different bright colours. By utilizing a serial print method with a subject as respected as the Mona Lisa, Warhol illustrates how art can be treated as a commodity. The prints of Mona Lisa therefore can be eternally manufactured and reproduced, detracting from the value of the original image. Vik Muniz also comments on this idea with his Double Mona Lisa, after Warhol (Peanut Butter + Jelly), a photograph of a peanut butter and jelly version of one of Warhol’s infamous Mona Lisa prints. The sheer fact that it is a photograph of a mise en abyme of the Mona Lisa further emphasizes the variability of the image.
In addition, contemporary art focuses extensively on pop culture and identity. Andy Warhol’s massive silk screen prints of famous icons such as Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, and Elizabeth Taylor illustrate the idea of universal identity. The “Marilyns” that he depicts within his works fail to portray the essence of Marilyn Monroe herself but rather represent the mass media “Marilyn”, the inflated identity that society and the media has cultivated and reproduced. Contemporary Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura takes a unique approach to the idea of the identity by depicting himself disguised as icons such as Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn within his works. His kitschy appropriation portraits imitate the allure of the icon or celebrity in addition to illustrating the human fascination with assuming different identities. Photography – the presumed antithesis of the portrait – now is being used in portrait painting to bring up the question of identity.
The Photorealism movement which began in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s also experimented with the question of individuality. Photorealist portraits are meticulously processed paintings copied directly from photographs of individuals. Upon examining Chuck Close’s paintings, it’s incredibly difficult to delineate whether it’s a photograph or a painting. The optical illusion that is achieved by a photorealist painting calls attention to the process itself. We can’t look at the painting without questioning the manner in which it was produced, taking the emphasis of the painting away from the individual subject. Therefore the essence of the individual becomes debased and reduced to a mechanical form, in the sense that the photograph of the person is converted into a large grid in order to achieve the most accurate replication.
Contemporary portraiture is a genre based on the artists own philosophy of the eternal effort to capture the human essence. Though in contemporary art the themes directly confront the question of self identity within a consumerist society, the diversity and freedom of the art world today allows artists to develop their own ideas provided they can be expanded upon in today’s market. These artists are striving to represent and embody the struggles and meaning of self.