above: Inside Portrait of a Man. (1950)
above: Inside Portrait of a Man. (1950)
Likenesses not necessarily do good portraits make. Often, a lifecast of a person s face will not resemble him. Brunettes will not look as well in sculpture as blondes, for black eyes and hair do not look black in sculpture.
If you are an artist and commissioned to make a portrait of a person on the condition that no words will be exchanged between the two of you for as long as it takes to make it perfect; then you are to make another portrait of the same person being permitted to be together for a solid week, eating, discussing, quarreling, and laughing, so you can make another judgement of the sitter while painting and both pieces turn out identical... you are a worthless artist. For you absolutely cannot paint the portraits identical, once you have learned the man sitting in front of you and know that he murdered seven people or saved seven from a band of Communist killers.
We stood in front of the store where this man sold any objects to the class of people who are so conscious of being the personification of Prosaicism that they often exclaim that they love Culture and things like that! There had been an accident outside the store and people gathered quickly to see what had happened. A customer had banged his bead into a board that was dangerously placed head-high. I proposed that the board was useless and should be removed. But the owner insisted that it should remain; His wife grudgingly explained that the man had placed the board there purposely, so that when people bumped their heads on it, he could roar with hysteric laughter.
On another occasion, a stranger entered the store asking directions. My model for this portrait told the man that there were two paths to follow, a short walk or a long walk, that the longer walk was much more scenic and easier to travel. The visitor thanked him and left. My humorous sitter then offered his reason for advising the stranger to take the longer route. In that section of the country there were many poison oak plants, and perhaps the foolish inquisitor would get his hands and face covered with a rash. For some reason my model had a grudge against Humanity, and not being a Commissar in Russia, he had found his personal way to assuage his craving to inflict suffering.
While I was drawing him before me, he became bored and forgot that he was not alone, falling into his pit of obsessive interests. He did not know how he looked for there was no mirror to reveal the tightening of his tin-can lips, edged like a steel trap. I dressed him into the deceptive vestment of a monk while growing Pan's horns in order to hint at a disguised potential sadist.
On seeing that I had caught him in this secular escapade, he wished to buy the portrait from me, but the drawing was worth more than his money.
above: Portrait of a Wistful Lady (1950)
This dear lady, the German-American wife of an American Pole was anemic, hence prevalently dejected in spirit. The overlapping upper eyelids, denoting kidney malfunction, made her predominant expression that of melancholic sadness. Faces are like lanterns, some of them unlighted by the spark of vivacious life.
I took liberty with her hair, standing on end some seashells.
above: Mrs. Johnson. (1950)
I am always under awful tension when a lady sits for her portrait. I feel I am imposing too much when I ask her to sit this way or that in attempting to get a view that would be more picturesque. So I do not ask these things and my portraits of ladies start very badly. However, if the lady has a natural way of sitting interestingly, not merely plopped onto a seat, I am thrilled to draw her. But I fear my enthusiasm, which would exaggerate her features and displease her. My tendency to monumentalize, hence make more masculine, would be a fatal offence to her marvelous femminity. So I usually refrain from using women in my works. While I have always thought mostly of them as a form of escapism from the trivia of daily life and would rather commit suicide than be without their presence in this world, I furthermore exclude them from my creative deeds, because the subjects I carve or paint often deal with Death and Enslavement of Humanity by the Sneak-Predators, and it is too solemn and grievous a world of my mind's preoccupation to have their adorable company so misused and abused.
above: Hipparchus. (1973)
The first astronomer in history to apply mathematics to astronomy. He counted, located and named 800 stars so that others could follow their positions. He died in 126 B.C.
Since there is no known portrait of him, I invented his likeness, giving him an expression of great consternation, for, being that closely involved with the planetary vastness, he became tremendously concerned with individual destinies. For spending most of his 62 years fraternizing with the planets, I made him lean upon the crescent of the Moon.
All quotes in this page are excerpted from his Inner Portraits↗ collection.
Related essays:
