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Portraits
NMB, Florida January 14, 2002 A.H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on Issues, Ideas and Reflections on the Times. Published Now and
Then. Opinions Pro or Con Are Welcome.
PORTRAITS
I know a little something about portraits. I am a fair copyist and simply
copy what I see. I now take photos of someone's face and head and use them
as a guide rather than have the subject sit for me. My friend, Norman the
Genius, unfairly accused me of using carbon paper. This is the time of year
that our politicians are polishing up their portraits. They want to present
themselves in the best possible light. The face is a mirror of your history
much better than the lines on your palms show your future. But your history
can be made to look better than it is.
It was difficult to make Osama bin Laden look evil. His face is melancholy
and while the cartoonists put horns on his head they didn't fit with the
hats or turbans he wore. Now he is not around anymore and his bearded punim
is revered in countries where he was hailed as hero after September 11,
2001. It is much easier to make George Bush look like a mentally deficient
troll than to characterize his opponents in the court of world opinion as
the monsters they are. The court of world opinion is composed of unfriendly
opponents of American Capitalist democracy.
When I do a portrait I try to see the essential nature of the person I am
rendering in pencil or in pen and ink. I like the pencil because it is more
forgiving of mistakes. The finished product looks as though it was produced
perfectly but that is only because erasures, restarts and changes cover up
the messy work of creation. I once saw an artist using a razor blade to
scrape off the lines he wanted to do over. We can use all kinds of gels and
pastes today to eliminate false starts or in going too far. The magnificent
portrait painters of the Renaissance have been accused of using "camera
obscuras" to achieve their perfection. And, so what?
When you think about it the spin-doctors and PR types do this all the time.
Their job is to create a portrait of the kind of nice guy we want to
represent us. In the distant past one of the early movies of its type
represented a vacant faced smiling and mild-mannered dupe in campaign
posters as a vacant faced smiling, mild-mannered dupe and he got elected.
Well, so it goes. Carol's Evaluation:10 out of 10.
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