SECTION 1 - via - School of Visual Arts

A first step might be a rejection in the academic community of the bogus notion that culture
determines likeness. That error is the residue of cultural relativism’s excesses, of hard-core
behavioralists who believe that visual perception has no universality beyond the fundamental
physiology of the eye. If likeness was culturally dependent, as they suppose, then the
computerized facial recognition systems set up in airports to detect terrorists could not
function; yet “Face It” technology, by Visionics, is advertised as having an error rate of less
than 1% under optimal conditions. Further, as Jan B. Deregowski noted in “Illusion and
Culture,” “an analysis of pictures suggests that there exists an optimum way of depicting an
object, which can be arrived at by consideration of purely physical principles of propogation of
light.” The author goes on to point out how systems such as traditional perspective are not
merely cultural conventions, but approximate reality as the eye sees it. 12 Depictions which
approximate the universal retinal display of the eye, are culturally independent, which is why
trompe l’oeil images can “fool the eye,” anyone’s eye, from any culture.
That said, although capturing a likeness by hand is a demanding craft, it is not sufficient for art.
In the judgment of John Pope-Hennessay, Gentile Bellini, for example did not come up to
snuff: “The limitation of his portraits is that they are destitute of the pictorial ideas which effect
the mysterious act of transubstantiation from history to art. . . . [The] portrait of Caterona
Cornaro at Budapest reveals, in its deadly evenness of emphasis, the mind of a cartographer.” 13
Life is short and art is long, and the accuracy of the great Renaissance portraits is generally now
beyond verification. These images continue to move viewers for reasons beyond verisimilitude,
or their careful mapping of features. Further, while some old masters seem to have been
merciless in their veracity, others found discretion to be the better part of valor: Richard
Wendorf, in his fascinating study of Sir Joshua Reynolds as a society painter, indicates Reynolds
_made the tall short and the short tall as the wishes of the sitter wavered. 14
Aspiring portrait painters should be welcomed into the university, where they could learn a
great deal about their art from the liberal arts: In psychology class, they could study not only
the universal nature of fundamental human facial expression, but also the basics of human
visual perception. Sociology classes can help with culturally significant gestures and the wide
range of behaviors (including fashions) which identify individuals as being part of a particular
group. Biology can assist with cephalic anatomy. And, of course, art academics have a wealth of
knowledge about iconography, composition, thematic unity, significant gestures, and visual
traditions in general that today_s portrait artists sorely need.
In exchange, perhaps those art academics who have wrapped themselves in constructs, period
modes of production, and signifying practices, can strip off their cultural strait-jackest, stare
into the face of some marvelous portrait from the past, and rediscover what it means to be a
human being.
NOTES
1. p. 16, The Portraits of the Greeks, by G.M.A.Richter, abridged and revised by R.R. Smith;
Cornell University Press; Ithaca, NY, 1984.
2. p. 20, Ancient Faces /Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt, essay “Graeco-Roman
Portraiture,” by Kurt Gschwantler.
13