Painting Webinar: ANTI-PORTRAIT
LIVE on Friday, May 14, 2021, at 11 am Pacific.
recording available anytime thereafter.
Inspiration video: https://youtu.be/RJX5hxAu49k
-Scroll down to view the registration button.
After purchase, we will send you an access link to the webinar (before the session starts) or recorded links if you purchase thereafter. We'll also send you the link to the shared photo folder specific to this webinar.
We're using ZOOM as the video platform. Video and audio for participants will be muted by default during the live webinar. You'll be able to view and listen to the presentation and interact via chat. The session will be recorded and up for replay anytime after the live webinar ends.
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ANTI-PORTRAIT
Contemporary artist Virginia Nimarkoh painted Untitled #1 (After Gerhard Richter, Betty, 1988) in 2001. Her painting replicates the famous photorealist portrait by Gerhard Richter, replacing a young African-American woman for Richter's daughter, engaging us to reconsider the determinability of an image and the ways minority representation expands the narrative of a conceptually unmovable artwork.
Nimarkoh's painting invited us to revisit Richter's piece, which at that time broke many conventions in portraiture. The daughter turns away from the camera, and the viewer looks into one of Richter’s monochrome works from the mid-70s. The composition achieves intimacy through extreme awkwardness.
Conceptually, the tension builds from the uncertainty about the reason the figure is looking back. Is she about to look forward? Was this the instant when Richter is about to press the shutter button, and Betty decides to unexpectedly look away?
We will reenact both paintings' exact position using a different subject: ourselves, a family member, a friend.
- Painting premise: Portrait.
- Props: photograph of the subject in the same position as the original Gerhard Richter painting.
- Painting surface: any size, any kind. We recommend 9x12 or under.
- Painting webinar medium: oil over cotton paper. Feel free to select your media.
