‘A kind of reconnecting with the past’: the Met celebrates the art of the portrait

What happened

According to The Guardian’s report, ‘A kind of reconnecting with the past’: the Met celebrates the art of the portrait, In a new exhibition, work from artists including Pablo Picasso and Wifredo Lam offer different ways to see what a portrait can represent What exactly is a portrait? At its simplest, it might be an attempt to depict oneself or someone else via a painting. But then consider German expressionist Max Beckmann’s masterpiece The Beginning, a triptych of scenes from his childhood, or Cuban artist Wifredo Lam’s Ídolo, a melange of forms based around the goddess Oyá. Rooted more in memory and myth than a mere physical likeness, these pieces stretch just what we might decide counts as a portrait. Works such as the Beckmann and the Lam – as well as cubist abstractions, an ornate hand mirror, and one of Joan Miró’s pieces of “painting-poetry”, — are all portraits as defined by The Met’s new show The Face of Modern Life, which gathers close to 80 works from the museum’s permanent collection. A boiste

Context

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Source

Primary source: ‘A kind of reconnecting with the past’: the Met celebrates the art of the portrait via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the source; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.