Thanks for posting this here, Tom. Since I am about to begin painting an official gubernatorial portrait myself, I was particularly interested in reading this author's take on the current state of governmental portraiture.
The author, Blake Gopnik, misses the overwhelming irony in this statement he made, on the third page of the article:
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If money is being spent on public art of little lasting value...
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He is referring, of course, to the official portraits that he spends the rest of the article deriding but I can't help but think of the millions of dollars of taxpayer money going into often outrageously silly (if not downright offensive) contemporary public "art" that is heavily funded and displayed throughout the country.
At least the curator of the Hirshhorn, Kerry Brougher, understands the real situation regarding the traditional portraiture we create:
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"What they (clients) want and where contemporary art is right now may be two different places."
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I don't think any of us practicing this profession even
want to be "where contemporary art is right now", and neither do our clients. What we do is so very different from the performance art/video art/installation art that, by its attention-grabbing sheer shock value, gathers up so much of the public funding for the visual arts these days.
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As Brougher points out, most of the portraiture that goes on in contemporary art is "the kind of thing that's in opposition to what federal officials want to say about themselves".
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Exactly.
Gopnik is biting into an apple and expecting it to taste like an orange. The traditional portraiture we do is not part of what is commonly thought of as today's "contemporary art" -- and pretty adamantly doesn't want to be.
I'm saddened that he attacked your work, Tom, and the methodology used by that other charming and gracious artist, Simmie Knox. It's too bad he had to assail your reputations in trying to make his point.