Blake Gopnik trashes official portraits in Washington Post article

[Thomas Nash]

For some reason, the Washington Post employs a guy as their top art critic who thinks that painting is dead. He is enamored with photography and video mostly and is very intolerant of other art forms. The article ostensibly concerns itself with "official portraits" but he really says that anyone who would be foolish enough to work in oil on canvas nowadays isn't really an artist.

Most artists don't go out of their way to bash another art form. Most people just go there own way and if they don't have something good to say, they shut up. As a critic he felt compelled to criticize the art, artists and patrons of official portraiture in Washington rather than write an article on the positive qualities of his favorite type of artists.

I know it's a downer to read this junk because we are in a positive and happy business. The good news is that it is rare and that few people in the public really care what he thinks. It is healthy though for everybody in the portrait world to know what is sometimes said so that we can be better ambassadors of our art form and speak up for it when appropriate.

The reason I was even aware of the article was that they requested a photo of my painting without telling me what a hatchet job they intended to do on traditional oil portraiture. The author didn't have the artistic curiosity or journalistic integrity to even call me before making false assumptions about my painting.

In order to attack "the current crop" of official portraits, he reached back to a painting I did five years ago of the Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. One can be forgiven for smelling a political angle in this choice.

The article "Portrait Capital" was in Sunday May 29th edition of Washington Post. It's on-line. The photos aren't shown.