Painting Portraiture

I have always had a natural pop art edge to my painting with acrylic, i think this may be to do with my eye for  composition as opposed to painting technique. Here are some experimentations and outcomes.

This is a painting of a model from a magazine. Although it isn't nearly as good as painting from real life, i wanted to still use images of women in the media as it still has a close link to my theme this way. I have used previous influence on my painting from pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein as i like the effect of block black colour, however i have used a realistic colour palette which is more similar to Hamilton, for example;













Unfortunately when i upload this image to my blog it returns to the wrong way around, however it is an image of model Daisy Lowe taken from an article where she says her dream is to see a magazine full of normal women with curves. This is a fair comment, however, this isn't the issue my work is about. Yes, i think photoshopped women who are small sizes and creating this 'perfect body image' is a very wrong and negative thing, although my issue is with the male gaze theory and how women are dressed and portrayed or objectified in the media and the effects this has on ordinary females.
I have taken some parts of her face and collaged them down before using acrylic and painting the rest. I chose this particular image as it has a retro feeling, similar to the images i have researched from Cindy Sherman.

This is a larger scale painting and i found it a lot easier to get paint in proportion and get a balance of technique between my own skill and influences from famous painters/artists. I was luckily able to find a large scale photograph of some lips to use from a magazine, however it isn't very common to find the images i particularly need.
Because this has worked better, after experimenting with composition i may look at the size of my work and see if i could blow images up or scan in some parts of collage to create more of an effect.








Below are two compositions i have made after trying to improve my technique on facial features. They work better, but i am now wondering if its the imagery i am choosing that isn't displaying the effect i want.

Tom Wesselmann

Wesselmann (February 23, 1931, Cincinnati – December 17, 2004) was an American artist associated with the Pop art movement who worked in painting, collage and sculpture. In particular, I am have only been able to see elements of my work in his work in the year 1961-62, just at the start of the creation of pop art as a movement, meaning these works were some of his most crucial.

Throughout the year 1961, Wesselmann had a dream surrounding the colours red, white and blue and this became the starting point for a year of work. The colours represented patriotism and the collection ‘The Great American Nude’ began, incorporating other colours for example a khaki pallete taken from his old army uniform and symbolism of stars, stripes, American landscape and historic portraiture. As the year went on, his intense experimentation began to include new materials, as in taken from magazines and discarded posters from the walls of subway stations. His collage worked alongside painting in oils or acrylics, enamels and drawings. As his works took a larger scale he began to approach advertisers directly to acquire billboards. As I experiment with painting more his work is slowly becoming closer to displaying how types of media other than collage can mimic representation of the female form.

As the year went on Wesselmann met Alex Katz who then offered him a show at the Tanager Gallery. This was his first solo show later in the year and it featured both the large and small Great American Nude Collages.

In 1962 he was offered a one-man exhibition by Richard Bellamy at the Green Gallery, at the same time as he was put in touch with several collectors, speaking about the work of Lichtenstein and Rosenquist. Even after visiting the works of these artists, he failed to notice any similarities with his own. With some reservation that November Wesselmann took part in the New Realist show where he exhibited Still life #17 and Still life #22.

Also in this year, Wesselmann began working on a new series of still lifes, which although still used collage, they began incorporating real objects wherever he happened to find them. Although he became slowly more included in the Pop Art movement, he disliked the use of labels and never liked it.

The Great American Nude series relate not as closely to my work as the work from other artists as its more a personal insight into the world of Wesselmann, however you can still see the female body shown in a way that isn’t respectful, specifically number 44, this acrylic and paper collage on board with radiator, telephone, coat and door.

81 1/8 x 105½ in. (206 x 268 cm.)

What I found interesting with the representation of the woman, is that it is life sized and juxtaposed (or not) with a domestic environment. The collage made me question if the piece is still suggesting women should remain in a domestic environment? Are all of this collection doing this? After reading more, I discovered the figure is modelled on his wife.
The piece includes a real door and he had the phone linked to ring six times every six minutes, making it a multi-sensory experience. This realistic setting is said to be an experience blurring boundaries between the home/domestic setting and the representation. Although a third dimension, Wesselman is to have said it is only an illusion and you cannot actually answer the phone, which is supposed to make it a painting and not a sculptural context.
It is the enforced gap between the world of the woman and the viewers which is said to represent Wesellmanns interesting relationship with Pop Art. The Pop Artists raised everyday objects of consumer society to pieces of art, whereas Wesselmann attempted to ironically avoid this. The billboards and collage elements, the phone and the heater are not ironic statements but representations of rejected objects or unwanted materials from our own lives.
The figure displays, as most of his pieces in this collection, more on the erotic. He is focussing on desire and the woman is in a sexually appealing stretching position. The only obvious detail on the body are her hair, both pubic and on her head, her lips and her nipples. These give an effect of pornographic models, her character is removed but the things which make her female are being shown. Similarly to the phone on the wall that cant be answered, she is in a separate two dimensional world.

I would like to take the character away from the models used in the magazine for my collages and outcomes by using symbols to remove facial features, as an example.