At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Face to Face” With Portraits of Artists

A recently opened exhibition of over 100 photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), Face to Face: Portraits of Artists, introduces visitors to the flesh-and-blood creatives behind oil-on-canvas works hung in nearby galleries. “These wonderful portraits feel a little bit like family photos that we’re excited to share with you,” curator Peter Barberie notes in the show’s introductory wall text. 

The show begins with a classic studio portrait of 19th century French caricaturist Honoré Daumier and ends with contemporary photographer Alice O’Malley’s semi-nude depiction of Manhattan drag queen, Mistress Formika. Clearly, the formality of the photographic portrait has changed over the years. The fascination with this mode of image-making has not.

Some portraits relate to the depicted artist’s work. A series of topless photographs of Frida Kahlo taken by her art dealer, Julien Levy, shows an intimate view of the beloved Mexican artist resembling the painted self-portraits for which she is celebrated. A carefully composed Piet Mondrian portrait, by Arnold Newman, shows the painter standing near a multipaned French door, with many geometric layers of screens and one of his characteristic abstract works in the foreground.

But the majority of portraits show artists outside the studio: Dadaist Marcel Duchamp smokes a cigarette, Fauvist Henri Matisse stands in his living room, modernist Stuart Davis sits near a painting turned around against the wall, revealing only the stretchers. We may be curious about the canvas hidden from view but are forced, instead, to look at its maker.

Face to Face: Portraits of Artists is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through October 14, 2018.