Ian Cumberland’s portrait, the winner of the Ireland-US Council/Irish Arts Review Portraiture Award at the 182nd RHA Annual Exhibition, is not a ‘pretty’ picture, writes Jane Humphries.
Considering the ebbs and flows within art history and visual culture, the genre of portraiture, particularly the ‘painted portrait’ continues to fascinate both contemporary artists and viewers. When photography prompted artists to move beyond the mimetic leading to modern movements such as Cubism, Fauvism and Expressionism, portraiture was usurped from its lofty heights as the second most important subject in the academic hierarchy of genres. Later in the 20th century artists such as Cindy Sherman explored photography as a medium capable of presenting an objective reality, eventually leading to something of a contemporary renaissance within painting and portraiture, as the development of the inclusion of a conceptual element by artists such as Gerhard Richter exposed the endless possibilities for future artists to explore. But has a portrait ever been quite what it seems in any media?
Stephanie McBride examines the startling imagery of Richard Mosse who has made infrared film his signature medium
From a rural setting in County Antrim, Basil Blackshaw has contributed a new chapter to the story of Irish art, writes Brian Fallon as the retrospective at the F E McWilliam Gallery marking Blackshaw’s 80th birthday continues.
Frederick O’Dwyer follows the evidence to unearth the design sources for Dublin Airport’s original terminal at Collinstown