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The Obama Official Portraits

TenaciousKory said:
Working though that example though, there are plenty of presidential portraits that don't fit such a definition: see Thomas Jefferson, William Henry Harrison, or James Garfield. These leave little detail to be interpreted. We get a face and that's pretty much it.

So, there are two categories of official presidential portrait. Art portraits and Reference portraits.

The Obama portraits would seem to fit into the former.
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#MakeArtGreatAgain!
 
Seriously?

Just google “the art of portrait photography”.

A portrait is always art.
 
The little picture of me on my driver's license is art?
 
Which photo is chosen? Which “look”, expression, setting, background, lighting, etc. are preferred?
 
TenaciousKory said:
Working though that example though, there are plenty of presidential portraits that don't fit such a definition: see Thomas Jefferson, William Henry Harrison, or James Garfield. These leave little detail to be interpreted. We get a face and that's pretty much it.

So, there are two categories of official presidential portrait. Art portraits and Reference portraits.

The Obama portraits would seem to fit into the former.
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i don't understand, how are those examples different than a Renoir
 
The DMV lady literally chose the first one and any rhetorical choice I made in dress, setting, lighting, etc. is constrained by the situation (DMV and cropping of photo).

It's a reference photo.
 
ImTheCaptain said:
i don't understand, how are those examples different than a Renoir
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Good question. Well - for one - I'm keeping the lens (and thus this distinction) on presidential portraits. Certainly it would be hard to classify a Renoir portrait as reference portrait when we're not sure who the subject is. With presidential portraits, we can be reasonably sure we know who it is of. They're a unique genre. I'm just dividing the genre a bit.
 
ConnorEl said:
Probably not, as it likely lacked collaboration and artistic intent.
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I like the idea of portraits requiring collaboration. Seems true. I did agree to sit down and have my photo taken, though.

I guess you'd call it a headshot?
 
TenaciousKory said:
The DMV lady literally chose the first one and any rhetorical choice I made in dress, setting, lighting, etc. is constrained by the situation (DMV and cropping of photo).

It's a reference photo.
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There are a few examples of people making purposeful asthetic choices for their license photos - haircuts, jewelry, etc. Couldn't any asthetic choice be considered artistic?
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
There are a few examples of people making purposeful asthetic choices for their license photos - haircuts, jewelry, etc. Couldn't any asthetic choice be considered artistic?
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The subject of a DMV photo is not an artist. They don't create anything. The DMV worker is not an artist. They take no artistic intent and make no artistic choices. They push a button. Therefore a license picture is not art.
 
DistrictDeacon said:
The subject of a DMV photo is not an artist. They don't create anything. The DMV worker is not an artist. They take no artistic intent and make no artistic choices. They push a button. Therefore a license picture is not art.
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Bullshit, any photo of me is art.
 
TenaciousKory said:
4644e4d2d4a9e7c93c67525e2f2aea90.jpg


is the WSJ's portrait art?
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ImTheCaptain said:
it's merely a machine created photo-facsimile for reference purposes. the portraits are designed by the artist to express imagery but also ideals and other information about the subject
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TenaciousKory said:
Google says WSJ "hedcuts" are hand-drawn
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I've always wondered about this because they are certainly crafted to look they are itaglio prints. Probably just skeuomorphic.
 
This is the lamest argument. And I spent half of yesterday arguing about Doug Wojcik.
 
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