Altered Images: The New Portraiture
Louisa Buck, The Telegraph
October 2015
From primitive images of hunters on cave walls to portraits of Medici popes and princes, the urge to portray and to be portrayed is as old as art itself. And even in our current era of selfies, Snapchat and Instagram when everyone’s smartphone can take a top-quality snap, there remains a hunger for a more formal portraiture: the National Portrait Gallery’s annual BP Portrait Award packs in the crowds every year and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters continues to rake in commissions. But at the same time the definition of what now constitutes a bespoke portrait has become as broad and as various as art itself, and many of our most progressive artists are pushing back the boundaries of the made-to-order likeness for their own artistic ends. […]