There’s something dodgy about portrait artists, and that’s part of their allure. One way or another, they need faces. Often, they steal them and hope nobody complains. At times, they entice volunteers by appealing to their arrogance or cluelessness. Other portraitists pride themselves on treating their subjects well—befriending them, learning about them—but even a subject who feels seen may not understand exactly what she’s getting into (how many people know how they look?), and, if she is satisfied with the result, she is lucky. It’s the artist’s way that counts, not hers.
Not everyone agrees—if anything, there seems to be a law that all great portraitists must be praised for their empathy. (Even Diane Arbus, who referred to the people she photographed as “freaks,” is now described as a champion of body positivity.) There’s something defensive about this, perhaps related to the intrinsic strangeness, so common that we forget, of looking at faces that can’t look back. The more we flatter portrait makers for their virtue, the better we portrait viewers get to feel about our ogling.
Esta historia es de la edición October 30, 2023 de The New Yorker.
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Esta historia es de la edición October 30, 2023 de The New Yorker.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
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INSIDE JOB-"Hit Man"
Years before Hannah Arendt coined, in the pages of this magazine, the phrase \"the banality of evil,\" popular films and fiction were embodying that idea in the character of the hit man. In classic crime movies such as \"This Gun for Hire\" (1942) and \"Murder by Contract\" (1958), hit men figure much as Nazis do in political movies, as symbols of abstract evil.
WHATEVER YOU SAY
Rereading Jenny Holzer, at the Guggenheim.
SUBCONSCIOUSLY YOURS
Does every generation get the Freud it deserves?
BY A WHISKER
Louis Wain and the reinvention of the cat.
Beyond Imagining
Bessie, Lotte, Ruth, Farah, and Bridget, who had been lunching together for half a century, joined in later years by Ilka, Hope, and, occasionally, Lucinella, had agreed without the need for discussion that they were not going to pass, pass away, and under no circumstances on.
STATES OF PLAY
Can advocates use state supreme courts to preserve-and perhaps expand-constitutional rights?
THE LONG RIDE
The surf legend Jock Sutherland's unlikely life.
ARE WE DOOMED?
A course at the University of Chicago thinks it through.
GOD EXPLAINS THE RULES OF HIS NEW BOARD GAME
Guys, want to play this new board game? It’s called Life. No, it’s not “one of God’s impossible-to-understand games that take three hours to learn.” It’ll be fun, I promise!
RED LINE
With the election approaching, the U.S. and Mexico wrangle over border policy.