PatrickPhotos

Doesn’t seem like a year since I posted the 2014 Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries but it has come round again. I got the catalogue today and hope to pay a visit before it closes on 1 May 2015.

23 APRIL 2015 The reason why I love the RP 2015 Annual Exhibition is that it reminds me of how much effort and passion there is creating portraits around us. Seeing the works as the artist intended makes you search for small details you will miss viewing the work online or in print. There are also works on show which aren’t in the catalogue.

One of my favourites which isn’t in the catalogue is The Directors: A Portrait of Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, London, and Tom Campbell, Director of the Metropolitan Museum, New York by Jennifer Anderson. Another is Paul by Sophie Ploeg.

During my visit I was sure Teri Anne Scoble was hanging round her excellent depiction of Lord Julian Fellowes. So not only do you see the art but may see the artist.

Do catch it if you can.

First of all I would like to offer one of my usual apologies for the lack of posts in the last few months. My day job has to come first and there haven’t been enough days in the week to concentrate on this project.

This doesn’t mean that I haven’t been thinking about the path of this project. I have and to that end I paid a visit to the British Museum Defining beauty: The Body in Ancient Greek Art exhibition that is on show until 5 July.

Walking round the exhibition it did strike me that I don’t think much has changed since these works were born. On my tube journey to the British Museum I saw a poster advertising a product that had a prominent image of a near naked young woman. The athletic body shape in this poster was identical to the body shapes in some of the pieces in this exhibition.

I am certain that the image on the advertising poster had some form of post production manipulation to it and I wonder how true to life these ancient Greek art pieces are to the models they are based on. How much has the artist added or subtracted to create what we now see?

The title of the exhibition is also an interesting choice of words. “Defining Beauty”. What is beauty in a person? Is it their physical shape? Is it their emotional connection to the rest of the world? Or is it, as some people would argue, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.