This is the final essay I wrote for the assignment we were given for the Perspectives of Art Theory class. We were instructed to write an exhibition review about an exhibition of our choice.
Transhistorical Journey of Icons
Once you get to know someone so well, how much do you really see them? The
exhibition, ‘Icons - Masterpieces From the National Portrait Gallery’, brings a new perspective
to this question through the portraits of various public figures. Placed in the Fries Museum in
Leeuwarden, this exhibition was one of the most interesting exhibitions I have visited. Walking
around all those different faces from quite different time periods made me wonder, “how is this
exhibition affected by transhistorical curation?” Thus, my aim in this essay is to find the
influence of the transhistorical relationship between the paintings, through using the theory of
Social Art History. To that end, I will present the notions of several theoreticians such as Karl
Marx and T.J. Clark regarding that art is inseparable from politics and social factors,
furthermore, that art doesn’t rely on intuitive formal analysis and aesthetics but rather more on
the social, historical context.
To start off, ‘Icons’ exhibition is a collection of artworks from the National Portrait
Gallery in the United Kingdom complemented by a few works from the Fries Museum’s own
collection. There is a wide range of different art mediums such as painting, photography,
sculpture, drawing and print. Besides the range in mediums, there are also a lot of artists behind
these portraits, from all over the world; from Andy Warhol to Mario Sorrenti. The main subject
of this exhibition are the world famous icons that are depicted in portraits, these people vary
from as old as the William Shakespeare era to, nowadays, young as Ed Sheeran. Artworks dated
back to the 16th century can be found in this exhibition (such as the portrait of Queen Elizabeth
I), which tells us even back then, thousands of years ago, human figures aroused curiosity and
were fascinating enough to be the main subject of an artwork made with limited resources. In our
day, perhaps, portraits are even more important since it has been a way to declare status and
reflect a person’s self image. Moving on to the layout and design, the exhibition consists of six
different rooms. These rooms are divided into themes, which I will be explaining later in this
paragraph. All the rooms have distinct colors from each other, some of them even have two
different shades of the same color, in relation to the theme they are representing. When I first
entered the exhibition, the lighting immediately caught my attention. The first room I entered
was quite dark and had a view of the following two rooms. After the lightning, I immediately
, Alara Sagel S4249852 January 18, 2022
noticed the different colors of the rooms, which gave me a good first impression since it led me
to think that it was going to be an interesting exhibition. I got curious as I saw rooms with
different colors from each other, therefore, it can be said that color plays quite a big role in this
exhibition. Karen Polder, a Dutch designer, has curated this exhibition. Looking at her other
works, it looks like she likes to incorporate color into her curations. One common thing in all her
exhibitions are the style of the walls, color and texts on them. There is no further information
regarding her use of color, however, I think that she associates concepts, notions and themes with
colors in her head and adapts the exhibition according to that. Which I think is a very creative
thing to be able to succeed in, I found all her color choices in the ‘Icons’ exhibition highly
appropriate and fitting to the themes. In fact, the color harmony was the thing that stuck in my
mind throughout and after the exhibition. After walking into the first room, I realized that the
flow of the exhibition was pretty natural, I could easily understand which work I was going to
see next after another. Moreover, people around me looked very interested in the artworks they
were seeing. Many people were leaning towards the works, trying to get a better and closer look
at them. Last but not least, there were people with very different age groups, I saw anyone from a
little child with her mother to an old woman with her husband. To go more into depth, I want to
analyze the transhistorical relationship between these portraits and their relation to social art
history as a whole, by looking at the exhibition part by part. As I mentioned earlier, the six
different parts of the ‘Icons’ exhibition represent the different themes of each room. These six
parts, rooms, are, consecutively, by the order the exhibition path follows; Self-Portrait, Fame,
Love & Loss, Innovation, Identity and Power. Firstly, I want to touch upon each room separately,
in paragraphs and later on, connect them to the transhistorical aspect of the exhibition in another
paragraph.
Before I go more into depth about each of the six rooms, I would like to include some
brief information about the Social Art Theory. Social art history is essentially “an approach to art
history that attempts to identify the social factors relevant to the production.”1 The main
objective of this theory is to provide a deeper artistic understanding. This theory of Social Art
History was developed explicitly in the 1970s. Some of the most important theoreticians of this
1 “Social History of Art.”
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