The Obama Foundation produced this behind-the-scenes video of Robert McCurdy and Sharon Sprung painting the official White House portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama. (Link to YouTube)
Mr. Obama's portrait shows him in a dark suit against a white background.
The emptiness of the background removes him from context and focuses the viewer on his expression and posture, because there's nothing else to look at.
White backgrounds can suggest many things: the contemporary gallery wall, the unwritten page, the mysterious, luminous void. What a white background doesn't suggest is wealth, heritage, power, status, or cultural milieu—all the usual trappings of official portraiture of a former head of state.
Maybe such associations were impossible in the case of Mr. Obama, and the artist made the best choice, I don't know.
The idea of the white background isn't new. Photographer Richard Avedon presented many of his subjects against a white seamless. In Avedon's case it often had a leveling effect, cutting through normal distinctions of status or power and making everyone equal. It could even have a clinical flavor that made the viewer examine the way the subject presented himself or herself.
When director Alfred Hitchcock made the praying gesture against a field of pure white, one wonders why he presents himself that way, and how sincere he is.
When painter James Bama used the white background for his portraits of Western characters, he invited us to study the details of their face and costume, and from those clues to wonder about the character of their working life.
2 comments:
The strong omnidirectional lighting from the viewer's right is striking. Obama's choice orthe artist's?
Understanding colours and their placement is very hard. This article has really helped me understand how to make portraits and how to make them pop against a background while learning about the white background and its enactment in the field of painting.
You can check the website of Museum of Art & Photography (MAP). The museum has some great portraits in its collection.
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