Plato and Plotinus in Portrait Painting

[00:00:00]Okay, I thought I would uh do a little talk about the Platonic ideal in portrait painting.

[00:00:08]Um a couple weeks ago I won this award in London and it was interesting because the judges said that there was a timeless presence in the portrait.

[00:00:19]And what I was trying to do with the portrait was uh combine my sitter, Jean-Denis, with this Platonic ideal of a um a person. And the idea is not that popular today. People refer to uh flattering the sitter. Whereas when I was studying, we didn't really uh call it flattering the sitter, we called it idealizing the sitter. And this has a long history in uh Western art, the idea that you would uh take somebody and make sort of an idealized version of them. So, I just wanted to talk a little bit about that and where it comes from and and where I learned about it. I have some books here.

[00:00:59]Uh Plato's uh Republic, in book 10, it's kind of where he explains uh the Platonic ideal. I don't know if you all remember this, but basically there's an ideal form of everything. I think the example he uses is beds and tables.

[00:01:16]I always like tables cuz that's the the version I heard first. But so, the idea is that you have this ideal table which exists outside of time and space.

[00:01:27]There's no physical ideal table. So, this ideal table exists out there, created by God, and every time a carpenter makes a table, they make, no matter how beautiful the table is, they make sort of an inferior version to this perfect table. And if people stop making tables for 500 years and then somebody makes a table, you know, tables have always existed in this sort of ideal version.

[00:01:55]Um it's interesting in the the republic in um because after he explains this uh platonic ideal with um beds and tables, he kind of attacks painters, uh naturalistic painters. He says that um you know, there's this ideal table and then a carpenter makes a table that's an inferior version of the table. And then painters, when they paint a table, um they're actually painting a copy an inferior copy of an inferior copy of the um the ideal table. And it's interesting Plato has sort of a complicated uh relationship with >> [gasps] >> artists, but um it's a bit ironic because in the section where he, you know, really talks about the ideal and where he is sort of negative about uh painters and it's ironic because this has been what probably one of the most influential passages in uh western art.

[00:02:56]What happened was that artists, you know, read this and thought, "Well, I'm not going to do an inferior copy of an inferior copy. I'm just going to imagine the ideal version in my head and make a copy of that." And so, already in ancient Greece you had artists like uh I think it's Zeuxis who did um a Helen by taking sort of the best features of a a number of different um female models and combining them, making an ideal that way. I think Phidias's um statue of Zeus was a famous example where he didn't copy any one person, but he imagined in his head what the ideal um version of Zeus would look like, and that's where the sculpture came from.

[00:03:42]So, this idea has been going on for a long time. Um I was first introduced to it through uh Reynolds.

[00:03:52]Um in his uh uh Discourses on art and I'll actually just read to you um an important section. This is at the end of Discourse 3 talks a lot about this idea through um It's funny cuz uh he doesn't actually mention Plato. He gives uh talks about it through Proclus who was uh I think he was the head of the Athenian Academy in like the 5th century or something. But it's a Platonic ideal.

[00:04:23]Um but let's see. Here we go. This is in Discourse number four.

[00:04:30]He's talking about the great style which is this sort of ideal um beauty. He, you know, refers to it in the Italian and the French um I can't remember where that is. Uh um But when he gets to portrait painting, he talks about He says, "It may be asserted that the great style is always more or less contaminated by any meaning meaner mixture." So, here he's talking about portrait painting as a meaner mixture.

[00:05:02]He has sort of um a hierarchy of painting where history painting, which is entirely based on the ideal, is at the top and then portraiture and landscape and and uh still life are considered uh meaner.

[00:05:17]But it happens in a few instances that the lower may be improved by borrowing from the grand. Thus, if a portrait painter is desirous to raise and improve his subject, he has no other means than by approaching it to a general idea.

[00:05:31]He leaves out all the minute breaks and peculiarities in the face, changes the dress from a temporary fashion to one more permanent which has annexed to it no ideas of meanness from its familiar to us from its being familiar to us.

[00:05:47]But if an exact resemblance of an individual be considered as the sole object to be aimed at, the portrait painter will be apt to lose more than he gains by the acquired dignity taken from general nature. So, um that's Reynolds uh talking about um basically this idea where you would, you know, lose uh little details, but peculiarities. And when you think about it, too, you know, you'll often get a sitter at a certain age, you know, maybe they're a young child or um you know, an old man, uh if you think about it, there's an interesting idea that I heard before I started this portrait.

[00:06:30]The philosopher Schopenhauer had this idea that each one of us has our own Platonic ideal. I mean, the real Platonic ideal, and again, Plato wouldn't agree with any of this, but the real Platonic ideal is just a sort of general ideal person. But Schopenhauer's idea was that there's, and it's a more modern um take on it cuz he's 19th century.

[00:06:52]Schopenhauer's idea was that you have this each one of us has an ideal version of ourselves. And it's kind of interesting to think about, like, over the the course of your life, you know, when would you have arrived closer to that ideal, um just thinking about your own existence, and when would you, you know, when would the the portrait uh be done that that described you uh at your best, um you know, not just when you're able to sit because you're retired and, you know, it's a Tuesday afternoon in January and you're tired and um you know, uh might not be your best moment, but why does it It's not, you know, it's why does that have to represent you as a person? I had a a commission many years ago that went badly. It was uh uh 15 years ago or so.

[00:07:46]And it was a friend of a friend and it was we just we really disagreed about what he looked like. Um he kept saying that doesn't look like me. And he was, you know, an older man in his 70s.

[00:08:00]And it got to the point where I even had another professional portrait painter come in and give me a critique with the client standing there, which was um not very professional, but he just kept saying that's not what I look like.

[00:08:12]Finally, I said to him, "Can you bring me a photograph of what you look like?"

[00:08:15]And he brought me a photo from like 30 years earlier or something. He was on a beach in Sardinia. It was this little sort of brown smudge with the the blue water behind him. And at the time I remember thinking it was a bit ridiculous. You know, that's not what he looks like.

[00:08:30]But that was, like I say, 15 years ago.

[00:08:32]And over the course of the years it's sort of stuck in my head and I've come to think that maybe he was right. Like I should have, in a way, um you know, I should have been on that beach in the 70s in Sardinia. Somebody, you know, he should have had his portrait painted that day.

[00:08:50]So, that was his sort of the closest he ever arrived at his ideal self. And that's, you know, if he's now passed away, like that should have been what captured him. So, um that's kind of the foundation of this idea of idealizing your sitter.

[00:09:13]And again, it's not that you're flattering them or you're just trying to make them uh happy. You're really trying to capture their essence and um you know, merge that with uh the person that is sitting in front of you and try to describe in paint the the the version of themselves.

[00:09:38]Um and you can do this, you know, with the client and you each decide. It can be the entirely the artist who decides.

[00:09:45]Um another thing that's interesting is you you know, some people think that well then you're always going to paint them really young, but this is not necessarily true. Sometimes I've definitely painted people where if you saw photos of them when they were younger and you saw them the way they were when they were older, they they've sort of grown into their ideal self and in a way they're more picturesque uh when they were older. So, anyways, those are some ideas on uh the Platonic ideal in portrait painting and uh something to think about. Um I'll actually do another little uh story about this uh painting. Again, um you know, it's funny cuz I tend to talk about gadgets and technology and stuff in this in my videos and it's true that I personally well, I've always been interested in this sort of um philosophical and spiritual aspect to painting. I personally come from a very materialistic um scientific rational uh background and I have, you know, I can't see somebody's soul when I look at them and but another interesting um Platonic late Platonic or Neo-Platonic, if you prefer, idea that went into this portrait was um you know, I was doing this to test the light in my studio. One issue I have is this skylight. So, if I look up, you probably get um highlights in my eyes.

[00:11:13]But because of this highlight source is higher than I'm used to, my eyes are in shadow. And as a portrait painter, you're supposed paint the the soul of your sitter or capture the soul in the painting.

[00:11:27]But we're also told the soul is inside the body and uh the eyes are the window to the soul. So, what do you do if your light source is too high and you can't see the soul of your sitter?

[00:11:39]Um just before I started the portrait of Jean Denys, I was reading a book completely unrelated to uh painting or philosophy. It was actually about wood carving, but he mentioned um a line um by Plotinus, the neo I think he was second, third century uh neoplatonic philosopher.

[00:12:05]And he said that the soul is not in the body at all.

[00:12:12]But that the body sits in the soul like a net in the sea.

[00:12:17]And I thought it was a very beautiful image, this idea of our bodies, you know, in our souls with the soul sort of, you know, all around us. And like I said, I can't see um souls, but it it's an interesting approach to portrait painting. Um I I'm also humble enough to admit that there's a ton going on that I don't understand when uh when I'm painting, you know, you have strong inspiration or emotional um uh attachment to the light and there's, you know, we're definitely not completely aware of everything that's happening, but um if you think of the soul as being outside the body, then you can paint it without needing the eyes. The eyes don't have to do all the heavy lifting in the portrait, so I thought that was an interesting idea that I had read when I was working on the portrait of Jean Denys.

[00:13:16]I hope you enjoyed it. It's a bit different than usual, but thanks for watching.