The Flea-Market Portrait and Death

Not the portrait I saw, but a prime example

The other day I was at a bar on the Lower East Side, or perhaps a restaurant. It doesn’t matter, it was the style of portrait that seems to fit the décor of so many trendy establishments today due to its nostalgic and kitschy qualities. I saw the type of portrait one sees at a flea market or tucked behind some boxes in the corner of someone’s garage. The flea market portrait is almost always executed in an unoffensive, heavy handed, amateurish style that brings to mind the weekend painter-hobbiest. And the sitter can be anyone’s brother or father or sister, mother, or friend, and yet, at the same time, he or she is someone unmistakably specific.

I suppose the charm of these portraits is, in fact, the nostalgia. Like going through old photos of unknown families from generations past, at a second hand store. The loss of the subjects’ identities due to the passing of time turn the photos into a novelty. If you can get past the charm and the kitsch, you are face to face with the mystery of the individual and eventually, you feel a sense of the passing of time, and further, a sense of loss. You come to the realization that someone thought highly of this person. Highly enough that the painter-hobbiest took up the task to attempt to record the likeness of this specific individual in paint, for themselves, for others, and for future generations. Then you ask, so what has happened to this individual? And this is where the sense of loss comes. Since the time that this record was made, he or she has aged and is that much closer to death, if not dead already. And what has happened to the painter-hobbiest? No one cares. Besides the small signature scrolled on the bottom corner of the canvas, the painter-hobbiest’s identity is unknown, if not completely irrelevant. Which is how it should be. These flee market portraits are about the sitter and, as the years roll by, they end up having nothing to do with the painter-hobbiest.

The individuality and the undeniable existence of the sitter in the portrait I saw seemed overly apparent. This, because of the position that the sitter took as he posed for the portrait. As if to underline the passing of the hours in real time and real space, he had chosen to rest his head on his hand and his elbow on the table. His head was heavy and to sit for hours for a portrait, he decided to rest it in his hand, to prop himself up against time and gravity. Had this painting been done from a photo, most likely, the sitter would not have chosen such a cumbersome position. As it is, as he sits in the painting, he expresses his own passing in real time, be it years ago, it is the same passing of time we experience, which places him in our world, which gives him a specific identity and existence.

It is the kitsch that makes it so much easier for people to hang a portrait of an unknown sitter in their house. No one wants a portrait, a realistic portrait, of a specific individual who is unknown to them in their home. But an old portrait is ok, the time has erased the identity, turned it kitsch to a degree, and it is now more about being an OLD portrait and less about the person in the portrait. The same rule applies for more contemporary portraits that are highly stylized- John Currin for example. (I am in no way saying that Currin’s paintings resemble that of the flea market painting- they are two different types of kitsch, on two very different levels.) Currin’s portraits are of  individuals, ie: his wife, but he has turned her into a cartoon, he is embracing the kitsch, therefor erasing her specific identity and as a result, making it easier for the owner of the portrait to coexist with. John Currin’s wife is no longer looking back at you in your living room, instead its some funny looking woman, who certainly doesn’t exist in your world, who is staring at you. And that is easy to live with. The kitsch is a buffer.