Portraits and Philosophy, edited by Hans Maes

Abstract

With few remarkable exceptions, portraiture has been a very much neglected topic in philosophy in general, and in aesthetics in particular. This might be due to a more or less implicit prejudice to the effect that there is not much philosophically interesting reflection to be had about the topic—at least not beyond the general area of pictorial representation which has received a great deal of attention—and/or to the decline in reputation of the genre in art history; just consider John Berger’s ominous pronouncement: ‘It seems to me unlikely that any important portraits will ever be painted again’ (cited in this volume, p. 239). Be this as it may, we are more exposed than ever to portraits—or to pictures we would pre-theoretically be inclined to consider portraits—and we might even be tempted to claim that we are witnessing a revival of portraiture. (As incidental evidence, only in the last year, two important art institutions in Madrid, the city where I live, have devoted exhibitions to this artistic genre: Fundación Juan March ‘Típicos Retratos’ and CaixaForum ‘La imagen humana’.) This book might be a response to this trend; it is a philosophical invitation to reconsider portraits as an artistic genre as well as an object of philosophical investigation. Chapter after chapter, ‘Portraits and Philosophy’ debunks all the underlying scepticism about the possibility of substantial reflection on this topic. This is philosophical aesthetics done at its best: the collection of eighteen original articles written by philosophers and art historians— plus an introduction and an epilogue by the editor—not only shows philosophical insight, but establishes a substantial dialogue between philosophy, art history and art practice that one frequently expects, but rarely finds, in the aesthetics literature.