Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture

Ciao my friends!  Hope all was well while ShoutOut JMU! was on hiatus.  I am writing to you from Washington DC.  I will be up here this semester so I am hoping I will relay to you some things happening here.

And one thing going on, I went to this amazing, amazing art gallery: National Portrait Gallery.  Maybe you’ve been?  I believe that was my first time.  I stumbled upon some quite amazing work, including work portraying women and those of the LGBT community.  This traveling exhibit called  Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture has been by far one of the most moving, erotic, enigmatic at times, exhibit I’ve ever been to.   And I’m in love.

The exhibit’s prologue describes it as, “Hide/Seek considers such themes as the role of sexual difference in depicting Modern America; how artists explored the fluidity of sexuality and gender; how major themes in modern art-especially abstraction-were influenced by social marginalization; and how art reflected society’s evolving and changing attitudes towards sexuality, desire, and romantic attachment.”

Arresting and inviting.

These art expressions are at the core and in the heart of my fields of study.  To not write on, but to see.

I unfortunately could not take pictures in this exhibit, ( I took a picture in an another traveling exhibit and got in trouble.  You can tell how much I go to galleries) but I did find some copies online.

However, I have two art pieces in my mind that stuck.

The first, a photograph of a man buried beneath ground with his face revealed.  His mouth slightly opened, eyes shut.  The man is alive.  Prior to taking this photograph, he received news he is HIV positive.

The second, a Modernist oil painting entitled “Self-Portrait” by Romaine Brooks (1923).  A black and white portrait of a Parisian, lesbian woman, I’m assuming Bohemian.  This woman was wealthy therefore was not entirely rejected by all of society because of her sexuality.  However, this portrait represents both women and those of the LGBT community of that time and still represents both groups today.  The woman stands on her balcony, inside the private domain where she hides while behind her lives the city, the public domain, a place where most seek to live freely amongst.

This was only a small taste of the exhibit, if you are in DC, visit this gallery, especially this exhibit.  It’s free and open from 1130-7 everyday.  It will be up until February 13.