Portraits With Personality

Albrecht Dürer was a Renaissance painter and printmaker from Germany. During the Renaissance, artists figured out how to create the illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface. In his 1498 Self-Portrait With Gloves, right, Dürer introduces three layers of space. The subject sits in the first layer, just inside the frame, or the foreground. The second, in the background, recedes through the window on the right. Trees, meadows, hills, and sky are visible through this window, indicating a vast landscape lies beyond. The third layer is unexpected. The subject leans on a ledge and looks out, almost as if looking through a second window into the gallery where the painting hangs. He seems to be inviting the viewer to interact with the art.

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican artist known for her self-portraits. In the one at right, painted in 1948, the artist depicts herself wearing a traditional bridal headdress. Notice how many different textures appear in this painting. Kahlo’s skin looks smooth, and her hair seems to pull sharply away from her face. The rough-looking fabric surrounding her head is rich with patterns. The artist creates these varied textures by changing the delicate paint surface. Her skin is carefully blended so that the brushstrokes are not visible at all. The texture in the headdress is made of many tiny crosshatched, or crisscrossing, lines. These lines get darker and denser in areas of shadow, and subtler in the places where light hits the fabric. Think about the texture of the clothing you are wearing. How would you draw it so that someone else would know how it feels without ever touching it?

Andy Warhol is an icon of Pop Art, 
a movement that began in the mid-1950s. Pop artists use recognizable images from popular culture. The vibrant colors in Warhol’s 1967 silkscreen print titled Marilyn Monroe, right, strike the viewer immediately, boldly announcing their importance. Monroe, a famous movie star, appears in tones of the complementary colors (opposite) green and red, with a shock of yellow hair. By using an unnatural color scheme, Warhol draws the viewer’s attention to the colors themselves. He transforms a very recognizable face into a statement about the colors he chose to use. Warhol began his career in advertising and was an expert at communicating his ideas to the public. What idea do you think he is trying to share here?