22
Portraits Destroyed:
Power, ego and
history’s vandals
Julie Cotter
Thames & Hudson
Art historian Dr Julie Cotter begins with
the example of Winston Churchill, a man
who ‘was his own muse, absorbed by his
achievements... excelled in the pageant of
life’ so when presented with an unflattering
portrait, it would not do. Cotter’s subsequent
vignettes in ‘Portraits Destroyed’ explore the
weight of the genre, how it can deify and also
send the ‘wrong’ message about a person. The
importance of the portrait is shown to extend
beyond likeness into a complex realm of
historiography and power, vanity, race, ethics
and the creative process itself; all of which are
intriguing reasons to conserve a portrait and,
at times, a compelling argument for it to meet
its demise.Tom Polo Paris Drawings:
The Most Elaborate
Disguise
Perimeter Editions in partnership with
STATION, Melbourne‘Paris Drawings: The Most Elaborate Disguise’
reveals Tom Polo’s distinct, and somewhat
peculiar approach to drawing, painting and
the portrait. This ‘non-digital face-book’
collates 48 portraits of imagined-sitters created
while on residency at the Cite Internationale
des Arts, Paris, in 2016. Frayed brushstrokes
create rough enclosures to geometric form
while an undefined, soft palette of subtracted
colours (muddy greens and browns, and dull
ochres) build personality and character. An
underlying threat of camouflage is present
as the figurative is filtered by the abstract,
reflecting the emotional masks we adopt as
part of our public personas – ‘people are never
quite what they seem and always what they
are becoming,’ writes curator Justin Paton in
the accompanying essay to this illustrative
catalogue.