Portrait of artist Tim Garwood by James Frederick Barrett
Is it me, or are artists looking really good these days? Almost too good? The mythological image of the artist is rooted in the artist portrait photograph, that familiar tableau of a paint-splattered figure with disheveled hair, brooding and intense in their messy studio, brushes and pots of paint abandoned on the floor, canvases in progress in the background, references torn from obscurity and tacked to the wall. This is how we want artists to be: the perfect representation of chaos and wantonness. If artists are obliged to participate in this performance, then it’s likely we’re all guilty of fuelling it; after all, audiences are insatiable when it comes to image consumption in the age of the internet.
But something has shifted of late: I have noticed more portrait photos of artists circulating, and more frequently, in gallery newsletters, on art fair websites and, of course, on Instagram. Which makes sense in an increasingly fast-paced and commercialised art world, where social interactions are ruled by the cult of everyone-as-celebrity propelled by social media. Whether chic or shabby, nonchalant or earnest, in turps-drenched overalls or designer drip, everyone expects artists to reveal themselves, to let us peer into their private worlds. As a consequence, these pictures have become ever-more carefully calculated and ar