ILLUS-3234

CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITURE

Faculty: Julio Flores

Course Level: Junior, Senior, 5th Year

3 CREDITS

Portraiture is an interpretation of human presence: identity made visible through the decisions of the artist. More than a record of physical likeness, the portrait can communicate psychological experience, cultural identity, social power, and the conditions surrounding a life. Through observation, historical inquiry, and material exploration, students will develop an understanding of how structure, color, light, composition, gesture, environment, and paint handling shape the meaning of a represented person. Painting will remain the course’s primary language, with opportunities to incorporate collage, mixed media, digital processes, and other materials when they extend the work’s conceptual purpose.

Coursework will investigate four questions: How do people construct and present their identities? How can painting suggest an interior condition? Who controls how someone is seen? What can the portrait of one person reveal about a larger world? Students will select subjects through self-observation, direct encounters, collaboration, or mediated and archival sources. Interviews, repeated sittings, photography, environmental observation, and contextual research will help students consider not only who their subject is, but how they know what they believe about that person—and what remains unknowable. Through iterative studies and sustained projects, students will move between likeness and interpretation, tradition and experimentation, and the individual and the culture that surrounds them.

Capacity: 15

Registration Restriction: Major elective; restricted to Illustration juniors and seniors; open to non-majors pending seat availability and permission of instructor. 

Semester Offered: Spring