The Disruption In Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Portraiture deconstructed and reimagined
Contemporary art is known for its lack of a unifying theme and ideology. In a contemporary context, even the portrait paintings we have today look different than the ones we had ten or twenty years ago. The portrait artists today might not be household names as the old masters, but they are bringing innovations into the centuries-old art category.
In the past few years, I have noticed much disruption brought into this space and the evolvement of the genre itself. I will use four working contemporary artists as an example to take a deeper look into this phenomenon.
Contemporary artists in focus
Henrik Uldalen (Norwegian, b. 1986) is known for his thick impasto paint applications and the use of different painting mediums. The faces and figures in his paintings are often obscured by large paint blobs or slowly dissolved into the dark background.
