To Charing Cross tube station and then the short walk past the Edith Cavell memorial, that chunky piece of white marble honouring the nurse who was shot by the German military for helping British soldiers escape from Belgium during the First World War. It’s not so much the more-than lifesize statue of the heroine that captures my attention whenever I happen to pass it by, and less so the mourning mother and child couple placed on a cross that rises up above as an allegorical representation of humanity. No, the whole ensemble is undoubtedly rather moving and impressive but what always gives me that slight pause for thought are the words Cavell spoke the night before her execution and which are now forever carved into the pedestal on which she stands: Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone.
Noble sentiments indeed – but then the traffic pauses and they’re gone with the exhaust fumes as I cross the road and walk through the revolving glass doors that lead straight into the National Portrait Gallery. Although I’m still at street level and have definitely gone in through the main front entrance, when I grab one of the free, What’s On guides to the place, I discover that I am, in fact, on Floor -1 (not dash one, that is, but minus one). I’m not sure about the logic of that but anyway, I ascend the stairs to get to Floor 0 (zero, that is) in order to buy my ticket for the William Eggleston Portraits exhibition. Fortunately, I’ve got one of those Art Fund cards, added to which there seems to be a further oldies reduction that usefully bringing the cost down to £2.75. Otherwise the full cost, including the voluntary but recommended donation, would be £8 which, for a three-room show of about 100 photographs, seems definitely on the pricey side to me and, frankly, not particularly good value. Anyone young, penurious and curious about Eggleston’s work might be better off visiting one of the Gallery’s shops and flicking through the exhibition catalogue before deciding whether to pay out to take a look at the real thing.
Anyway, I’m in, so I scan through the exhibition’s introductory wall panel which rightly notes that Eggleston is, ‘not usually regarded as a portraitist’ but rather, ‘a pioneer of fine art colour photography and one of the first to embrace a snapshot aesthetic…’ And so, while it’s fair to say that heads, faces and people are at the centre of just about all of the pictures here, few resemble what would traditionally be regarded as typical portraiture, and I don’t think anyone in any of the shots is just stood still, trying to look smart and mouthing the word ‘cheese’. One or two are what might be called properly posed – where Eggleston has clearly got his sitter to stay still while he snaps away – but most look to have been taken much more unpreparedly, as if he’s suddenly just pulled out his camera and caught friends or strangers unawares and while they’re least expecting it, whether lounging at home, exiting the supermarket or just walking down the street. It’s clearly a bit of a hit and miss approach although if you take enough pictures this way I guess you’re almost certain to come up with some that are interesting and out of the ordinary and, of course, we don’t get to see all the duffers that just remain undeveloped or edited out. Either way, I’m not entirely convinced that what Eggleston produces really deserves to be classified as portraiture, as he seems far less interested in trying to record any aspects of the personalities of any of these people than in dehumanising them into mere shapes and colours that can, on occasion, create curious, quirky compositions. And while I don’t have a problem when artists start shifting around various bits of fruit and crockery to find pleasing arrangement of tones and textures to copy, I do tend to feel a bit uneasy when photographers start composing their still lifes from the still living.
So it is with the picture of Devoe Money, a little old lady with big black glasses wearing a radiant blue, lilac and red abstract dress who is seated on the bright, orange floral-patterned cushions of a slightly dilapidated and weather-worn bench in the garden of her home. There’s something intriguing about this large print that undoubtedly holds the attention but I think it’s more the frightening clash of the coloured fabrics rather than anything about the person with the expressionless face, whose eye look off to the right and way into the distance. Similarly, there’s something quite striking about the way the golden rays of a setting sun emphasise the lustrous sheen on the hair of a boy as he goes about his mundane job stacking up supermarket trolleys; or the contrast between the red and white tiling in the diner and the black suit of the office worker as he munches his midday burger. I suppose most of us walk pass these kinds of mundane situations every day and hardly notice them, so for Eggleston to freeze them and bring them to our attention as art is quite a cute trick, especially when he alerts us to the vibrancy of the colours in these compositions.
But, having said that, I think the results are clever formalist studies and not proper portraits and, however compelling some of these images are to look at, I think there’s a real problem when it’s actual, unwitting people who form the key elements that go into making them. It suggests to me that their author lacks much empathy with his subjects, a thought perhaps compounded by one of the earlier works showing a black maid spreading the coverlet over a bed she’s making up. The accompanying label informs that Lucille Fleming was the Eggleston family housekeeper, ‘…essentially a member of the family herself, she spent more than fifty years in their employ.’ Apparently she was also a highly talented quiltmaker, whose work entered into various public collections, and I can’t help thinking she might have preferred to have had an image of that part of her biography recorded for posterity rather than a bland episode from her long, everyday life of servitude. And however much a part of the family that the family imagined her to be, I think I’d like to have heard her considered opinion on that piece of clichéd and patronising fiction.
One final image caught my eye and that showed a young black woman walking down the street and who Eggleston had evidently photographed without bothering to ask her permission, which, I think, is essentially what the term ‘snapshot aesthetic’ means. It’s one of the few photographs where the person is looking straight into the lens and, reading the face, I’d say the expression is a mix of surprise and suspicion bordering on hostility. In short, I don’t think the person wished to be photographed by some complete stranger. I suppose you could argue that it confirms Eggleston has at least managed on this occasion accurately to capture the inner thoughts of one of his subjects, although it seems to show such a disrespect for the woman’s feelings that I’m not sure that he should ever have printed it up, let alone thought it suitable to display in a Gallery. All in all this is not a very happy exhibition and rather than a hundred individual portraits I think it probably adds up to just one-and-a-half: the uncomfortable one of a society – suburban Tennessee in the 1960s and ‘70s – that is not entirely at ease with itself; and a photographer who’s only half interested in what he’s seeing.
As well as the Gallery’s permanent collection, that shows painted portraits of kings and queens, politicians and adventurers, scientists and celebrities from the past half millennia, there are also a couple of small – and one quite large – temporary exhibitions that are free entry and worth taking the time to have a quick perusal. Lucian Freud Unseen contains a couple of paintings – one rather lovely picture of Caroline Blackwood and one small, unfinished self-portrait – alongside a small, rather tantalising, selection of sketchbooks, doodles, drawings and other ephemera by the late great artist. While Leon Golub has been given a wall to show some of his painted sketches of world leaders from the 1970s. Amongst this selection of the good, the bad and the distinctly dodgy are Castro, Franco, Pope Paul VI, Henry Kissinger and our very own Michael Foot, although judging by Golub’s representation of the last in that list of luminaries, I’m not sure the artist was all that precise a draughtsman. Nevertheless, for anyone who lived through the period in which that lot wielded such political power, it’s perhaps gratifying to look at some of the faces and be reminded that, even if the electorate or wider populace can’t do it, time eventually displaces all leaders no matter how wise or otherwise they may be.
Finally, the Gallery is showing its pick from this year’s annual, open entry BP Portrait Award which includes work that varies from the scrupulously realist to the startlingly precise – some works are so detailed as to look like photographs on first and, indeed, second sight. It’s all very clever stuff but maybe next year they’ll allow a bit ofvariety by including a few more looser, expressionistic works which would, I think, make for a slightly more enjoyable show.