About portraits and narratives in contemporary art

Abstract

What portraiture tells about our age and our history as individual human beings? In this written part of Bachelor’s thesis I study portraiture and the narratives behind it. I discuss how the popular culture and youth culture affects the way we see the portraiture today and what is the significance of it with examples such as Elisabeth Peyton’s Age of Innocence, Richard Prince’s New Portraits, Andy Warhol’s iconic portraits and also I explain my own relationship to portraiture art in 21st century and especially portraiture in this present time when social media has grown to be a major force in our everyday life by introducing a representation of my Bachelor thesis’ art work the ‘Youngsters’, a series of portraits, which was inspired by individual images on Instagram.