VCM

10Story

22 January 2010

Role

Posing Questions: Being & image in Europe & Asia

Contents
- Introduction
- The sections
     * Agent
     * Role
     * Person
     * Mind
- The panels
     * Optical character recognition?
     * Vernacular parallels
     * Modernist Politics
     * Show & Tell                                                        - Acknowledgements

Role

The identities of members of any society are at least partly defined by the roles they play and the status they occupy. When these identities are conveyed visually, the artist resorts to props, text, or other conventions.

To represent people in terms of their role or status does not imply that they lack individuality or that the artist lacks the skill to depict it.

Showing role or status is usually compared unfavourably with the ‘character-capturing’ form of portraiture associated with modernisms. But such comparison is beside the point. Where the role is the subject, the player must not overshadow it. Everyone, however, is both an individual and a role-player, and many portraits, even modernist ones, manage to combine these two dimensions.

As with individual expression, so also with role: what is depicted is always chosen from a wider spectrum - such as a serious rather than a frivolous look, or the brain-surgeon rather than the ham-fisted home-decorator.