So many things wrong with Oprah Winfrey's Portrait in the Smithsonian

I'm sure you are all familiar with the children's story of the Emperor's new clothes. Well I feel like I'm about to emulate the whistle blower.

This review of the new portrait of Oprah Winfrey in the Smithsonian comes in two parts:

• a list of the unfortunately high number of things I can find wrong with the portrait; and
• some straight facts about the commission, the sitter and the artist - because when all said and done somebody did go to a lot of effort - even if I really don't like it.

Before I go any further, let me say a few things.

I think Oprah Winfrey has achieved some remarkable things in her lifetime. As such she very definitely deserves a portrait in the Smithsonian. As described by the Smithsonian

As a global media leader, philanthropist, producer, actor, author, and entrepreneur, Winfrey has made significant contributions to American popular culture, which earned her a place in the National Portrait Gallery.

Whether it should be this particular portrait to deliver a place is another matter - discussed below.

I've personally always found Oprah interesting. I've watched a few of her programmes and some of the things she has written and have always found her interesting. I also admire what she has done in terms of building a commercial empire. I certainly don't dislike her - even if I'm not a fan of some of the company she keeps.

Oprah Winfrey (2023) by Shawn Michael Warren, 

oil on linen, 6 feet 10 inches by 5 feet 8 inches 

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

The painting depicts a self-assured and joyful Winfrey holding a sprig from an olive tree. Smithsonian press release

 

1. Let me count the problems.....

This review is coming from the perspective of somebody who has written a lot about portraiture over the last 18 years and has viewed excellent portraits by renowned portrait artists and knows and has known leading contemporary portrait artists.

It's also coming from somebody who is British born and bred and lives in London but comes from the north. Which means I tend to be rather direct and say what I mean rather than do a lot of fawning....

I wouldn't normally call out a portrait I don't like. But there was so much OTT fawning over this one on the American side of the Atlantic and so many people saying how wonderful it was, I thought it could maybe do with another perspective from across the pond. Just for balance you understand....

I do understand that what Americans think is good art is not necessarily what Brits might think of as good art - and vice versa. It's a cultural thing - which is sometimes nearly as big as the ocean that divides us. So my perspective is coming from my cultural background.

This list of what's wrong with the portrait has been helped by those commenting on my Facebook Page when the picture of the portrait was first published.

Plus some reflection over a few days....

My post on my Making A Mark Facebook Page.

I'm going to tackle a number of different aspects in turn.

Technical

This is not a portrait from life. How do I know? 

• The subject is smiling. NOBODY ever smiles for a portrait. It's far too difficult to hold a smile and it becomes a rictus grin.
• White teeth might be a symbol of health and wealth and wellbeing in the USA - but not in traditional portraiture and portrait paintings!

it’s an object lesson in why portrait sitters are rarely painted smiling. Ian Dugdale

I very much suspect that this is a portrait by an artist who is used to working only from photographs. Apparently he had one sitting with Ms Winfrey at her home. I suspect most of the time was taken up with photographs of Ms Winfrey and her garden.

You can of course copy a photograph of an individual when smiling - but we all know you simply copied a photograph!

Don't get me wrong. Lots of artists use photographs for reference purposes when creating a portrait - but very few of the well regarded portrait artists do so without also making lots of drawings and small studies to learn how the head, face and body works plus the development of small colour studies to get the colour of the skin right. That takes several sittings. Even the Queen typically used to give artists two life sittings!

I gather he did several studies of her hands so as to make sure he got them right.

Style

Bottom line - too much Disney, not enough authenticity. It's the sort of portrait which makes me want to barf. I know there are lots of little girls who really want to grow up to be a Disney Princess - but a grown up multi-billionaire media mogul? Really? At age 70? Really?

Oooh very Disney princess.... Feeling slightly queasy now Sarah Wimperis

In artistic style terms, it's painted in a very photographic hyperrealistic style - although having said that it's not as good as the best who paint in this style (and I've seen a LOT of these in person over the years - by both American and British artists).

Indeed, several who have looked at it thought it was a photograph. They were aghast when they realised it was a painting.....

I thought it was a photoshopped photograph Diana Bonas

Speaking for myself, besides Disney, the portrait also reminds me very forcefully of Cindy Sherman's larger than life Society Portraits (2008). This is a collection of works which portray middle aged older women of wealth of who become art world patrons and which also addresses "the experience and representation of aging in the context of contemporary obsessions with youth and status." They all wear dresses representing their wealth which makes them seem rather overdressed and  introduces an element of discontinuity to the setting of the individual. They also all look like women who are trying rather too hard to be something they're not. 

I saw these artworks in the the major restrospective exhibition of Cindy Sherman's portraits in 2019 at the National Portrait Gallery (London). See also

• my post Taking aim at art world patrons - Sherman, Perry and Pohida)
• an article which considers why Cindy Sherman did what she did The truth about Cindy Sherman's society portraits

I personally think Oprah Winfrey deserves much better than this. She is a self made woman not a rich man's appendage. She really doesn't need to persuade anybody of how wealthy she is by using clothes or jewellery and/or lots of glossy long hair pieces. Far from it. What would be much interesting and authentic is to see a portrait of the REAL Oprah Winfrey getting ready to do business - at home or at work. She has no need to use props to make herself seem important or wealthy! Maybe "less is more" would have been much more authentic?

UPDATE: Since publishing this post, I've been studying the portrait paintings of women in the Smithsonian Collection which are available online. An awful lot of them are quite simply awful. That's "awful" as in wouldn't stand a chance of being selected/accepted into an open exhibition/art competition at a national level in the UK. So maybe I now understand better why people in the USA think this is a good portrait. 

Lighting

The lighting is incongruous. We seem to have light coming from different angles. It's a very common fault in portraits created by individuals from different photographs.

The Face

Normally the face is the one area of any portrait where the artist spends the most time and takes the most cate. Not in this portrait.

I've downloaded the press version of the image from the Smithsonian - which comes out BIG. Which allowed me to zoom in and take a close look at the actual painting in different parts of the image

Despite being in a hyperrealistic style, I've seen much better renditions of a face. Indeed, it seemed to me there was no more work applied to the face than to other parts of the painting.

• Maybe Oprah goes in for glaringly obvious lip liner - but to me it just looked crude.
• The teeth I've covered above
• overall, the painting would have benefited from the face being more modulated and refined

My biggest gripe is with how the face is rendered. It looks too plastic, as if it’s a painting of a Disney figurine…

Must try harder or actually, NOT as hard! It’s overworked and tacky… 

The Dress

When I looked at the complete painting I barely noticed anything but the dress. It dominates everything. Alison Jackson-Bass

I have lots of issues with the dress. 

• Do people seriously want to be portrayed in this sort of dress when recording the impact they had on American life? Really?  Compare it for example with the iconic design of Michelle Obama's dress in Amy Sherald's portrait for the Smithsonian which spoke of metaphor and character.
• Next I get that the colour relates to her performance in the film of The Color Purple. The latter being from the novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award. 
• Also that Oprah likes purple - as per the recent photos of her in a gown demonstrating her weight loss (which just made me wonder whether she wished she waited to have the portrait done until after she had lost the weight!). I'm very inclined to think that maybe her recent weight loss (which I applaud - knowing how difficult it can be) might have resulted from having seen how the portrait was progressing....
• However the colour is very "in your face". 
• BUT most of all - put bluntly - this dress does NOT win any prizes for making a lady who is somewhat larger than life from appearing VERY BIG indeed. This is not the sort of dress I'd use for somebody who has issues with weight. All that fabric just makes her look even larger.

The rendering of the purple fabric is very good. It seems symbolic of wealth and status, hence so much of it which takes away attention from the subject herself, which could have done with a bit more time and consideration. Claudette Holmes

The Pose / Stance - and THAT TREE!

This is not the pose I would use with a larger lady. I am one of those. I know what I'm talking about. Enough said?

It's also a very strange pose or as one follower indicated

She looks as though she has had one drink too many...lol Kim Perman

and

it looks as though she saw that branch at the last minute and is arching back to avoid it. John Cooney

The tree on the left hand side makes no sort of sense to me. There's enough of it to represent a serious distraction. Its angle makes it look as if she's going to be knocked out by it as soon as she becomes upright from that extraordinary leaning back pose.

The tree branch is also painted very flat. There is no form to it - it is not rotund.

The Olive Branch

It is very difficult to work out what the artist intended through the use of the olive branch. Symbolically it can mean:

• a sacred symbol of peace in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
• peaceful power - when used as a symbol for an organisation
• you want to end a disagreement 

But maybe it just means Oprah grows olive trees in her garden?

The Garden

Oprah very obviously has a lovely garden. What a pity the artist did not make more of it.

It looks to me very much as if photos of the garden have been added to the background of a photo of Oprah in party frock.

I have never been a fan of artists who are drawing individual blades of grass which are some 20-30 feet away. They are a complete nonsense. You simply cannot see them in real life. As soon as I see this, my estimation of the artist takes a dive.

There's also a very short vertical in off white just above the branch - which might be a flag pole - but frankly reminds me of the mantra "just because it's there doesn't mean you have to paint it!". Artists are allowed to edit!

There again he paints people rather than landscapes which just makes me wonder why the backdrop is a garden..... Presumably something Oprah wanted to include.

What a lost opportunity. Oprah’s achievements are considerable and she is therefore a really interesting person. Yet all I get here is an uncomfortable pose and irritation from that blasted tree. Fiona Carvell

2. Facts about the Portrait of Oprah Winfrey, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian

Subject: Oprah Winfrey

The commissioned painting was unveiled a month before Oprah Winfrey's 70th birthday (I didn't know we were born in the same year!)

She has developed a media and business empire worth $2.8 billion. Some of her very considerable achievements are: 

• her award-winning network TV talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show ran for more than 25 years (1986–2011)
• 1986: established Harpo Productions
• 1996: launched Oprah's Book Club
• 2000: launched O the Oprah Magazine
• 2011: became chairman and CEO of the cable network OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network 
• 2013, Winfrey was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
• 2018: she was the first African American woman to receive the Golden Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Award.
• 2021: digital advancement for O, The Oprah Magazine which became OprahDaily.com and Oprah Insider, a subscription site.

She is also a dedicated philanthropist, having donated $500 million to various causes

Commission: by the National Portrait Gallery / Smithsonian

Winfrey’s portrait is the latest example of the Portrait Gallery’s commitment to commissioning portraits of living sitters by contemporary artists. Smithsonian press release

The commission for this new painting in oil on canvas was led by Rhea L. Combs, the museum’s director of curatorial affairs.

It took five years for the Smithsonian to find an artist that Oprah liked.

The full-length portrait in oil on canvas within frame measures approximately 6 feet 10 inches by 5 feet 8 inches. It was commissioned for the Smithsonian museum’s permanent collection

Oprah Winfrey’s portrait is now on display at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery between December 13, 2023 - October 20, 2024

Acquisition: aided by sponsors

Acquired through the generosity of Tommie L. Pegues and Donald A. Capoccia; Taylor and Wemimo Abbey; Anonymous; Deon Jones and Cameron J. Ross; Lisa Opoku and Loki Muthu; Mack Wilbourn; Charles Young and Andrea Wishom Young.

Artist: Shawn Michael Warren

• website: https://www.shawnmichaelwarren.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/warrenart/

He describes himself as a fine artist, muralist and sculptor

Some facts:

• born in Chicago (unclear when)
• attended the American Academy of Art and the Florence Academy of Art (intensive drawing program) where he studied the work of master Renaissance painters and their approaches to narrative painting
• He has created critically acclaimed works, notably of prominent African Americans

He wrote about What It Was Like to Paint Oprah for the National Portrait Gallery for Oprah Daily

“I wanted to carefully represent her, but I also thought about how she would be depicted to the generations that aren’t here yet—who will see it long after we’re gone, 100 years from now, when it starts to cross over into a piece of art history,” he says. The entire process took 10 months, starting with a drawing and progressing to paint. No detail was too small for deep consideration: He even did a series of sketches of just her hands.

Having looked at some of his work, I have to say I think I prefer some of his larger narrative paintings / murals and his pencil drawings.