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Volume CXXXII, Number 14 |
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Pregnant portraits in museum
MACAELA FLANAGAN
STAFF WRITER
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| Images that seem to emerge from the wall characterize the work of Anne Harris. Ghostly faces look into the distance, always watching the viewer. The exhibit is called "Without Likeness." (Nancy Van Dyke, Bowdoin Orient) |
If you have been to the Bowdoin Museum of Art lately you may have felt like someone was watching you. Perhaps you felt a pair of eyes gaze upon you from across the room, and turn to find that the eyes watching you were not those of another gallery-goer, but belonged to the faces in the portraits and self-portraits of Anne Harris. "Without Likeness: The Paintings of Anne Harris" is the artist's first solo museum show, and is currently on view downstairs in the temporary exhibition gallery.
The artist's portraits vary from images of herself, to unnamed female faces, to her own son, Max. The works are startlingly life-like, yet at the same time intriguingly foreign. Two of the first paintings to confront the viewer are almost photorealistic works: "Self Portrait with Hood," and "Portrait with Bridal Veil," both from 1994. These oil-on-canvas works each show a face staring back at you. Neither confrontational nor inviting, these faces are studying you at the same time that you are examining them.
This feeling of being watched is taken a step further when the gaze comes from a fully nude and pregnant Harris. In her "Portrait with Max" series, the artist paints herself from the mid-thigh up, exposing her swollen stomach and breasts. Blue veins coursing through her body are evident under her pallid skin. Her gaze is neutral but at the same time it is demanding. Her hands rest palm up and the tones of her skin gently fade into the similarly colored background. It is a raw exploration of a pregnant body, yet its sincerity and soft hue make it spiritual; her body seems to float somewhere between us and the canvas.
Harris' figures are not the typically beautiful figures that grace the walls of the Museum's upper floor. Eerie and stark, her subjects communicate a mysticism that draws in the viewer. This enigmatic quality could not be achieved with images of conventionally beautiful people.
Harris' "Portrait with Pink Eyelids" may be one of the best examples of this removal of standard attractiveness. The figure in the painting is oddly disfigured. One side of her head looks flattened, and her features are far too large for her awkward face. Yet the high hairline and porcelain skin are reminiscent of the idealized beauty characteristic of classical artwork. Harris looks to this lineage, yet morphs the figures into her own creations in an abstract and ethereal way.
Themes of motherhood and questions surrounding the conventions of beauty are examined in Harris' show. As curator Alison Ferris describes, the show is "both a formal and psychological abstraction, which nonetheless uses realist techniques." "Without Likeness: Paintings by Anne Harris" will be on display in the Bowdoin Museum of Art until March 23.
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