This striking book explores contemporary portraiture from the past decade. The selection features cutting-edge new work from the international art community and reflects an increasing interest in identity worldwide. Organised thematically, the book examines seven key strands of portraiture: The Body; The Self-Portrait; The Invented Portrait; The Anonymous Portrait; Social Identity; The Celebrity Portrait. With an essay by Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, that locates contemporary portraiture within a historic tradition, 21st Century Portraits examines current trends, showcasing the wide range of media today's artists are using. This book includes an extensive bibliography and is an essential reference work in the field of twenty-first-century portraiture. It will present many images to academic, curatorial and general audiences, including museum and gallery visitors and general art book buyers in the trade for the first time.

"This revised and updated edition brings together a selection of more than 500 contemporary painted portraits from some of the world's leading artists in this genre, all of whom have been shortlisted for the annual BP Portrait Award in its first 25 years."--Back cover.

With just under a thousand portraits of Queen Elizabeth II, the National Portrait Gallery boasts some of the most treasured and famous official portraits of the Queen captured at key historic moments, as well as day-to-day images of the monarch at home and with family, following her journey from childhood, to princess and Queen, mother and grandmother. This publication highlights the most important portraits of Elizabeth II from the Gallery's Collection. Paintings and photographs from the birth of Elizabeth II to the present will take readers on a visual journey through the life of Britain's foremost icon. 0The book will reflect on the Queen's life, presenting family photographs alongside important formal portraits to explore how, as her reign became record-breaking, she became an iconic figure in modern British culture and history. The publication features works by key artists depicting the Queen from 1926 to the present day, including Baron, Cecil Beaton, Dorothy Wilding, Patrick Lichfield, Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz and David Bailey. 0This book features an introductory essay by Alexandra Schulman, exploring how the collected portraits depict the Queen throughout her life and reign, and a timeline of key historical events and moments from Elizabeth II's life.

Catalogues of three concurrent exhibitions in London galleries, 2018.

Unveiling the unconventional : Kehinde Wiley's portrait of Barack Obama / Taína Caragol -- "Radical empathy" : Amy Sherald's portrait of Michelle Obama / Dorothy Moss -- The Obama portraits, in art history and beyond / Richard J. Powell -- The Obama portraits and the National Portrait Gallery as a site of secular pilgrimage / Kim Sajet -- The presentation of the Obama portraits : a transcript of the unveiling ceremony.

From first to last, Picasso's prime subject was the human figure and portraiture remained a favourite genre. His earliest portraits were done from life and reveal a precocious ability to catch likeness and suggest character and state of mind. B y 1900 Picasso was producing portraits of astonishing variety and thereafter they reflected the full range of his innovative styles - symbolist, cubist, neoclassica l, surrealist, expressionist. B ut however extreme his departur e from representational conventions, Picasso never wholly abandoned drawing from the sitter or ceased producing portraits of classic beauty and naturalism. For all his radical originality, Picasso remained in constant dialogue with the art of the past and his portraits often alluded to canonical masterpieces, chosen for their appropriateness to the looks and personality of his subject. Treating favourite Old Masters as indecorously as his intimate friends, he enjoyed caricaturing them and indulging in fant asies about their sex lives that mirrored his own obsession with the interaction of eroticism and creativity. His late suites of free ' variations ' after Vel�zquez's Las Meninas and Rembrandt's The Prodigal Son , both of which involve self - portraiture, allow ed him to ruminate on the complex psychological relationship of artist and sitter, and continu ities between past and present. When Picasso depicted people in his intimate circle, the nature of his bond with them inevitably influenced his interpretation. T he focus of this book is not, however, Picasso's life story but his creative process, and, although following a broadly chronological path, its chapters are structured thematically. Issues addressed in depth include Picasso's exploitation of familiar pose s and formats, his sources of inspiration and identification with favourite Old Masters, the role of caricature in his expressive conception of portraiture, the relationship between observation, memory and fantasy, critical differences between his portray al of men and women, and the motivation behind his defiance of decorum and the extreme transformation of his sitter's appearance.