Eyes That Never Rest!

There are two kinds of portraits out there: ones with a gaze that burns right through you, seeing all your secrets. These eyes lock onto you, creating an intense connection.

Think of Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace. Her eyes pierce through the canvas, revealing layers of pain and resilience.

Then, there are those destined to be ogled, demanding repeated viewings unless they get swiped and left to rot in some godforsaken basement. Take Paul Cézanne’s Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair—her composed stillness invites endless contemplation. You’ve got all kinds here.

Some are scrutinised, glanced at, spied upon, or blatantly displayed.

Every portrait holds one exquisitely flattering angle and one that’s absolute shit. Rembrandt’s Lucretia captures a tragic beauty that’s hauntingly perfect.

And Courbet’s Desperate Man? It reveals a raw, unsettling side.

You think others don’t notice, but you do. After countless glances in the mirror. The worst side appears as often as the best. A constant reminder of your flaws and your beauty.

Ilya Repin’s portrait of Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin shows a man caught between brilliance and despair, both angles starkly present.

You can't just bask in the best side. The worst side is always there, fleeting but ever-present, validating the good side by contrast.

I wonder, are there any portraits without faces out there? Do we miss some presence in some paintings and therefore place and paint our own imagination, however fleeting, short-lived, and audacious?

I do—placing the murderer briefly contemplating the act achieved before vanishing, leaving no trace. A lost family member in the family portrait. A person who grew bitter from the world’s injustice. No portrait to freeze his anguish.

Only that old, jolly childhood expression that ceases to exist.

Sure, there are portraits without make-up, before and after adulteration, without masks and walls. These categories are different. They take a separate, special time to meet them.

It's this interplay between good and bad that makes the beauty of the best angles shine even brighter.

Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe? Glamour and vulnerability, side by side. Hashiguchi Goyo's Ukiyo-e capture transient beauty with a delicate, sometimes stark hand. In the same breath, Radha Bani Thani exudes a delicate, timeless allure that is both captivating and elusive.

But let’s be real.

Beauty isn’t just in the highlights. It’s in the ugly, the raw, the brutal truth staring back at you. Those cracks and flaws?

They tell the whole damn story.

It’s the dance between light and shadow, perfection and imperfection, that elevates these works beyond mere images to something profoundly human and eternally fascinating.

We see ourselves a million times in the mirror. Each glance a brutal reminder of who we are and who we could be.

And these portraits?

They capture it all.