Representations of irrepresentability The painted portrait in the twentieth-century in the works of Edvard Munch, Francis Bacon, and Marlene Dumas

This study proposes an understanding of the genre of painted portraiture in the twentieth-century that reaches beyond traditional notions of representation based on the Cartesian belief in a unique subjectivity. The study analyzes how this new type of portraiture functions in the works of Edvard Munch, Francis Bacon, and Marlene Dumas – emphasizing the novel ways these artists challenge the notion of representation as something reflecting an external, stable reality. Munch’s hybrid portraits analyzed in this study undermine formal structures of the genre by introducing landscape into portraiture. Additionally, these works make use of cinematic qualities and the materiality of the paintings to create the feeling of an ongoing moment. As a result, the hybrid portrait genre achieves effects that surpass passive contemplation in favor of direct engagement with the artworks. Bacon's portraits renounce conventional norms of mimetic representation to unmask the unrepresentability of human subjectivity. This study argues that these portraits blur the boundaries between object and subject, portrait and viewer, in order to remodel conventional notions of portraiture. Reinterpreting Gilles Deleuze's understanding of Bacon's works through the prism of Buddhism, this study demonstrates the possibility of a complete transformation of preexisting concepts that had traditionally shaped portrait making. By creating unrecognizable portraits of the iconic subjects Mary Magdalene and Marilyn Monroe, Dumas unmasks stereotypical depictions of female subjectivity. By representing these subjects in “liminoid” situations, Dumas deconstructs the notion of fixed identity inherent in traditional portraiture, rewriting and reclaiming the subjectivity of the characters.