A walk around any art gallery will reveal that the image of the open smile has, for a very long time, been deeply unfashionable....
Smiling... has a large number of discrete cultural and historical significances, few of them in line with our modern perceptions of it being a physical signal of warmth, enjoyment, or indeed of happiness. By the 17th century in Europe it was a well-established fact that the only people who smiled broadly, in life and in art, were the poor, the lewd, the drunk, the innocent, and the entertainment....
May 24, 2014
"Why do we so seldom see people smiling in painted portraits?"
"Nicholas Jeeves explores the history of the smile through the ages of portraiture, from Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to Alexander Gardner’s photographs of Abraham Lincoln."
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16 comments:
Just be thankful they didn't have "duck lips", "trout pouts" and selfies.
As is mentioned halfway through the article, it is technically far more difficult to hold a smile during a portrait or daguerreotype. Genuine smiles by nature are spontaneous, not fixed.
I have a Columbia University classbook picture of a relative who would be 100 if he were alive today. He has floppy, angled hair and an impish grin. He is the only one, perhaps because he was only 15. Compared to his dour classmates, he leaps off the page as a modern kid trapped in an earlier time.
In some Rick Steves travel book on France, he remarked that if you walked down the street smiling at everyone, the locals would assume you were simple-minded (at best). It sounded like a personal anecdote.
People did not always have perfect teeth.
The advances in the art & science of dentistry probably had something to do with the smile becoming an expected part of later photography if not portraiture ("Say 'Cheese'!").
It wasn't that long ago that everyone, rich and poor, had awful teeth. The introduction of affordable refined sugar from the Caribbean into the European diet in the late 18th C made a bad dental situation all the worse. All kinds of folks from George Washington to Queen Elizabeth had appalling teeth, and so would never be painted smiling.
What country has the best dentistry? The USA. What country is full of people who are thought by the rest of the world to be "grinning imbeciles" because of their every-present smiles? The USA. Co-ink-ee-dink? I think not!
"As is mentioned halfway through the article, it is technically far more difficult to hold a smile during a portrait or daguerreotype. Genuine smiles by nature are spontaneous, not fixed."
I found the article because I was thinking about how much I hate painted portraits with people giving the kind of big toothy smiles that are normal in casual photography. It's such a dead giveaway that it's a painting done from a photograph… unless it's some expressionistic type of painting of a hideous person.
It's actually hard to give a genuine, spontaneous smile for a photographer. Models who can do it are used a lot, but there's something inane about all these models smiling as if life is so wonderfully gratifying for them. It used to nag at me. I wanted such bliss! Even when I knew they were not actually experiencing bliss, the picture of it had an effect, and I wanted that nonexistent bliss. I've gotten over that.
Smiling models is a thing that really got going in the 1970s. Before that, the models were very somber. It was the way to be glamorous.
Smiling comes easily and naturally to some people, but not for everyone. I'm one of those who does not know how to smile. If I'm asked to smile for a photo, I either look like I have a silly smirk or am grimacing in pain, so I don't bother with it. I do try to avoid The Scowl, and every once in a while I succeed in coming up with a rare, pleasant, full smile.
Remember this montage of presidential portraits that came out after President Obama was elected? Presidents didn't really start smiling for portraits until Nixon.
In contrast with the earlier portraits, it looks a little ridiculous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYrZZ68zhSs
Smiling fashion models is largely an American thing, and it really started taking off in the 1950's. (Naturally there are precedents.)
Jean Patchett. The archetype of the serious fashion face. A point for the professor's case.
Dovima. More smirks than outright toothy smiles. Loved to clown around and affect seriousness.
Suzy Parker. The biggest smiler of them all, and the biggest success.
Evelyn Tripp. Often smiled, sometimes laughed, sometimes looked sombre.
Mary Jane Russel. Not afraid to smile.
Carmen Dell’Orefice. A smiler even then.
Sunny Harnett. Lots of nice big smiles, and some more enigmatic ones too.
Lisa Fonssagrives. Smiled more as an American.
It's also physically difficult to hold a genuine smile for a prolonged period. Try it sometime.
I always assumed sore feet or sore ass and no air conditioning.
Smiled Ng started with the Kodak Brownie camera in the late 19th century. You begin to see the occasional smile...
Why the hell shouldn't they smile? You're getting paid $10,000 a day to stand there and look pretty. Who wants to look at a sourpuss? How does that sell makeup?
"Who wants to look at a sourpuss? How does that sell makeup?"
The "pouting" look is part of being a model, along with the prancing walk.
She's not supposed to prance down the runway while grinning.
Well that's rather circular. Again, who wants to look at that? Who wants to identify with that? Who wants to buy the product that makes you look like that? There's no smiling attractively, there's only grinning like an ape?
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