The inheritance of stylized representation is the central focus in Amy Hill's Future Presidents (2022) at Fortnight Institute. The exhibition shows 10 works in oil on canvas, ranging from about 2’x2’ to 3’x4’. The contemporary world is mediated through a glazed lens where distant cityscapes are flattened and graphic, and figures’ bulging features peer blankly in the direction of the viewer, borrowing in part from the tradition of classic painted portraiture from both the European Renaissance and American Folk Art. By evoking the painting movements of seemingly bygone eras, as in Family Breakfast (2022), the attitudes of the past linger in the contemporary. A father, mother and child are shown with flowing hair and heavy eyelids, pouring over a bounty of processed and branded food.
This mode of portraiture has connotations with christianity and the pastoral, which is replaced with a secular, consumerist, urban lifestyle. The baby’s gaze meets the viewers’, as does one figure in almost every work in the show. Each figure who meets our gaze has an abundance to display— Sachs shopping bags, a pearl necklace, the luxury of a zoom call with a view, or a golden revolving apartment door. Western portraiture’s enduring obsession with displaying wealth is shown to continue here, without the facade of religion, as Hill subverts the romanticization of earlier periods in art history. Compressing time through styles of painting shows the continuing dissonance of the upper class, and asks if the future presidents will continue to be raised by historical precedents of American expansion and wealth.
-Madeline McQuillan
I was glad to read that we shared similar takeaways from Future Presidents that you have written in your blog post. However, what stood out to me about the stylization and its connection to Christianity was the use of Byzantine portrait techniques. Though, after looking at some examples of Renaissance and American Folk portraiture, I see your connection. I would love to know how you think this use of stylized representation connects to the show's overall theme of the next generation and contemplation of who our future leaders will be. What type of people are being depicted? Why might they be quite literally idolized?
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