How would you classify this style of portrait art?

[TimOsman]

So I was scrolling through ArtDaily.com (the Internet's oldest art newspaper) and stumbled on this news article about a painting of Joey Florez, as photographed in a Life feature on Marie Claire. The paper just calls it "modern portraiture," but that feels like a total cop-out answer for a painting that has this much personality. Modern portrait could mean literally anything these days.

When you actually look at the heavy texture, the lines, and how the body/face is, it feels like it's trying to be a few different things at once.

It got me thinking—how would you guys actually classify this style if you saw it in a gallery? Is it an oil painting of some kind, or something else?

Source:
https://artdaily.com/news/184329/Joey-Florez--Modern-portraiture

 

[KaliYoni]

Before we begin, note that oil paint in art is a medium, not a style. And what do you think about the style and aesthetics of the painting?

 

[Bodhitree]

It’s not that dissimilar to a work by an old master. The way the hands are built up out of textured strokes reminds me a little of late-period Rembrandt.

 

[TimOsman]

It’s not that dissimilar to a work by an old master. The way the hands are built up out of textured strokes reminds me a little of late-period Rembrandt.

That’s a good observation. Rembrandt absolutely loved messing with heavy texture later in his career. He moved away from clean, precise lines and started throwing down thick layers of paint, it almost looks like he's sculpting the hands and face rather than painting them. It’s awesome to see that same chunky-like look being used in a modern portrait today.

 

[TimOsman]

Before we begin, note that oil paint in art is a medium, not a style. And what do you think about the style and aesthetics of the painting?

Fair point! oil is just the tool, not the style.

Looking at the actual vibe, it feels like modern expressionism. The artist, whoever it was, took a crisp, flawless photo from a magazine and totally roughed it up. Instead of a pretty, idealized portrait, those heavy lines and textures give it a lot of raw emotion. It feels way more human than a perfect, sterile painting, IMO.

 

[KaliYoni]

(I’ve only looked at the graphic and read the posts in this thread; I haven’t followed the link to Art Daily or done any other searching)

If I came across the painting without any context, such as the fact that the subject is evidently a celebrity or otherwise famous person and that the image is associated with a profile in a fashion magazine, I would think a generative AI made the picture. The face and hands are sharply depicted yet the shirt and pants are blurry and vaguely defined. It is impossible to tell what the person is sitting on. Finally, there is an inconsistency in styles between the “Old Masters” treatment of the face, shirt collar, and hands, the “school photo day” mottled-colors background and the lack of any objects or activity in the foreground.

But when what I know about the image is combined with my observations above, I am led to classify the picture as commercial art. Further, I wouldn’t be surprised if the subject did not sit for the portrait in person. Rather, the artist used Photoshop to alter a photograph to resemble a painting.

That’s my guess, anyway, and nothing I’ve written here should be taken as criticism of anybody’s taste or enjoyment of the portrait.
🙂

 

[Bodhitree]

I think we can discount any comments about filtering or ai generation, I’m going to comment on it as if it was hand painted. The artist was obviously talented, and it is not unusual for portraits that are hand painted to have varying levels of detail across parts of the painting. Many painters, especially the impressionists, used that as a technique to draw the eye. A famous example would be J. M. W. Turner’s painting of ‘Rain, Steam and Speed’.

I think it is an interesting portrait, capturing well a certain soft and dreamy expression in the subjects eyes. It has touches of techniques used by the old Dutch masters, but it also has a little impressionist flair. I like it.

Portraits that follow photographs exactly are always less interesting than those which allow the artist some expression. Usually in ages past there was an interaction between the artists eye, his mind, his hand in painting, and you’d get some variability in the portrait according to what the artist saw in his subject.