William Orpen: Towards a Minor Self-Portraiture

摘要

Royal Academy artist William Orpen (1878-1931) was once the most sought-after and the highest-earning portrait painter in Britain. His posthumous fall from favour was partly due to Tate director John Rothenstein's damning critique of Orpen's inability to fulfil his artistic potential thanks to his a??divided loyaltiesa?? to Britain and his native Ireland. This essay argues rather that it was precisely Orpen's complex positionality that informed the most innovative of his works, leading him to develop a new approach to representation as such. In this essay Orpen is proposed to operate within the paradigms of a??minor arta??, following Gilles Deleuze and F??lix Guattari's conception of minor literature. Orpen's self-portraits are presented as an early instance of a shift of artistic focus from the represented to the process of representing, prefiguring the interests of artists working with post-representative strategies some fifty years after his death.View full textDownload full textKeywordsIrish art, British art, Deleuze and Guattari, Edwardian, minor painting, William Orpen, postcolonial, self-portraitRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; var addthis_config = {"data_track_addressbar":true,"ui_click":true}; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14714787.2012.641850