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Titel
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Portraits
This course has explored portraiture as both artistic representation and investigation of identity, with particular focus on how portraits can communicate aspects of the self. We have also explored how portraits connect to emotion, power, context, and viewer experience. Through translated excerpts from Billedkunstbogen, selected visual examples, analytical discussions, and practical exercises, students have examined how portraits can be constructed, interpreted, and reimagined across different media and historical contexts.
Key focus areas have included facial proportions, symmetry and asymmetry, contextual analysis, symbolism, expressionist portraiture, Modernism, self-portraiture, and installation art. Students have worked with the relationship between artist, context, and viewer, and we have practiced distinguishing the difference between personal response and analytical interpretation. The class has studied selected modernist movements, with particular emphasis on expressionism and expressive strategies such as distortion, bold color, exaggeration, emotional intensity, and non-naturalistic representation.
Throughout the course, students have engaged in a continuous interplay between theory, analysis, and practice (the TAP-method). Practical work has included blind portrait drawing, facial proportion exercises, pastel and acrylic expressive portraits, symbolic self-portraits using personal objects, modernist self-portraits, mini installation artworks, and a final installation portrait project. Consistently throughout the unit, students have documented and reflected on their experiments, analyses, and artistic choices in their portfolios.
The course also included a field trip to ARoS in Aarhus with other art classes, where students got to experience several installation artworks first-hand, such as those of Anna Boghiguian and Olafur Eliassen. These works gave them the opportunity to reflect more on use of space, sensory experience, viewer involvement, and site-specific meaning. In connection with contemporary visual culture and design, students watched an episode of Abstract: The Art of Design on the portrait photographer Platon, and we considered how portraiture can communicate character, narrative, and social meaning.
The final project in this unit combined portraiture and installation art. Students created an installation portrait and recorded a short video from the perspective of an artist presenting and reflecting on their work. This supported IB-style learning goals such as independent inquiry, process-based reflection, visual communication, contextual awareness, and the ability to explain artistic choices with relevant terminology.
By the end of the course, students have strengthened their ability to:
• apply relevant visual arts terminology in analysis and reflection
• examine portraits through form, content, context, and viewer response
• understand selected characteristics of Modernism and expressionist portraiture
• experiment with visual and spatial strategies in aesthetic processes
• explain artistic choices (including material possibilities and limitations)
• reflect on identity, self-representation, and viewer experience in a global and contemporary context
A few artists/works we have studied:
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Everlyn Nicodemus
• Sarah Biffin
• Gwen John
• Anna Boghiguian
• Laure Prouvost
• Anicka Yi
• Olafur Eliasson
• Cardiff and Miller
• Platon
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