Pop Art Portraits

Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of portraits from the pop art school.

I must admit this exhibition mainly made me use on the subject of what is a portrait. I feel it is a representation of a real person in a realistic or abstract form not people used in a picture to express something else. I therefore felt the Eduardo Paolozzi’s at the start of the exhibition were not portraits.

I did however like the Marilyn Monroe theme running through the show culminating in a room devoted to her. The Marilyn pictures mainly focused on the effects of fame on a person and an image.

It was great to see a Lichtenstein close up again. We are so used to seeing them in prints that the images are familiar but it is good to be reminded of the sheer precision of the original.

I think my favourite picture was Mel Ramoes “Hunt for the Best” a picture of his wife with a ketchup bottle. I also liked the dialogue it unconsciously set up with previous exhibitions such as last year Hockney portraits and whichever exhibition had had Warhol’s “Double Elvis”, “Painting the Century?”

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