Friday, May 3, 2024

do portraits begin to resemble their subjects?

William Zorach, Art Is My Life: The autobiography of William Zorach. Cleveland OH: World Publishing, 1967, p 130—

There is a disconcerting thing about portraits. Someone does your portrait and you don't like it, your friends don't like it; everyone says it doesn't look like you. A few years go by and you look like that portrait and all your family and all your friends say, "What a good likeness." People, they say, begin to look like their dogs. Maybe this is somewhat the same thing.