Portrait Tales

The English, even as they are masters of written biography (no one can touch Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, and Marcel Proust found in George D. Painter the painter of his life. . .), are great lovers of drawn and painted portraits. To the extent that a museum in London, the National Portrait Gallery, is entirely devoted to them.' Fables, memories, things he's read, things he's seen, transposed or made up, the stories gathered in this slim volume have the portrait, portraitists and the portraitees as common themes. Frémon takes the reader around the world, hopping through art history, as facts and personal memories are retold with imaginative flair for the telling detail: from an impossible portrait of Jesus in 50 AD, which somehow brings J.L. Godard into the picture, to the 14th c. Ottoman Empire, to China's Qing Dynasty, the Italian Renaissance, French Rococo, and Louise Bourgeois's mirrors, these historiettes expound the paradoxes, the necessity, and the dangers of seeking truthfulness in art. With gentle but unmistakable irony, they highlight the intricate connexion between art and power. 'As far back as Plotinus, who warned against that ugly custom of leaving an image of one's appearance behind us, we have ceaselessly given ourselves over to the urge to parry death with the image.' Jean Frémon's imaginary diary of Louise Bourgeois Now, Now, Louison (trans. Cole Swensen, 2019) was published to critical acclaim, and translated into several languages. Nativity (2020), with ink drawings by Bourgeois, represents a different facet in Frémon's ample body of work, multiplied here in Portrait Tales.