Portrait Wall Art

A portrait is the only subject that looks back, and that single fact governs everything about where one can go. A landscape is a window and can hang anywhere. A face is a presence, and people are far more particular about which rooms they want a presence in.

Named and unnamed, and the difference is not subtle

A recognisable face — Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin — says something about the owner. It is a reference, and it invites a reaction. That is often exactly the intention, and it is why those pieces suit social rooms: kitchens, bars, home cinemas, anywhere conversation happens.

An anonymous figure says nothing except what the treatment says. A cubist woman in greys, a stippled profile, a face emerging from op-art stripes — these are formal exercises, and they hang comfortably in bedrooms and hallways where a celebrity portrait would feel like a statement being made.

The treatments

Cubist and geometric work breaks the face into planes; the subject becomes structure and the piece reads as modern art. Stippled and halftone treatments come out of print history and carry a graphic, poster-like quality. Fashion profiles — a woman under a wide brim, closed eyes, a red lip — are the most decorative and the easiest to live with.

Hanging a face

Lower and closer than you would hang anything else. A portrait is meant to be met at eye level, and a face hung high looks like it is presiding over the room, which is rarely the effect anybody wants at home.

Give it a wall where you approach from the front rather than the side. A portrait seen edge-on from a doorway loses the one thing it has.

Groups

Faces in a row work well — same size, even gaps, three or four of them — and they work better when the treatment is consistent than when the subjects are related. Three different styles of the same person looks like indecision; three different people in the same style looks like a collection.