https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1U-0XP5elg
Johnathon Yeo’s portrait of the king is replete with all his vices. It is technically superficial and unfelt. There’s no insight into the king’s personality here, just a weird allegory about a monarch butterfly that Yeo says symbolizes his metamorphosis from prince to king.
Nice flattery. So it’s no surprise King Charles was said to be pleased with his first official portrait since being crowned. As he courageously copes with cancer, who’d begrudge any pleasure this glowing red homage gives good old King Charles? But the pleasing effect of joy and uplift as Charles’s red military uniform melds with a pinkish psychedelic splurge that was bought at the price of any genuine artistic perceptiveness or purpose.
Yeo’s art is formulaic, and this one follows the formula. He does a pedantic study of someone’s features then – daringly! – collides this staid depiction with a free burst of lurid abstract wallpaper.
He did Cara Delevingne in a vague subaqua setting and Taron Egerton in purple and pink rain. This is an evasion of actual portraiture based on acute, and hard observation. Royalists want portraits that look at their idols too astutely.
Only one great artist in recent times has been allowed near a royal head: Lucian Freud’s searching, cruelly honest portrait of Queen Elizabeth II will never be loved by sentimentalists because it dares to treat the regal personage as just another person. And to be fair, Yeo has seen Charles in the same way he sees everyone – blandly.
I would say his portrayal of that kindly face adds nothing to what we see of Charles in photos and TV images, except that it is not fair to photographers and camera people who often capture awkward, complex moments in the royal interaction with reality. Even the deferential coverage of the accession gave us those less-than-jolly glimpses of Charles infuriated by a pen.
It’s tempting to laugh at this painting, but if you care about art, it’s a little sad as well. Yeo seems to be saying that the painting is just a cheery bit of fakery and razzle-dazzle. Who cares about the truth when you can beautify? A serious portrait would look hard and long at Charles (or anyone), not combine facile pseudo-portraiture with the cheery serotonin of random colour. We all know the king is more complex than this. The king knows he is more complicated than this.
When the portrait was unveiled it should be noted that this was not what King Charles expected as he twinged slightly when he first saw it. It was commissioned before the coronation in consultation with Charles while he was still a Prince. So unless he specifically requested what we now see it is still just the interpretation only of the artist that now leaves everyone to gasp at its shock and aware effect which is likely what he intended rather than a conventional portrait.
It is a masterpiece of shallowness by an artist so ludicrously upbeat that he should be called Jonathan Yeo!
Blessings
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