Mick Hartley

From Now You See Me, by Thomas J Price, at the National Portrait Gallery:

The accompanying text:

Representing an anonymous twenty-first century subject, this large scale work makes reference to ancient traditions of monumental sculpture… Price has cast this head in aluminium, a material used for making computers, cars and phones. The fictional subject, with his contemporary "fade" haircut, is presented on a grand Italian marble column. Price uses the conventions of portraiture and subverts tradition to position this character as an object of worship in a modern age.

Well fair enough – the classical European tradition in sculpture is indeed noticeably short of black subjects…mainly because the men on the pedestals tended to be European. Where black men are put on monumental pedestals in imitation of the European tradition – in Senegal, for instance - the results can tend to kitsch and bombast.

But yes, harshly lit, in a side room on its own, this is effective and powerful.

[Numen, I should say, is the title of the piece.]