What compels me to look and look again, is that the artist seems to have distilled some ‘ essence of Hobbes’. I am drawn to return to him in his painting even though I am not drawn to return to his writing. Yet, the person I see seems so utterly at odds with the thinker I have studied. He of the infamous anti-utopian dictum that life without law is ‘nasty brutish and short’.
Each time I visit it I am struck by the contrast between the Thomas Hobbes I have read and the man who is looking at me. The face is intelligent yet surprisingly benign, not in the least smug and even somewhat self-effacing. And when I say I visited it, of course I mean I clicked on it, which is the only way one can visit these paintings in a pandemic lockdown.
It is tucked down a quiet hallway of the National Portrait Gallery in London. This morning, before settling in to write this nutshell, I visited a portrait. Lucy Dahlsen | King’s Cultural Institute | CPA
She is currently studying for an MA in Philosophy at King’s College, London. She was also co-curator of the Gallery’s major group exhibition Michael Jackson: On the Wall (2018) and was assistant curator on exhibitions of the artists Howard Hodgkin (2017) and Alberto Giacometti (2016). Her recent projects at the NPG include curating solo exhibitions of the contemporary artists Elizabeth Peyton (2019-20), Njideka Akunyili Crosby (2018) and Samuel Fosso (2017). Lucy Dahlsen is a curator based in London and former Associate Curator of 20th century and contemporary portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery. LUCY DAHLSEN ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF PORTRAITURE
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