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Document Type

Text

Broad Creation Date

2026

Language

English

Location

Portland

Abstract

This dissertation examines the contemporary portrait as an enduring and evolving interdisciplinary experience, encounter, and artifact through which identity and Otherness are revealed. Historically, portraiture has served not only to depict the self or the Other but also to record the human condition. From early forms of mimesis to Renaissance anatomical ideals and contemporary neurological insights, the portrait reflects and accumulates shifting cultural, aesthetic, philosophical, and technological frameworks. At this intersection of art, science, theory, and philosophy, the portrait operates as a phenomenological, intersubjective encounter that demonstrates how the visual embodiment of the face anchors contemporary theories of identity and Otherness in relation to and with the Other.

In the early twenty-first century (2000–2025), portraiture takes on new significance, influenced by greater access to cybernetic technology. Rapid technological innovation and the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative systems (GenAI) intensify these dynamics, complicating contemporary understandings and representations of the self and the Other. As a result, the portrait mirrors the aesthetic and conceptual fragmentation of mediated technology within a cybernetic collective. Approaching this circumstance through an interdisciplinary critique, which is inherently fragmented by definition, is the most effective way to comprehend and thereby expand the theorization and evaluation of contemporary portraiture.

Keywords: Portraiture; Contemporary Painting; Interdisciplinary Aesthetics; Embodiment; Phenomenology; Generative Artificial Intelligence

Disciplines

Aesthetics | Arts and Humanities | Human-Computer Interaction | Interdisciplinary Arts and Media | Painting | Philosophy

Publisher

Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts

City

Portland ME

THE EMBODIED PORTRAIT: A CONTEMPORARY CRITIQUE OF FRAGMENTATION, IDENTITY, AND OTHERNESS THROUGH THE FACE



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