'Let Slip the Dogs of War'
René J. Marquez, University of Delaware

Presented at the College Art Association National Conference, 2009
Los Angeles, CA

Panel: Battlelines: Painting Portraits Today
Chair: Brandon Brame Fortune
Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture
National Portrait Gallery

Abstract: Can we speak of contemporary painting as a battlefield, with portraiture as a casualty? Or can portraiture exist more as a weapon? This paper examines the position of the human portrait in contemporary painting by contrasting it with the contemporary pet portrait, dog portraits specifically. While human portraiture may be derided for its sentimentality, dog portraiture embraces sentimentality, embodying it and flaunting it unapologetically. Does the inherent “self-awareness” of pet portraiture constitute a valid strategy in the standards of contemporary discourse? Does the human portrait speak to culturally derived constructs while the pet portrait speaks to something irreducible, something “natural”? And, in this irreducibility, does the portrait genre find a posthumanist voice that offers a broader context for consideration?