Portraits and Psychology: Inner Worlds

Albert Tucker Psycho 1942

The National Portrait Gallery has the ambitious aim of developing a collection of portraits which reflect the ‘breadth and energy of Australian culture and endeavour’.¹ A part of the realisation of this aim is currently on show at the UQ Art Museum until the 23^rd of October in the form of the travelling exhibition Inner Worlds: Portraits and Psychology. Through an intriguing exploration of social history, biography and visual art this exhibition curated by Dr Christopher Chapman illuminates connections between psychology and portraiture in Australia since the early twentieth century.

Described as a ‘window into the subconscious’² Inner Worlds: Portraits and Psychology opens with intimate and telling portraits of just under a dozen portraits of pioneering men and women from the developing field of psychology in Australia from World War I to the 1950s. In the accompanying exhibition catalogue through commissioned essays the network of connections between these figures and their endeavours is fleshed out and provides a unique look at how this field which ‘examines the relationship between behaviour and mental processes’³ was influential to portraiture.⁴ 

For example the close acquaintance between the artists Albert Tucker, Sydney Nolan and Joy Hester with the progressive Melbourne psychiatrist Reginald Ellery is reflected in concerns with psychosis and war trauma in the portrait works during the period surrounding World War II.⁵ Within these works the relationship in their portrait paintings between the mind and physical state of the subject is clear. In each of the works an emphasis is placed on the eyes, which were often depicted as bulging or heavily shadowed in a manner which expressed distress and suggested a traumatised state of mind. In Albert Tuckers works which form the main body of the exhibition, the background of the portraits also reflects a distressed state of mind with distorted perspectives creating a menacing sense of constrictive space.

Also included in the exhibition are portraits and imaginary faces created by mental health patients in the 1950s and 1960s and experimental self-portraits and figure studies by Dale Frank, Anne Ferran and Mike Parr from the 1980s and 1990s which explore highly intense mental states. The final piece of the exhibition is a specially commissioned portrait of a contemporary Australian philosopher of consciousness David Chalmers by artist Nick Mourtzakis. It is with this last work that the evolving relationship of influence between psychology and portraiture is made relevant to contemporary experience, providing a new framework in which to view this classic genre.

Eileen Abood

 1. National Portrait Gallery, 2011, ‘About the Gallery’, viewed 12 September 2011, <http://www.portrait.gov.au/site/info_about.php>.2. University of Queensland, 2011, ‘Art and psychology combine for portrait exhibition’, viewed 12 September 2011, <http://www.uq.edu.au/news/index.html?article=23627>.
3. Chapman, C 2011,‘Inner worlds: Portraits and Psychology’, 2011, National Portrait Gallery, viewed 9 September 2011 , <http://www.portrait.gov.au/exhibit/innerworlds/index.html>.
4. These connections are also explored in an online curatorial talk by Dr Chapman.
5. Damousi, J 2011, ‘War Trauma, Psychology and Portraiture’, Inner worlds: Portraits and Psychology, p. 111, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.