The Easel

In Honour of Faces

Velazquez’s portraits commemorated a person’s public role. Portraiture after Freud tried to portray psychological truths. Now, selfie portraits seem mostly to be self-promotion. A “lavish” portrait show at New York’s Whitney displays examples of all these possibilities. “[D]ecidedly stale” complains one critic; a genre under “great pressure” state the curators. Images are here.