The Group Portrait

Even though the self-portrait through the effortless ability to make “selfies’ has become ubiquitous we will, nevertheless, collect a trove of snapshots over a lifetime. These will include group portraits that document the social context of our lives, showing us with our families, our friends, and our colleagues. Whether formally or informally composed, individual faces and gestures will be subsumed into the congregate reality of the group. The occasions and events these images record will range from collectively celebrated birthdays, parties, holidays, sightseeing excursions to professional gatherings.

The group portrait has a long and rich history, gaining social import and a high degree of artistic excellence in Dutch painting of the seventeenth century.  As an artist with training as an art historian, Dean learned how to compose tableaux on an epic scale using his animatronic figures, his studio assistants, and himself as actors in a variety of provocative and playful narratives as seen in Case Study: Gross Clinic; Still- At the Gym; Still- The Agnew Clinic; Still – Studio View After Jan Van Eyck, 2019.

Gross Clinic, Case Study

2016, chromogenic print
Artist collaboration with Andrew Savery-Whiteway
Credit: Max Dean / courtesy Stephen Bulger Gallery

Above

Jan Van Eyck (active 1422, died 1441) Portrait of Giovanni(?)Arnolfini and his Wife, 1434

Oil on oak
82.2 x 60.0 cm
National Gallery, London Inv. NG 186

Left

Still – Studio View After Jan Van Eyck, 2019

Chromogenic print, 48.90 X 73.03 cm
Artist collaboration with Andrew Savery-Whiteway
Credit: Max Dean / courtesy Stephen Bulger Gallery

Still – at the Gym

2020, chromogenic print
Artist collaboration with Andrew Savery-Whiteway
Credit: Max Dean / courtesy Stephen Bulger Gallery

Above

Thomas Eakins – Agnew Clinic, 1889

oil, canvas
300 X 214 cm

Left

Still – Agnew Clinic, 2020

Chromogenic print, 48.90 X 73.03 cm
from the series Still – Living Through Cancer and Covid
Artist collaboration with Andrew Savery-Whiteway
Credit: Max Dean / courtesy Stephen Bulger Gallery