The Queen: Art and Image In February 2012, the Queen will have been on the throne for 60 years. The Jubilee is almost upon us, and events kick off tomorrow with the opening of The Queen: Art And Image at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. Organised by the National Portrait Gallery, the show starts here, calling next at Belfast and Cardiff and London. For fans of the Queen, there is glamour, intimacy, and some things which may shock. For republicans, there is also a story worth hearing: about how a seemingly infallible product has been forced to rebrand to catch up with a rapidly changing society. The story is told in clear chronological steps: starting with the 50s and 60s when the Queen was youthful and glamorous; moving on to the 70s and 80s when dissent and revolution were in the air; and finishing with the last two decades, when the Queen learned the hard way to reveal a little more of the ordinary human being under the crown. If you’ve ever watched Big Brother, you’ll know that the greatest modern crime is artifice. To be two-faced, insincere or at all controlling is to see yourself voted out. Authenticity is what the people want. That is the story of this exhibition. The first few photographs encapsulate much of this conflict between the authentic and the artificial. Although the beginning of the Queen’s reign harked back to a more glorious Victorian era, the first picture in this exhibition is actually a small, candid press photograph. It depicts the young Elizabeth moments after she has stepped off a plane, just after her father’s death. While others talk, she looks, for a moment, the other way. She is the shortest in the group, and alone in her anticipation of everything that is to come. This uncredited photograph heralded, before its time, the sort of natural, spontaneous image we are accustomed to today. Next to the black and white image sits a hand-coloured photographic portrait by Dorothy Wilding. It looks strangely modern, Warholesque. The monochrome posed photograph is overlaid by strong hues, creating a totally artificial impression. It is layer upon layer of conscious image-making, a far cry from the solitary figure caught off guard a few months before. Then there is a curious Cecil Beaton portrait taken on the day of her majesty’s coronation. The robed monarch sits on her throne, oddly thrust towards the viewer by the backdrop, a view of Westminster Abbey soaring up and back behind her. This disorienting clash of perspectives – with hints of expressionism and film noir – puts the young Elizabeth at the heart of a dramatic performance, with no physical anchor in reality. Most of the pictures in this show are simply titled Queen Elizabeth II, which opens up a can of worms in Scotland. But issues of devolution and nationalism appear to be taboo; the catalogue deals comfortably with the disintegration of the British Empire, going on to say that “the British nation itself has been significantly transformed within”; then completely failing to mention the obvious. More irritating, art historically, is the omission of the influential royal portrait of 1954-5 by Pietro Annigoni; lending restrictions mean the oil painting will only go on show in London. Many later images refer directly to this precedent, including Annie Leibowitz’s stormy portrait of 2007. Annigoni’s later commission is included, but to my mind it is a ghastly thing; a wall-eyed Godzilla arising from the deep. The middle room of the exhibition is where the real visual debate begins. Jamie Reid’s iconic Sex Pistols design must have been a real shock, coming after the deferential portraiture which went before. Andy Warhol’s line of four garish head-shots puts the Queen on a par with the Campbell’s soup tin; a product designed for mass consumption, an image of an image. Gilbert and George’s ambiguous collages pose questions about power, and most damning of all, a photograph from the Evening Standard shows the Queen charging ahead of Charles and Diana, unable to disguise her rage. As you advance through the three-roomed exhibition, you make your way towards a ghostly apparition. It is the Queen, with her eyes shut, twice life-size. She is a holographic image in a light box, set into a black recess like a saintly relic, glowing in her shrine. Chris Levine’s portrait of 2007 was taken as the Queen rested her eyes, and the result hovers powerfully between holiness and human frailty. That portrait is the result of a new approach at the Palace, recognising the public’s hunger for a more accessible, human head of state. So is the new commission by Thomas Struth, just unveiled, in which the Queen and her husband sit side by side on their sofa. Elizabeth’s beady eyes scrutinise us for a moment as her façade drops, and the new, authentic monarch lets us in a little bit more.
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