Tag: Portraiture

• June 30, 2014

  Philosophical Portraiture: Courage and Nobility

  About a month ago, Aleksandra completed a philosophical portrait of a woman who is seeking to live the life of a modern mystic (below). In her work on philosophical portraiture, the claim Aleksandra wants to make is that she is not rendering the subject in a too literal form of mimesis as if the photograph of…
• May 1, 2014

  Philosophical portraiture: ‘What the eyes cannot see’

  In Aleksandra’s recently completed philosophical portrait (visible below), the man exhibits soft concentration while the woman exudes a soft composure attained through experience and contemplative practice. Both appear to be thinking together about the non-discursive. The allusion in the title is to an early Daoist text called Inward Training. In Verse 4, the authors write, As for the Way: It…
• February 26, 2014

  Philosophical portraiture: The common ear

  The screen shot included below is an example of philosophical portraiture by Aleksandra Marcella Lauro. Philosophical portraiture is concerned with the project of self-cultivation–specifically, with how one comes into contact with what is higher. Here, the figure on the viewer’s left is wholesome, earnest, yet naive in the ways of the world. The figure on…