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"\"21st-Century Portraits\" Surveys the World's Most Cutting-Edge Contemporary Artists\nA new compendium from London's National Portrait Gallery surveys the most inspiring new portraiture by today's artists\nDutch photographer Hendrik Kerstens's work mimics the moody portraits by the 17th-century masters from his home country, with modern twists. The artist's daughter, Paula, glows against a dramatic backdrop, her face cast in a soft light, her gaze intimate. Kersten makes droll sartorial references to works by Vermeer, outfitting his subject with a single pearl stud and an enormous ruff made of stacked doilies.\nFor Australian Aboriginal artist Daniel Boyd, the grand portraits of Europe's monarchs are reminders of a painful racial narrative. Boyd turns cultural appropriation on its head by deftly re-creating 18th-century paintings of figures who spearheaded the colonization of Australia. In King No Beard, the artist presents Nathaniel Dance's 1773 portrait of King George III with some small adjustments to the monarch's regal finery. The chain of gold buckles that decorated the king's ermine mantle in the original has been exchanged for skulls strung together like small tokens of conquest. The absurd parrot and eye patch mark the sovereign as little better than a thieving pirate, and St. Edward's crown, which sat on the table at left in Dance's work, is replaced by a saintlike representation of Boyd's own face trapped in a jar.\nWhile Bettina von Zwehl's photographs in profile recall the work of early Renaissance painters, she infuses each portrait with a subtle vulnerability that only the click of a shutter can capture. In her \"Made up love song\" series, the artist responds to the 16th-century obsession with miniature portraits, shooting her assistant Sophia more than 30 times and printing the images as circular C-types at 58mm in diameter. The poses and even the clothing are nearly identical, but across each frame the subject's face shifts expressions ever so slightly.\nJapanese-born, London-based sculptor Tomoaki Suzuki takes a different approach to the miniature. Inspired by the proliferation of blogs about street style and infatuated with the nowness of fashion trends, Suzuki selects his subjects from among his most stylish friends and art-world acquaintances. The artist first photographs each subject from every angle, and then carves the sitters' likenesses from wood, creating three-dimensional portraits. Though small, the sculptures are highly detailed, as Suzuki expertly reproduces one friend's tattoos and another's beer can and cigarette. For the artist's solo show at SCAI the Bathhouse in Tokyo in 2010, viewers walked among these tiny figures, observing a microcosm of contemporary fashion from above.\nOriginally trained in traditional painting, photographer Steven Klein has lent his name to numerous fashion campaigns and magazine editorials. A series of Klein's images for W Magazine featuring Madonna for reimagines the singer as a performance artist capable of assuming unrecognizable identities. On all fours in a sequined costume and mask, the star takes an animalistic stance, as if ready for a fight. Her eyes, glaring at something out of frame, mark her as a hungry and powerful figure."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/21st-century-portraits-book-slideshow>