Lounsberry+ES

Emma Smith

"Pieces and the Frame: McPhee and Portraiture" By Barbara Lounsberry

Barbara Lounsberry writes about McPhee as a portrait artist in “Pieces and the Frame: McPhee and Portraiture”. She opens up by describing McPhee as a landscape painter, as someone who is driven by his power of observation. But she says, “McPhee has always been more than a deft landscape painter. He is an extraordinary portrait painter as well.” Lounsberry spends the rest of the article going into depth about McPhee’s gift as a portrait painter.

Lounsberry goes into some background of how McPhee got into profile writing. He was 21 when he read a profile written by Alva Johnston in the New Yorker. Lounsberry writes a lot about how influential Johnston became to McPhee’s writing. But before McPhee made it to the //New Yorker// he was working for //Time// magazine. Lounsberry calls this phase his “show business” days, where he wrote miniature profiles on mostly celebrities. Although he wasn’t given the free reign he would be given at the //New Yorker,// readers still got a sense of who McPhee was. During this time, “McPhee offers the first signs of his penchant for framing his subjects as representative figures, as models of human achievement.”

Throughout this article Lounsberry talks about McPhee’s love of the heroic. He continued the 19th century tradition of Emerson by choosing “representative men” for his subjects. McPhee was drawn to people who excelled in their fields and who showed us a glimpse of perfection. Yet, Lounsberry is careful to make the distinction that McPhee also searched out those lesser known. This made his work more fresh and contemporary than men like Emerson.

As a portrait writer McPhee wanted to get all sides of a person. He was concerned with the multi-faceted and multi-dimensional nature of all human beings. Lunsberry says that like a painter, McPhee wanted a panoramic view of his subject. This meant that, unlike other literary journalists like Tom Wolfe, McPhee spent a lot of time with his subjects. He often lived with them and was therefore able to explore the dark and light sides of their lives. Along with this panoramic view, McPhee wrote multi-radial portraits. He went down different avenues and explored all possible routes to make his picture accurate. Lounsberry gives the example of metropolitan museum director, Thomas Hoving. McPhee’s profile on him followed his life, but not in a linear way. McPhee was able to create a portrait of Hoving that incorporated McPhee’s own artistic freedom. He did this by telling his life story in a new and non-linear way.

Lounsberry makes the point that not all McPhee’s portraits were rosy. She quotes McPhee who said, “I have a total inability to conceal my mood.” Above all else McPhee disliked the flaw of hubris. In “The Survival of the Bark Canoe” McPhee is unable to conceal his feelings towards his subject who was overly proud.

In this article Lounsberry explores McPhee’s style of creating a profile. He drew on influences from literature and Christian myths. Overall, it was McPhee’s wide-ranging mind and curious nature that allowed him to create pictures of people that were fully encompassing. McPhee’s profiles are truthful pictures of what it means to be human. Lounsberry says, “McPhee’s portraiture constitutes an heroic aesthetic religion complete in itself.”