Discussed the universality of portraits in daily life and their development as the oldest subject matter in art history. Portrait art has evolved from rock painting, sculpture to painting since the Paleolithic era, becoming a part of modern social and cultural phenomena. People express emotions, concepts, and aesthetic pursuits through portraits, while also perceiving themselves and interpreting others. Portraits deeply participate in cultural construction from the perspective of cultural studies, reflecting the understanding and expression of identity, personality, power, status, and social relationships in specific cultural, social, and historical contexts.

The concept and function of a portrait

The term 'portrait' originated from Middle Latin and refers to the artistic representation of a specific person or object, as well as the portrayal of character images through written language, photography, and other forms. Portrait works create works with profound connotations by capturing the characteristics of characters, combining internal traits and external images. Portrait originates from emotional drive and is born out of absence, becoming a way to express longing for those who are not present or mourning for the deceased. Portrait products have become material substitutes, dispelling the sadness of separation, filling the void of physical absence, and even becoming carriers for the reincarnation of the deceased. Portraits played an important role in ancient Greek and Roman art, closely related to the emphasis on human nature. In ancient Rome, portraits became a carrier of political information, promoting and flaunting social status. In medieval religious art, portraits paradoxically constructed a connection between the sacred and the secular, conveying doctrine through icons and strengthening the religious memory of believers. As a medium of power, portraits demonstrate the symbiotic logic between religious authority and aristocratic class. In the 15th century, humanism valued individual achievement and reputation, and portrait painting experienced a comprehensive revival, breaking the monopoly of religion on the form of portrait expression. The awakening of the creative subject of portrait painting is based on the rediscovery of geometric order, and artists use mathematical rules to regulate visual expression and reconstruct visual reality. Portraits, as agents of the physical body, participate in the exercise of power. Noble portrait paintings integrate family order, emphasize bloodline legitimacy, and regulate the behavior of future generations. In the late 17th century, group portraits became popular, visualizing social status through image consumption and reflecting respect for individual value. The rational thought of the 18th century reconstructed the way humans understand the world and themselves, focusing on individual facial features and establishing the independent aesthetic value of facial features. The wave of nationalism in the 19th century forged portraits into propaganda devices, emphasizing individuality and class, and promoting ancestor worship. The national level hero temple reveals the operational mechanism of portrait politics, integrating personal portraits into national portraits and becoming a sanctuary for national spirit.

Two portraits in the diversification and proliferation of modern times

The popularity of modern portrait products in daily life has made it possible to reproduce prototypes and the presence of absentees, but this tradition faces complex situations and crises in modern times. The development of realism and positivism in the 19th century brought the realistic tendency of portrait painting to its extreme, but the emergence of photography posed a challenge to it, leading painting to shift towards more subjective and profound expression. Artists pursue sensory experience to restore nature, cutting off the connection between portraits and prototypes, shifting the relationship between portraits and prototypes from imitation to intertextuality, and from reproduction to questioning. The traditional realism collapses, fixed perspective points move, and portraits lose their solid contours, becoming amorphous in appearance. The dilemma faced by modern portraits is closely related to the overall cutting of the traditional life world by the modernization process, and complete portraits no longer exist. The recognition function of portraits ensures that individuals can freely shuttle between political, economic, and cultural systems, and occupy a place in national governance. The progress of modern medical research has elucidated the principles and mechanisms of portrait generation, such as the discovery of facial blindness and the possibility of reconstructing personal physical characteristics from genetic data. Modern medical aesthetics enhances the artificial editability of facial features, reduces the certainty of biological genetic facial characteristics, and leads to portrait homogenization. The 'end' of portrait is the starting point of its transformation from a single paradigm to a diverse paradigm, enriching the forms of portrait expression. Neuroimaging transforms invisible physiological differences into "brain portraits" that distinguish individuals, with fingerprints, handwriting, DNA, and other identifiable personality traits. Digital technology enables portraits to be replicated and disseminated at no cost, leading to their proliferation and devaluation, posing a threat to reality through simulation. The interpretation modes and dimensions of modern portraits are rich, connecting individuals, groups, and social norms, becoming one of the core representations of modernity. Gadamer's hermeneutic theory provides a dynamic framework for the interpretation of portraits, giving the meaning of portraits a continuity beyond the image itself. Modern portrait takes the individual's gaze as the starting point, establishing a connection between the image and the body, forming a new understanding of the relationship between the image, gaze, and body. The bidirectional gaze of self and others participates in the construction of subjectivity, pushing the portrait from the private domain to the public domain. Nancy and Bertin's viewpoint elevates the interpretation of portrait to the ontological level, and portrait painting jumps from self confirmation of the subject to a certain absolute subject spirit. It is no longer a document that records facial features, but a field where the subject spirit is manifested. Modern portrait is understood as the personality of modern individuals, which is a visual expression of their inner selves. The creation of a portrait can be spontaneous, not created to praise, commemorate, or defend anyone, but simply to seek a final portrait. Portrait becomes a spiritual collection of human beings, approaching the intuitive concept of 'human'.

Portraits in Three Literatures: Poetic Interpretation of Human Beings

Explored the concept of portrait in literature and its interactive relationship with words. Portraits are not only images, but also involve the deep involvement of words, including their appearance as material works of art in literary texts and the poetic construction of character images at the textual level. During the Renaissance, the dispute between Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo over their creative ideas influenced the development of portraits. Michelangelo pursued ideal beauty while weakening similarity and increasing the necessity of text in portraits. Aristotle juxtaposed poets with portrait painters in his Poetics, emphasizing that poets should learn the idealized techniques of portrait painters in order to achieve the purifying effect of poetic art. Lai Xin also believes that painting and poetry have the same mechanism in producing effects. The similarity between portrait painting and biographical literature lies in the fact that both convey personal information and inevitably contain fictional elements in the shaping process. The relationship between biography and portrait painting reached its peak in the 18th and 19th centuries, with literary biographies being accompanied by printmaking portraits when published, and text and images complementing each other. The frequent appearance of portraits or sculptures in literary works, such as those by authors like Goethe, Kleist, Murrick, Hesse, Mann, and Roth, reflects the attention of art and literature to issues such as self-awareness and personal identity in the process of modernization. Literary portraits participate in text weaving in symbolic form, filling in the construction of textual meaning, with the aim of achieving maximum similarity with the target characters and reproducing their essence and characteristics in detail. The scope of literary portraits is broader than that of painted portraits, and the readability of text extends the scope of portraits, transforming the portrayal of people into a comprehensive description. The portrait and plot development are interdependent, jointly constructing the fictional world in the text. Works not only shape the characters in the text, but can also be seen as a self portrait of the writer, a way of presenting oneself. Through the poetic interpretation of portraits, literature itself, as a holistic portrait, shapes the spiritual outlook of the entire era. Portraits and literature both require interpretation, as they are products of various media that require constant vigilance in interpretation.

Four concluding remarks

Portrait, as a key term in cultural studies, showcases the unity of matter and spirit, finite and infinite, contingency and constancy through the prism of facial features. It realistically restores the external appearance through rational construction paradigm, establishes the subjectivity of the prototype, and achieves the function of reproduction. When the integrity of appearance is disrupted, the portrait subverts subjectivity and reveals the struggle of the self in development and deconstruction. Portraits always place people at the center of their field of view, containing an inseparable connection with the world. From appearance to inner self, from observation to understanding, from others to oneself, portrait is the starting point for gaining an understanding of the world. Modern portraits have moved away from the frame, no longer being mere accessories of identity, but rather a symbolic network that engages in equal dialogue with the subject. This transformation echoes the academic trends of "image turn" and "object turn", reflecting the bridging of the traditional Western spiritual material binary thinking. The interest in portrait is the interest in the person themselves. Portraits constantly break down their own boundaries and blend seamlessly with the world.