Tom Moore 'Politicians'

John F. Kennedy

Tom Moore's Politicians is a short book containing twenty portraits of prominent historical politicians, made using a calligraphy pen and black ink. They are varied in tone, ranging from grotesque, caricatured images, to more simple renditions of their subject. Responses to these images are prefigured by the book's Introduction which emphasises the relationship between the person viewing the image, or the artist drawing them, and the twenty subjects, who have (to varying degrees) become iconic in our culture; whose images themselves seem to expect a response - at least of vague recognition, if not numerous patterns of, possibly strongly emotional, relations; as Moore puts it, " a notoriety that imbues an image, so that it becomes not a person but a power."

Benito Mussolini

This notion could explain the varying degrees of caricature or uncannyness given to each portrait. The typical historical villains - we have Thatcher here alongside Brutus, Mussolini and Napoleon - all seem to express the concept that power distorts those who hold it (Thatcher in fact appears here as eerily chirpy; perhaps that nonchalance is what so many find villainous). Napoleon appears as if from some slim darkness, his eye wild and rather old; Brutus looks absurdly cunning. They spill over into the comic or macabre - into the territory of Peake, or even Disney.

Rupert Murdoch

Yet by maintaining this formula of powerful politicians/despots as physically warped villains the portraits speak also of that powerful notoriety itself, which is perpetually at work on the images of these specific humans. Moore points out that these portraits, due to their lack of physically present subject, relied on images themselves: "I found as many as I could, as cheaply as I could. I worked from one with reference to the others." These portraits therefore appear built from many other portraits, many other images and forms of images.

It's stimulating to think how two of the book's subjects, say Rasputin and Rupert Murdoch, may radically differ in the artist's work due to the images which are available of them; ultimately due to the mediums of image making available and how the prevalence and practices - be they ethical, political or otherwise - of image making differed in their time and culture. Therefore, how we and the artist understands them, how we know them visually, is completely linked to the technology and image making practices of their time. Moore, however, sustains some control:

Rasputin

while being this observer you also have to be almost underhandedly active, you have to turn away and do something secretly behind their back. You have to be faithful but it is not to the truth of them but to the truth of your relation to them, one which is dissected and reassembled constantly with the image of them in the creation of the portrait.  

There is then a complex relation here between person and image making, on both sides of the portraits in this book. Happily the portraits themselves, which should surely appear weighed down in some form  by these endless relations, are often very human and expressive. As I mentioned above the portraits are remarkably varied in tone; ranging from those with an air of the haunted - of the notorious - to those with less disreputable histories. They are all interesting to consider in relation to their specific stories and the set as a whole is enormously rewarding.

Tom Moore's Politicians is published by Monster Emporium Press who gave permission for the reproduction of the images. cheers guys!