Dotting the walls in a champagne-colored alcove in the Art Collector's Lounge at the Art Basel Miami Beach convention center are 19 faceless portraits. They are tiny, most measure less than about four or five inches. But the work is intricate; without facial features, the period clothing and various hairstyles tell a small story of each subject. These are the works by Israeli artist Gideon Rubin commissioned by Ruinart Champagne. For the project, Rubin painted various figures who played key roles in Ruinart's illustrious history, and on pieces of the Champagne house's cardboard packaging. Whitewall sat down with Rubin to discuss the series and his inspiration.
WHITEWALL: How did Ruinart Champagne approach you for this project?
GIDEON RUBIN: The contacted my gallery, Karsten Greve, a German/French gallery. Ruinart saw my work there and they liked the cardboard. So Ruinart contacted them and offered me this commission.
WW: Ruinart is the oldest Champagne house in the world. How did their history inspire your works?
GR: When I paint my cardboards, they usually span hundreds of years. I paint from my art history books, from Rembrandt and Vasquez, to Hello! magazine and celebrity culture. So this is something that I do already. They wanted me to paint the whole lineage; that is their pride and joy. They have the same tradition from 1729 up until today.
WW: How does working on cardboard compare to working on a basic canvas? What made you decide to begin working with cardboard?
GR: I started pretty much 5 years ago, in 2006, and it kind of evolved and evolved. They really started as an antidote. It was like a break for my paintings. I was painting old twentieth century black and white photographs and was kind of a quick thing. And they have just evolved as something so much more intricate than when I started. And now I can work, like, an hour on hair.
WW: You use the actual cardboard packaging from Ruinart boxes.
GR: Yes, that was part of the thing that Ruinart liked as well. I don't really do commissions, but when Ruinart offered, they said, look, you paint our people, which is fine by me, and you get our boxes, which is what I do anyways. I have the labels cut out and everything. They basically said, do what you do, but for us. It was pretty simple. You can't say no to that!
WW: You paint your subjects without faces. Can you tell me about the philosophy behind this method of portraiture?
GR: It started pretty much when I started painting the old photographs. There's a few things. First of all, I'm looking to make portraits that are specific to the individual and general at the same time. As viewers, we look at the portrait and it doesn't matter what is there; you see the features first and you negate everything else. I'm looking at everything else, at every little detail that is really considered. The stand, the posture, the hair, the style of clothing, and I want you to come back to the face instead of the other way around. Instead of the exact opposite where you just cancel everything else.
WW: What intrigues you about portraits? Why not landscapes?
GR: I do a little bit of landscapes, but I have always painted portraits. It's so internal, I was always painting portraits, even before I was doing the faceless ones, when I was making hard-edge figurative paintings. I was always interested in the interactions so for me it was a very natural thing.
WW: Do you have a favorite figure in the Ruinart series?
GR: I don't think I have a favorite, you know, because they were all quite interesting. What I do with my cardboards, and my paintings too, is that these are anonymous people. I'd really rather not know anything about them. When you start to paint them, you start discovering things. When you attach one thing to another, you find a connection, a theme going on, which I enjoy discovering. I do really like the Prince, the blue one. The one of Prince Joseph [of Ligne].
WW: I noticed that a lot of your paintings seem like old family photos, like finding a box of photographs in the attic or something. And you do actually refer to old photographs. How did you begin that process?
GR: I've always been into nostalgia, to history and memory. You can see it in the portraiture, it has always been a theme that goes through my work. I started going to flea markets and things like that. I like the unknown in these photographs. I don't know their story, I can make it up and I think the viewer can in a way. So eBay became the perfect thing! I could find all these old photo albums from the 1920's or 1930's and see all these families and you have no context. You know nothing about these people. You make all these connections, like between what you are doing now and your memory. It's this anonymous thing. Being Israeli, coming from Israel, my family came from Europe after World War II and there's not much left. There are no family albums from that generation. My parents don't have family albums of their parents. You know, these are people who have maybe one photo and nothing else. For me it sort of became reclaiming a past, almost like an alternate reality, in a way. A parallel reality.
Gideon Rubin's "Collection of Ruinart Portraits" will be on display in the Art Collector's Lounge at the convention center from December 1st though 4th.
Portraits of Rubin courtesy of Erica Simone. Studio photos by Ben Murphy.
