Clegg & Guttmann - Rejected

Present on the international contemporary art scene since the early 1980’s, Clegg & Guttmann take up a visual rhetoric reminiscent of the bourgeois portraits of the Dutch Golden Age, while at the same time referencing the group images that crystallize the powers of the 20th and 21st centuries. They use the conventions of 17th century Dutch portraiture to place them in a contemporary context. Clegg & Guttmann’s portraits, presented in the exhibition at the Konschthal Esch, are rejected commissions which involve a very particular protocol in the Clegg & Guttmann method. Thus, the subjects have commissioned a portrait from the artists, but are free to refuse the result. However, the artists retain the right to show and publish the work, which remains their property, even after the commissioner has refused it. This reverse tactic is also symbolic of the power issues in the particular category of portraiture.