Among the many other things it is, a portrait is always a record of the personal and artistic encounter that produced it. It is possible for artists to produce portraits of individuals who have not sat for them, but the portrait that finally emerges normally betrays the restrictions under which the artist has been forced to labor. Even when an artist’’s portrait is simply a copy of someone else’’s work-as in the many portraits of Queen Elizabeth I that were produced during her lifetime-the never-changing features of a ruler who refused to sit for her court painters reflect not only the supposed powers of an ever-youthful queen but the remoteness of those attempting to depict her as well.
Portraits are "occasional" not only in the sense that they are closely tied to particular events in the lives of their subjects but in the sense that there is usually an occasion-however brief, uncomfortable, artificial, or unsatisfactory it may prove to be-in which the artist and subject directly confront each other;and thus the encounter a portrait records is most really the sitting itself. The sitting may be brief or extended, collegial or confrontational. Cartier-Bresson has expressed his passion for portrait photography by characterizing it as "a duel without rules". While Cartier-Bresson reveals himself as an interloper and opportunist, Richard Avedon confesses to a role as diagnostician and psychic healer: not as someone who necessarily transforms his subjects, but as someone who reveals their essential nature. Both photographers appear to agree on one basis, however, which is that the fundamental dynamic in this process lies squarely in the hands of the artist.
A quite-different example has its roots not in confrontation or consultation but in active collaboration between the artist and sitter. This very different kind of relationship was formulated most vividly by William Hazlitt in his essay entitled "On Sitting for One’’s Picture". To Hazlitt, the "bond of connection" between painter and sitter is most like the relationship between two lovers: "They are always thinking and talking of the same thing, in which their self love finds an equal counterpart." Hazlitt flashes out his thesis by recounting particular episodes from the career of Sir Joshua Reynolds. According to Hazlitt, Reynolds’’ sitters, accompanied by their friends, were meant to enjoy an atmosphere that was both comfortable for them and conductive to the enterprise of the portrait painter, who was simultaneously their host and their contractual employee. In the case of artists like Reynolds, no fundamental difference exists between the artist’’s studio and all those other rooms in which the sitters spin out the days of their lives. The act of entering Reynolds’’ studio did not necessarily transform those who sat for him. Collaboration in portraiture such as Reynolds’’ is based on the sitter’’s comfort and security as well as on his or her desire to experiment with something new, and it is in this "creation of another self", as Hazlitt put it, that the painter’’s subjects may properly see themselves for the first time.
The author quotes Cartier-Bresson in order to
A．refute Avedon’’s conception about a portrait sitting. B．provide one perspective of the portraiture encounter. C．exemplify time restriction of the sitting for portraiture. D．support the thesis on the uncertainty of a collegial sitting