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Memorial Head
Artist / Origin: Akan artist, Twifo region, Hemang city, Ghana
Region: Africa
Date: 17th century
Period: 1400 CE – 1800 CE
Material: Terracotta, roots, quartz fragments
Medium: Sculpture
Dimensions: H: approx. 8 in. (20.24 cm.)
Location: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection
Gertrude Stein
Artist / Origin: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)
Region: Europe
Date: 1906
Period: 1900 CE – 2010 CE
Material: Oil on canvas
Medium: Painting
Dimensions: H: 39 3/8 in. (100 cm.), W: 32 in. (81.3 cm.)
Location: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Gertrude Stein, 1946 © 2009 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
The notion that likeness means an accurate representation of individual facial features in a realistic mode is an idea that is very much rooted in Western European tradition and one that did not gain widespread currency until the Renaissance. In their own ways, both the terracotta portrait head and Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein demand that we reconsider what a likeness might be, and in the process, question our assumptions about what portraiture is.