Danny Keith
Bearded Bust, 2011
Oil on panel
16 x 12 inches
Courtesy of Ratio 3

Retail value: $4,500

Contemporary takes on traditional subjects do not always enrich them, but in this portrait series, Boston-based painter Danny Keith extended the range of subtlety and metaphor inherent in portraiture. While Keith takes a classical approach to painting, his work is very contemporary: he takes on the relationship between beauty and gender. This work, Bearded Bust (2011), is the only still life in a series that otherwise comprises male portraits. Keith adorns his sitters with accessories to question gendered clichés of beauty. For example, In Fox Fur No. 2 (2011), the subject wears a fur that could serve as either a feminine stole or a masculine hood.  Keith uses accessories as metaphors for transformations of identity and notions of beauty. 

Keith’s painting technique is traditional, but his styling of his subjects puts a contemporary stamp on his art. This recent series is built around the classical bust, yet the emphasis is on facial features that define beauty, rather than the identity of the subject (such as Socrates or Zeus). The beard is the important detail here. 

The great British portrait artist Thomas Gainsborough claimed that, “the principal beauty and intention of a portrait lay in its likeness.” Although praiseworthy in that regard, this painting is significant for the ways in which Keith has questioned historical and even clichéd perceptions of beauty—both in art and in life. 

Currently a Boston resident, Danny Keith was born in Woodsville, New Hampshire, in 1966. He received a BA in graphic design from Notre Dame College, Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1988 and an MFA in painting from California College of the Arts, San Francisco, in 2008.  He is represented by the gallery Ratio 3 in San Francisco, where he has shown in several solo exhibitions. Keith has also participated in many group exhibitions in galleries in San Francisco; Santa Monica, California; Pomona, California; and Portland, Oregon.

Back to event page | Lots: 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16