Righteous

Did you know that we all favour the left-hand side of our face when we take/ pose for portraits? This includes over 90 percent of the depictions of Jesus throughout history. This insight is just in from science writer Sam Kern in The Atlantic (you can see the video here) with some speculation about why this might be (more attractive, more emotional). As photographer Peter Peryer was staying with us, we decided to look up his catalogues and test the idea.

Wouldn’t you know it, in practically every portrait he has made Peter Peryer favours exactly the reverse. When Peter isn’t going front-on, he almost invariably has his subjects turn the other cheek, in this case the right-hand one.

We of course did some counting. In the exhibition Erika: a portrait by Peter Peryer three of the portraits are face-on, two favour the left-hand side of the face like the rest of us would, and seven that favour the right. We’re figuring that this tendency may help explain why Peryer’s portraits can be so unsettling and memorable.

Image: Peter Peryer’s Self portrait, 1977

Before Avatar there was Tretchikoff

Who knows how many reproductions there are of the famous Chinese girl in New Zealand? We had a bunch of them back in the 1980s which hung in Cubewell House and least one other is on the back of a Derek Cowie painting The white one.

There's been doubt over the model for the original painting but now it's official: Monika Sing-Lee. She claims the painting was done over a month with sittings twice a week. For her troubles she was paid around twelve bucks. You can read an interview with Sing-Lee and watch a short video about the painting or buy your own copy of the print.

Images: Left, Tretchikoff’s Chinese girl and right, Monika Sing-Lee

Warning to models

"We can put an end to a centuries-old dispute and also understand Leonardo's relations to his models."

The guy who wants to dig up the bones of the woman who modeled for the Mona Lisa. Story here.

 Image: Mona Lisa's leg bone (reconstruction only)

When good models turn bad

Advice to life models