Stylised portraits

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The Netherlands.

Queen Beatrix was forced to abdicate after revealing that she wasn't actually Beatrix Potter.

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Hercule Poirot of Belgium discovered that Queen Beatrix was in fact just a paper cut out.

The stick people of the Netherlands felt persecuted and rebelled. Above you see their flag.

The Dutch police rounded up all the stick people in a football stadium and burned them.

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Sweden. A mechanical king?

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Even the British produced one of these portraits.

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Perhaps we are all really two-dimensional. After all, an atom consists of 99.9999% space - or nothingness. And what are humans made of? Atoms! So are we living in a computer simulation? Elon Musk Thinks So.

The Holographic universe suggests that the physical world we believe to be real is in fact illusion. Energy fields are decoded by our brains into a 3D picture, to give the illusion of a physical world.

[chrisild]

Of course the first image should be rotated 90° CW, you ruthless rabbit. Apart from that, I am sure you can find many portraits of Queen Beatrix that could rightfully be added to this topic.   Then there is that famous portrait of the Belgian king Baudouin/Boudewijn on the 5 fr (and also 50 fr) coins ...

Christian

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Belgium, 5 francs, 1988.

Why, that poor man! Frankenstein's monster has nothing on this.

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Of course the first image should be rotated 90° CW

No - that's how it was issued: SIDEWAYS to the front.    Those decadent Continentals. 

you ruthless rabbit.

[Figleaf]

In defence of stylised portraits.

Someone invented photography. Add a computer, some software and some computer skills and anyone can make a portrait and turn it into a coin design. And yet, we have a whole thread filled with ugly portraits. Conclusion: portraits are mechanical things, easy to make, easy to get wrong.

Go back to painted and sculpted portraits. What distinguishes an artist from an amateur? Being able to bring out character in a portrait. Hey, wait. That distinguishes photography from holiday snapshots also. In an age of computers, we don't need a good resemblance of the king on a coin so we'll recognise him when he makes a pee stop in Varennes. The portrait has become one of the symbols of the state. Character is even more important in symbols.

If character is more important than likeness, why struggle for likeness and forget character? What do you remember of princess Diana? Her hairdo or her radiant smile? So what if the hair is all wrong and the warmth of the smile is spot on? Is it not more efficient, more artistic and especially more of these times to go with a stylised portrait? The real problem of stylised portrait is not that likeness suffers. It is that casual observers may not catch the attempt to bring out character and compare the stylised portrait with photography, forgetting its large risk of artlessness and frequent total lack of character.

Peter

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Yes, all good points.    And that is why I gave these portraits their own topic and did not place them in the Worst portraits on coins topic.

 

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Argentina, 50 centavos, 2000.  José de San Martín.

[chrisild]

This one I found surprising too. Liechtenstein 2006; two coins (10 fr silver, 50 fr gold) commemorating 200 years of sovereignty. Previous issues from Liechtenstein (there are very few anyway) do not have such a "modern" appearance ...

http://img.ma-shops.de/pollandt/pic/46224_h_6279_liechtenstein_1_c.jpg

Christian

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Yes, it's unusual to see historical portraits treated in this way.

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Netherlands, 5 euro, 2004.

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Luxembourg, 500 francs, 1998.