Tacita Dean: Portrait and Still Life review – 'I find myself holding my breath'

National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, London Unknowable thoughts cross faces, pears dissolve and Hockney wanders around … companion shows offer breathtaking film portraits and curated works that compellingly give pauseIn a room in the National Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection, hung with portraits including John Donne and William Shakespeare, three groups of jewel-like miniatures, lit in such a way that they appear from a distance as glimmering points of light, sit on the grey wall. The rhythmic clattering sound of a projector rumbles. On a screen no wider than a hand’s breadth, three actors pose for the camera. Sometimes seen alone, sometimes all together, David Warner, Ben Whishaw and Stephen Dillane sit and lounge and stand. The light shifts across their faces. All of them have at some time played Hamlet on the London stage, and the title of Tacita Dean’s film, His Picture in Little, is taken from the play. Sometimes appearing to exchange glances, at others ignoring one another entirely, the three actors have nothing to do, no part to play, except to be there and to be filmed. There are private expressions, appeals to the camera (and by implications, ourselves), smiles and twitches and wry glances. You watch them thinking, waiting, being. They don’t even have to be still, as they would were they being painted. Sometimes one or other disappears. Trees appear, clouds, the light shifting along with the sitters’ unknowable thoughts. Warner does some wry actorly grimacing and eye-twinkling, as if he’s thought of a private joke. His resplendent eyebrows do their thing. Whishaw examines a mug of tea, and stands beside a window, coruscated by daylight. We only imagine their thoughts, their patience and unease. Dillane sits as though in a photo-booth, waiting for the camera’s flash. Sometimes they lie down under a big sky. Actors rest and actors wait. Continue reading…
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