Queen Elizabeth II is
meditating. Swathed in white fur and with her eyes closed, she seems
momentarily far from the heavy responsibilities she carries.
This intimate portrait, a hologram by photographer Chris Levine,
is one of sixty pictures of the British monarch on show at London's National
Portrait Gallery from Thursday to mark her diamond jubilee.
From stiff official portraits to her defaced image on an
infamous record sleeve by punk rockers the Sex Pistols, the exhibition explores
many facets of a queen who, after six decades on the throne, is still something
of a mystery.
"The queen remains a fascinating character, an
enigma," said Paul Moorhouse, curator of "The Queen: Art and
Image", which has come to the capital following a tour of Britain.
"These are questioning images," "Some of these pictures really ask: do we
need a queen? And what is she for?"
Controversy
From the 1960s, snapshots of the queen at breakfast with her
family or sifting through paperwork with her private secretary began to appear
alongside the traditional portraits of her in full regalia.
This portrayal of her as a working woman and a mother marked a
radical departure from previous monarchs who maintained a distance between
themselves and their subjects.
As one image from 1968 recalls, the queen even invited
television cameras to film a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the royals - a
decision she reportedly later regretted.
"I think the decision to shed the regal image and try to
become more ordinary, more down to earth, was a risky move," said
Moorhouse.
"When you become more informal, contempt can creep in - and
that's actually what happened."
By 1977 the Sex Pistols had dared to black out the queen's eyes
and mouth on the cover of their single God
Save the Queen, which was banned by the BBC for comparing the British
monarchy to a "fascist regime".
"The Sex Pistols image actually desecrates the image of the
queen," said Moorhouse. "That still creates a lot of controversy,
even now."
Voodoo-inspired portrait
Several photographs explore the major crises suffered by the
family over the following two decades, which saw, among other setbacks, the
divorce of three of the queen's four children.
A grainy image captures her shock as, garbed in a raincoat, she
inspects the wreckage of her Windsor Castle residence following a devastating
fire in 1992.
Another shows the queen and her husband Prince Philip standing
at the gates of Buckingham Palace, among huge piles of flowers left in homage
to Princess Diana after her death in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
Their grim faces recall the huge plunge in public support for
the monarchy following the queen's initial refusal to speak publicly about the
death of her former daughter-in-law.
Since then, said Moorhouse, "she has regained the affection
and the respect of the nation" - but works from the last decade suggest
contemporary artists feel free to let their views on the monarchy be known on
the canvas.
An unflattering oil painting by Lucian Freud in 2001 shows the
queen looking jowly and care-worn, emphasising her age and experience.
Meanwhile a voodoo-inspired portrait by Hew Locke, who grew up
in Guyana, depicts her with wide yellow eyes peeking eerily out of a melee of
beads, flowers, plastic scorpions and miniature gorillas.
Epitome of elegance
He was neither a republican nor a monarchist, but said it had
felt strange growing up in a South American nation where his schoolbooks were
emblazoned with the queen's image because it was a British colony.
"It's a strange thing," he said. "Your head of
state was white, when the country was black."
In contrast Chris Levine, who snapped the queen with her eyes
closed, said he had "genuine affection" for her. "She's a very
dear old lady," he said, as well as "a very powerful person".
Even a woman who is head of state of 16 nations has her carefree
moments, some of which are captured in the exhibition.
Our reporter snaps her laughing on the deck of her beloved
Britannia, the royal yacht decommissioned in 1997, while American photographer
Eve Arnold shows her beaming up towards the sky from under an umbrella in 1968.
And in the earliest portraits, the young queen is the epitome of
1950s elegance.
"People saw Diana as glamorous, and now Kate Middleton is
going through it," Moorhouse said.
"But they forget that at 24, the queen herself was seen as
an attractive woman - not least by Winston Churchill," he added.
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