February 8, 2020

 

It is difficult to view Stanley Rosenthal’s Wedding Portrait as anything other than menacing. In it, he portrays a more than slightly disheartening view of matrimony. Two men stand at the center of the tryptic, facing outwards with countenances overcast by harsh black shadows. They are dressed in nearly identical t-shirts and jeans with hands shoved in pockets and legs slightly splayed. Backed by a radiator and standing over wood floors and a carpet, they seem to be indoors, perhaps a home setting. In sharp contrast, two panels flank them, showing two nude women covering their faces with their hands. There is a feeling of extreme vulnerability, as they sit outside on park benches, all that conceals them being stockings and garters. These adornments feel somehow restrictive, as if the women are bound by the sexualizing gaze of the men between them. It is interesting that in this “wedding portrait,” the men stand together, rather than with whom we would presume to be their brides. Perhaps Rosenthal is commenting on a union which is certainly unequal. In a cynical take, the work shows the women as exploited for their physicality and portrays them as forced into passiveness by the male gaze. Yet with their faces shielded, they seem to be attempting to preserve their identities; as if in a final attempt to hold on to themselves rather than dissolve into their husband’s identity.

Stanley Rosenthal’s artwork is often ridden with symbolism through his mastery of watercolor techniques. However, Wedding Portrait is an example of his earlier focus in Intaglio print making. Rosenthal received his BFA from Carnegie Melon in Pittsburg and later his MFA from Wayne State University, where he would remain to teach for forty-six years. Rosenthal received a plethora of accolades for both his printmaking as well as watercolors and held several esteemed positions such as the chair of the Michigan Watercolor Society.

Written by Samantha Hohmann 

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