Even over the phone, Philip Burke’s voice radiates an empathy you wouldn’t necessarily expect from an artist famous for his celebrity caricatures. Asked about his greatest strength as an artist, he keeps it simple and direct: “I think it’s my ability to feel a person’s life.”
To see what he means, consider his Observer Read More
A portrait is an artist’s attempt to encapsulate and fix character, whether it’s been commissioned as an advertisement of power (all those pharaohs, kings, aristocrats and emperors) or something humble and intimate (think Rembrandt’s sobering self-depictions). But in the end, impetus counts less than insight. The Met’s marble bust of Caligula originally served as political Read More
