Art Metropole

#08519

The Role of a Lifetime (Royal Triptych)

Artist

Peter Trepanier

Date

2008

Publisher

self published

Format

Multiples

Size

6.3 × 8.3 cm

Set of 3 magnetic cards each with combined portrait of Royal posterity. Portraits include the young Queen framed within the silhouette from the Cecil Beaton Coronation Portrait, a split portrait of the Queen in the same pose 40 years apart and a split portrait of the Queen and Prince William at aproximately the same age.

The Queen is the supreme performance artist. She does not act her role – she embodies it. The Queen is the incarnation of the institution of monarchy and as such her public appearances are not personal performances but acts of state: symbolic assertions of national identity, and representations of power. A monarch’s public appearances do not represent the individual who performs them; rather the individual is subsumed by the role. Appearances before crowds are staged to gain support for the state through unforced obedience.

The Queen fills her ceremonial role graciously, keeps a certain distance from all of us to maintain a sense of magic while shrewdly guarding her private self. Although her face is familiar to us, her person remains an enigma. The Queen – the idea of her — exists somewhere deep in our collective unconsciousness. We know her only as an image, and that image is not one we always understand. After 56 years, many of us cannot remember her not being “there.” It is hard to imagine the world without her. (PT)