Art
Mario Testino
National Portrait Gallery, London
2 / 5
Jonathan Jones
The Guardian, Saturday 2 February 2002 00.00 GMT
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If you are baffled by reality TV that can give anyone their 15 minutes of fame, if you are nostalgic for the days when stars really were stars, then you need a purgative. And Mario Testino's photographs will do the trick. Testino photographs real stars, "the ultra-A-list of our celebrity-conscious age", as the National Portrait Gallery's catalogue fawns.
Their faces are blown up to the scale of carnival floats or baroque altarpieces in this Vogue photographer's museum show. You can genuflect before those whom Testino seems to revere as more beautiful and gifted than anyone else - Madonna, Diana, Meg Ryan.
That's Meg Ryan, the personification of all that is mediocre about modern Hollywood. Testino, who, if we accept this exhibition's claim, is a kind of crazed Peruvian visionary, photographed Ryan looking all hot and bothered beside her (made) bed. It's a very professional job, Meg looking a little bit naughty but not too much.
The annoying thing about the exhibition is the way it both hypes Testino's talent and implies that these pictures are just fun, not subject to snotty high art criteria. We are told that Testino has an amazing eye and a flamboyant sexuality, but the pictures are middle-of-the-road, and resolutely avoid anything that might mock or undermine the myth of glamour, or expose their subjects to unseemly slavering.
Testino takes commissioned portraits of the rich, famous and professionally gorgeous for Vogue and Vanity Fair. Good for him. But it's nonsense to claim that he has some special vision, or even a consistent, distinctive style. I don't think I'd instantly recognise a Testino photograph, even after seeing this show. Sometimes he uses black and white, sometimes lurid colour; sometimes he flirts, sometimes he's coy. The style seems to be determined by the requirements of the job.
The only appeal of these pictures lies in the fame of the people portrayed. And his portraits of Madonna are surely the least interesting images of their subject that exist. Here's Madonna wanting to redefine herself as cuddly and maternal. Testino is the man she calls in. He does what's required, smoothing away everything that once made Madonna exciting, putting her in the same middlebrow sphere as Meg Ryan, if that's what she wants.
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