Daily Pic: This week looks set to be all about portraits - with Lawrence’s Regency dandy yesterday, and now this one of Bill and Melinda Gates by the artist Jon Friedman, a commission now unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery. Here’s my contention about it: That some pictures need to be art, and others are best when they aren’t, and that this portrait falls into the latter category. It does a better job of pointing more people to its subject when it fits all the oil-on-canvas cliches of official portraiture. More artfulness would be beside the point, and distracting. In a sense, by obeying the cliches it becomes that much more transparent, almost like a snapshot photo whose features we read through. That is, it comes to function more like a document and less like fancy fine art. And that, weirdly, is how some of the best fine art is working these days. To hear this argument at greater length, read my article on The Daily Beast.

The Daily Pic, along with more global art news, can also be found on the  Art Beast page at thedailybeast.com.