Nadine Ouellet

An Exhibition


Indexed Portraiture as Design Evidence, MFA Thesis Book,
Yale University, 2001



This book contains an essay on Indexed Portraiture as a Design Evidence. It highlights a series of projects designed over the course of graduate studies at Yale University. For centuries, the authority of the likeness defined classical portraiture. Typically, the goal was a reproduction of a subject’s physical appearance and a quest to represent power and wealth. 

In the early twentieth century, artists explored more individual and unusual ways to portray their subject, what art historian Rosalind Krauss refers to as indexed portraiture. Those portraits evolved as an opportunity to express the real person within, through interpretative depictions instead of mere appearance. 

This essay focuses on the concept of “indexical portraiture” as a methodology to portray a subject in graphic design. Indexical portrait refers to the notion of interpretation, which offers a key for the graphic designer to distil more complex phenomena.








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