Lillian Schwartz implements the collaging of a painting and drawing with a whole other medium, the computer, in Mona/Leo (1987). This composite of an artist and his subject was seen as “blurring the boundaries between the persona of the artist and his creation”.
In this work you can see how Schwartz attempted to mesh the similarities and differences of what she saw in Leonardo da Vinci’s self-portrait and his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa. While da Vinci was older when he created his notorious self-portrait, adding to wrinkles and abundance of lines in the drawing, the Mona Lisa is a painting of a younger woman that then attained chips and cracks in the paint over the years. The combination of both subjects’ ages and the age of the works themselves leads to what I consider to be a timeless feel in the final composite. While da Vinci’s half face seems to add a sense of wisdom and knowledge to the half face of Lisa Gherardini, her side of the work adds a younger, more innocent and feminine touch to his otherwise rough portrait.
Next, both halves of this collage share a similar expression with downward pointing eyes, gazing into the distance, and the lack of a smile. This expression would not be apparent if the original works were viewed separately and whole, but instead is clearly a manipulation of Schwartz’s’, aimed to enhance the similarities of artist and subject. She uses the side of the Mona Lisa’s face with less upturned lips and the frown on Leonardo’s face to create a serious, thoughtful expression. Interestingly, in their complete and original forms, the Mona Lisa is smiling, whereas Leonardo is frowning – both holding very different connotations than Lillian Schwartz’s creation. Nevertheless, one who does not know the original works, and even those who do, may easily “believe” her manipulation of characters and see the two as a whole.
Although Schwartz was able to mesh her two subjects by flipping da Vinci’s portrait and appropriately zooming in on the face of the Mona Lisa, I felt the piece could have been enhanced if it did not show such a bold line of contrast at the center where the two works met. Because it was of my opinion that Schwartz was more trying to emphasize the similarities of da Vinci and his subject than their differences, I felt that this distracted from that goal. It would have been better if the line that separated subject from artist had been blurred, just as her intention was to blur their two personas. Despite this, I did like how the many lines of da Vinci’s self portrait seemed to meld right into the cracks of the Mona Lisa, further pulling the two together. I also felt that the overall use of combining specific sides of their faces to create an intense expression made the piece a lot more powerful.
(Art and quote taken from Christiane Paul pdf assigned in class)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Besides the Mona/Leo (1987), Lillian Schwartz was known for a very different type of computer graphic work. Her piece entitled Googlepex truly demonstrates how she was one of the earliest users of this medium. Its black and white structure is so pixilated that it highly resembles the now popular QR codes.
Furthermore, aside from making still frames, Schwartz used computer animation to become a filmmaker. Her work in UFO’s (1971) mimics that of Googlepex with its simplistic use of lines, shapes, and pixels, but then goes a few steps further by adding movement, color and music. While this piece was revolutionary for its’ time, I have to admit that the first thing it made me think of was how someone suffering from epilepsy would probably have a seizure watching it. It was very bright and flashy (too much for my taste) and had a constant hollow pipe tapping type noise that got increasingly irritating over the three minutes of the film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kic8YlHbhvI&feature=player_embedded
From viewing a number of example of her other work, I’d have to say that Mona/Leo (1987) is by far my favorite of Lillian Schwartz’s creations.
Citation: http://rhizome.org/editorial/2006/mar/16/early-american-computer-animation/
No comments:
Post a Comment