Portrait of Isabel Goldsmith

This technological double bind of fascination /alienation evolves throughout the installation and its use ofvisual means that seem to manifest, as in the case of the fiber-optics, a technological realm that has become naturalized and liberated from the polarized, dualistic conception of nature/technology. It is precisely this double bind, this persistent ambiguity emerging from our response to advanced imagery, that reinstates the urgency of developing a new kind of responsibility. Because of the various techniques and media used to produce them, the installation's components can trigger, at times, opposing responses to the same image, leading us to reflect on the myth of Perseus, with its multiple readings, as an Archimedean point for rethinking vision: The (Medusa's) cybernetic gaze appears at one and the same time as both a germinating point and an ebbing point from which we define experience. PORTRAITOFISABEL GOLDSMITH Steve Miller, 48 Gold Street, New York, NY 10038, U.S.A. Fax: (212) 267-4130. Received 9 October 1994. Acceptedfor publication byRogerF. Malina. Throughout the ages, the portrait has been a means of defining a historical moment. In the work of Rembrandt or Van Gogh, the psychological impact of the portrait came from the artist's ability to transmit some quality of the human soul. In contrast, the twentieth century offers photographic portraits, the formal studies of Picasso and the popularmedia tabloid portraits ofWarhol. Currently, I am clinically exploring the human interior by employing the accurate techniques of scientific research . The resulting portraits are electronic images-biological slivers of personal identities developed through medical technology-that I subsequently contaminate with the process of painting. The portraits contain no recognizable elements (other than oblique references to the personality within): they show no more than the blood and guts, molecules, cells, teeth, jaws, cranium and skeleton, the magnetic resonance ofthe womb, the void of internal surfaces and the corpse that stirs under its own skin. In short, identity is no longer confined to outward appearance alone. The subjects themselves remain identifiable only through the labeling of each work: the name of the sitter appears on the image as a signature inscribed by a technical apparatus. For example, to create the recent Portrait ofIsabel Goldsmith (Color Plate B No.1), I began with a sample of blood from the model. The sample was delivered to the John Innes Center, Norwich, England, where Dr. Pat Heslop-Harrison induced the division of the cell nuclei in a French bean culture. The chromosomes were then photographed under an electron microscope at different stages of their division. Next, I scanned the photographs into Photoshop and enhanced them in order to obtain a halftone negative, which was reversed and enlarged, resulting in a full-scale film positive. The film positive was exposed onto a silkscreening frame for printing. In the upper-left quarter of the painting, the chromosomes of Goldsmith can be seen during a moment of replication. The "legs" of the chromosomes are elongating, forming chains and breaking apart to form identical pairs. The lower-left quarter of the painting shows the condensed chromosomes after their division. In the upperright section, one can see where Heslop-Harrison numbered the chromosomes 1 through 46; in the lower-right quarter, the chromosomes have been grouped A through G according to size. When an image is screen printed, there is a collision of two language systems . The medical image and the paint (defined by movement, handling and color) playoff one another, resulting in conflict and tension. The paint acts like a virus attacking the medical image, which becomes decomposed through the painting process. In real terms, the model's genetic and physiological aberrations appear as if the image has lost all of its defenses. In these portraits, the analysis in the hospital laboratory has replaced the traditional pose in the studio. The models have agreed to reveal to the public the most sensitive and secret parts of themselves, risking the discovery of unknown disease and exposing their vital functions. AN ExPERIMENT IN ART Robert Emmett Mueller, 30 Homestead Lane, Britten House, Roosevelt, NJ 08555, U.S.A. Received 30June 1994. Accepted for publication byRogerF. Malina. Is it possible to conduct an experiment in art...