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An Experiment in ArtAuthor(s): Robert Emmett MuellerSource: Leonardo, Vol. 29, No. 1 (1996), pp. 73-74Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1576285 .

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This technological double bind of fas- cination/alienation evolves throughout the installation and its use of visual 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 persis- tent ambiguity emerging from our re- sponse 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 com- ponents 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 Archimed- ean point for rethinking vision: The (Medusa's) cybernetic gaze appears at one and the same time as both a germi- nating point and an ebbing point from which we define experience.

PORTRAIT OF ISABEL

GOLDSMITH

Steve Miller, 48 Gold Street, New York, NY 10038, U.S.A. Fax: (212) 267-4130.

Received 9 October 1994. Accepted for publication by RogerE 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 for- mal studies of Picasso and the popular- media tabloid portraits of Warhol.

Currently, I am clinically exploring the human interior by employing the accurate techniques of scientific re- search. The resulting portraits are elec- tronic images-biological slivers of

personal identities developed through medical technology-that I subse- quently contaminate with the process of painting. The portraits contain no rec-

ognizable elements (other than oblique references to the personality within): they show no more than the blood and guts, molecules, cells, teeth, jaws, cra- nium and skeleton, the magnetic reso- nance of the womb, the void of internal surfaces and the corpse that stirs under its own skin. In short, identity is no




PORTRAIT OF ISABEL

GOLDSMITH






ognizable elements (other than oblique references to the personality within): they show no more than the blood and guts, molecules, cells, teeth, jaws, cra- nium and skeleton, the magnetic reso- nance of the womb, the void of internal surfaces and the corpse that stirs under its own skin. In short, identity is no




PORTRAIT OF ISABEL

GOLDSMITH






ognizable elements (other than oblique references to the personality within): they show no more than the blood and guts, molecules, cells, teeth, jaws, cra- nium and skeleton, the magnetic reso- nance of the 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 ap-

longer confined to outward appearance alone. The subjects themselves remain identifiable only through the labeling of each work: the name of the sitter ap-

longer confined to outward appearance alone. The subjects themselves remain identifiable only through the labeling of each work: the name of the sitter ap-

pears on the image as a signature in- scribed by a technical apparatus.

For example, to create the recent Por- trait of Isabel Goldsmith (Color Plate B No. 1), I began with a sample of blood from the model. The sample was deliv- ered to theJohn 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 ex-

posed onto a silkscreening frame for

printing. In the upper-left quarter of the

painting, the chromosomes of Gold- smith 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 upper- right 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 sys- tems. The medical image and the paint (defined by movement, handling and color) play off 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 aber- rations 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 discov- ery of unknown disease and exposing their vital functions.

AN EXPERIMENT IN ART Robert Emmett Mueller, 30 Home- stead Lane, Britten House, Roosevelt, NJ 08555, U.S.A.























Received 30June 1994. Acceptedfor publication by Roger E Malina.

Is it possible to conduct an experiment in art? An experiment is an operation





designed to discover, test or illustrate a truth, principle, or effect. We think of

experiments as being the province of science, and art is anything but science. An experiment in art therefore appears to be a contradiction in terms. After

nearly 50 years spent developing a personal, idiosyncratic art form I call "schemas" [1], I have come to feel, in

retrospect, that I was motivated by an

impulse to experiment. I was trained as a scientist at the Mas-

sachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) [2], but when I began to study art with Gyorgy Kepes in the art depart- ment there, it occurred to me to build a list of organizational rules for a minimal art form in the spirit of a mathematical canon, restricting images to lines, dots, repetitions, parallelisms and echoes and allowing no recognizable images (with the exception of certain basic mathematical shapes, such as the circle or parabola).

In a sense, I was trying to begin art with a logic as strict as the mathematics I was studying as an engineer, to see if that logic could be pushed over the edge and into the realm of art. The his- tory of my schemas proves, at least to my own satisfaction, that such a translation of logic into sensual forms is possible.

Figure 2 traces a group of schemas from an original, nearly mathematical form through steps leading toward a free, expressive, yet highly minimal form.

At first I leaned heavily on the mathematical shapes that fascinated me [3] and, of course, on the art forms I was aware of at that time, especially the re- petitive shapes of the analytical cubistic paintings of Braque and Picasso. Re- membering these ideas was important, but I tried to refrain from making my new ideas dependent upon them, because I did not want to repeat, only to be inspired by what I remembered.

Time has played an important role in my schema experiment. Although a given schema occurs in a very short time (not more than a few minutes, usually), there is a chronological sequence in the production of the elements of schema parts. Even the recent past has a strong effect on the immediate future, provid- ing a progression that is due to an al- tered remembering and an evolving forgetting that is critical in its lapses. There is and there is not a chronological sequence: while each stroke is like a










Time has played an important role in my schema experiment. Although a given schema occurs in a very short time (not more than a few minutes, usually), there is a chronological sequence in the production of the elements of schema parts. Even the recent past has a strong effect on the immediate future, provid- ing a progression that is due to an al- tered remembering and an evolving forgetting that is critical in its lapses. There is and there is not a chronological sequence: while each stroke is like a










Time has played an important role in my schema experiment. Although a given schema occurs in a very short time (not more than a few minutes, usually), there is a chronological sequence in the production of the elements of schema parts. Even the recent past has a strong effect on the immediate future, provid- ing a progression that is due to an al- tered remembering and an evolving forgetting that is critical in its lapses. There is and there is not a chronological sequence: while each stroke is like a remembered one, in my willing some- thing different I am always trying to out- smart my memory and transcend it by forgetting and striving for novelty.

remembered one, in my willing some- thing different I am always trying to out- smart my memory and transcend it by forgetting and striving for novelty.

remembered one, in my willing some- thing different I am always trying to out- smart my memory and transcend it by forgetting and striving for novelty.

Artists' Statements 73 Artists' Statements 73 Artists' Statements 73



(a)

(d)

I i,r

(g)

(b)

(e)

(c)

(f)

(h) (i)

Fig. 2. Robert Emmett Mueller, Untitled Schemas, 1951-1995.

The illustration shows how my schema experiment has progressed and changed, how a given set of experimen- tal art conditions can force through to a new group that is related but different. Although I began with an art form that is essentially rule based, its rigidity

has always been open to change, de-

pending on the development of my visual ideas. It may be possible to guess from a late schema that it is somehow rule based, but it would be impossible to construct or infer from it what the

original rules were.

The image in Fig. 2a is just one of

many individual germ ideas that I car- ried through the years. How this idea

changed is illustrated in Fig. 2b, a related image completed nearly 20 years later. Another example of the evolution of the idea can be seen in Fig. 2c. Here the early influence of a musical score is obvious in the drawing, which was done in 1953; but by 1968 (Fig. 2d) the de-

sign transcends the monolithic form of music, and in 1968 (Fig. 2e) the music- related image has disappeared entirely.

Through the years, I have broken most of my original axioms of schema

production one by one. Whenever I feel that I have reached a dead end, I know that I must press harder, push my imagination more, explore the inner reaches of my awareness of artistic form, go deeper into complexity or

pare away lines for greater simplicity. To what extent, then, have I engaged

in an experiment in art? The development of my schemas seem to indicate that it is indeed possible to make an ex-

periment in art, given enough time and

creativity in applying the terms of the

experiment.

References and Notes

1. I began to use the word "schema" on the basis of my drawings' similarity to the amateur radio sche- matic diagrams I knew as a boy, long before I knew of the term's other (psychological, religious) mean- ings (and I never Latinize the plural into sche- mata). See my "Schemas: The Evolution of a Minimal Visual Art Form," Leonardo 24, No. 3, 273- 280 (1991); "Mnemesthetics: Art as the Revivifica- tion of Significant Consciousness Events," Leonardo 21, No. 2, 191-194 (1988); and Robert Emmett Mueller, The Science of Art: Cybernetics of Creative Com- munication (New York: John Day, 1967).

2. Gyorgy Kepes, Vision and Value (London: Studio Vista, 1965-1966) 6 vols.

3. EugeneJanke and Fritz Emde, Table of Functions (Dover, 1945).

74 Artists' Statements

