Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship Graduate School of Art Theses Graduate School of Art Spring 5-16-2014 A Face with a View Cassie S. Jones Washington University in St. Louis, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/samfox_art_etds Part of the Art and Design Commons Recommended Citation Jones, Cassie S., "A Face with a View" (2014). Graduate School of Art Theses. ETD 16. https://doi.org/10.7936/K77H1GG1. This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School of Art at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate School of Art Theses by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Washington University in St. Louis Graduate School of Art A FACE WITH A VIEW * * * By Cassie Jones A thesis presented to the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts of Washington University in St. Louis in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Fine Arts Graduate Committee: Richard Krueger Lisa Bulawsky Carmon Colangelo John Sarra Monika Weiss May 2014 Abstract This thesis serves to examine my practice as a visual artist. In its contents I consider both the internal image and the external image and the constant negotiation that happens between these two sets of images. What comes to represent the internal is my own image, in particular, my face . What comes to represent the external are prevailing images of socially idealized beauty. Likewise, I argue that the face becomes especially important in this negotiation as it is the intersection between the internal and the external; the self and the social. Using artists such as Vito Acconci , Orlan , and Andy Warhol, as well as other thinkers such as Jean Baudrillard , Judith Butler, David Byrne, Amelia Jones, Carl Jung, Jacques Lacan, Susan Stewart, Kurt Vonnegut and Brian Wilson , I assert that what makes my artistic images powerful is simply my willingness to enact and display a kind of tangible struggle that is absent from these external images. 2 Table of Contents Images are worth repeating and repeating and repeating: An lntroduction ..... 4 ONE: THE INTERNAL IMAGE The Authority of The Face = The Face as Text ..... 6 Smiley Smile: Quantifying Good Vibrations :) :) :) ... .. 7 The Mask: Before & After. .... 11 The Artifice of the Persona ... .. 13 Performance! Mis-performance: Removing the Other/ Confronting the Self .... 14 TWO: THE EXTERNAL IMAGE Beauty: flower by flower, star by star, wave by wave ..... 21 Narcissus and His Reflection .... 22 Lacan's Mirror. .. .. 23 The Feminine Image ..... 24 Make me young, make me young, make me young! .... .25 Intense Black: Modern-Day Masks ..... 28 Ugly: not even the sea contains things like your toenails ..... 30 A Concluding Wink .. ... 33 Bibliography. .... 38 3 ---------- -------------------------- S L A U G H T E.:R H. .0 U S E .- f I V E 'J , . .. And I asked ;•: myself about the .present: .. how Wide it was, how. deep it was, how much was mine to keep. ]f· ., e:' • c 23. Images are worth repeating and repeating and repeating: An Introduction 1 I look at images and I make images. Constantly moving between looking and making , my artistic practice seeks to enact the struggle inherent in the negotiation between the internal and the external; the self and the social. What often comes to represent the internal within my work is my own image, in particular, my face. What comes to represent the external or social are often prevailing images of socially idealized beauty. As we grapple with a world teeming with images, I argue that the face is of special importance because it is the physical and tangible intersection of the self and the social. As a surface of negotiation, the face comes to be a kind of text, existing in a liminal space, as it is continually being read and interpreted by both the self and the other. Because of this reading , the face's authority carries with it a particular vulnerability as it is subject to adopting an image of the social as it's own -we come to wear the mask of the social collective as our own modern-day mask, concealing our individuality. As an artist, I hope to better navigate and challenge this often harmful nexus of external images with my own images grounded more firmly in the world. I aim to create images that allow for and accept the inevitable failure that comes when we give into the pressures and anxiety of these external images. What can be gained by the engagement with this struggle and the acceptance of failure? What can be gained by viewing images of art that are made from both the struggle and failure of this negotiation? In my work, the mis-application and mis-performance of my adopted modern-day mask problematizes these external images, disrupting the semiotic systems that first established them. My belief is that just simply being able to see the struggle within my work, a struggle that is 4 absent in these external images, is what gives my images their power. Once we realize that these external images are real only to the extent that we acknowledge and perpetuate the linguistic systems that create them, they become capable of being constructed differently. This reconstruction can then transform these hazardous images that control and sanction according to the social collective, and thereby the logic that constitutes these images, into images that are powerless over the individual, resulting in perhaps a more authentic expression of the self. 5 ONE: THE INTERNAL IMAGE Out of all those kinds of people, you got a face with a view -The Talking Heads2 The Authority of The Face = The Face as Text "A face faces to express meanings. A face faces to express subjective feelings. More than 'express'- there are no meanings without a blank wall on which signs are inscribed and effaced; there is no self-conscious consciousness without black holes where its states of pleasure and displeasure turn... A face is a field that accepts some expressions and connections and neutralizes others. It is a screen and a framework. To be confronted with a face is to envision a certain range of things that could be expressed on it and to have available a certain range of things one could address to it. One sees what one might say, what one should not have said." -Alphonso Lingis3 The face has a privileged role in our lives. Central to all human expression and communication, the blank wall of the face makes it a surface for the displaying of signs and meaning. 4 On the face, in the intricate folds of its wrinkles, the dramatic forces of the social, surface. Likewise, it is the sight where the internal utterances of our minds are momentarily made legible and significant. The face is the intersection between the internal self and the external social world. And , indeed, the authority of the face resides in this junction. 6 -~------ In her book On Longing, in which she describes the significance and intrinsic complexity of the body, Susan Stewart writes: "if the face reveals a depth and profundity which the body itself is not capable of, it is because the eyes and to some degree the mouth are openings onto fathomlessness. Behind the appearance of the eyes and mouth lies the interior stripped of appearances. Hence we 'read' the expression of the face with trepidation , for this reading is never apparent from the surface alone; it is continually confronted by the correction of the other. The face is a type of 'deep' text, a text whose meaning is complicated by change and by a constant series of alternations between a reader and an author who is strangely disembodied, neither present nor absent, found in neither part nor whole, but, in fact, created by this reading ."5 While Stewart is talking about the "abstract totality", or understanding, of the body that we come to assume through a process of projection and introjection, I aim to emphasize the idea of the face as a kind of text that does not have one single author, but rather is a text that is constantly being read , translated, interpreted and rewritten. And , further, the nonstop and utterly complicated negotiation of the self (the author) and the other (the reader) that comes out of that reading. Smiley Smile: Quantifying Good Vibrations :) :) :) "People with pretty smiles fascinate me. You have to wonder what makes them smile so pretty. " -Andy Warhol6 * * * 7 In the instant of a smile time extends motionless; unaware of a before or after, the width of the present is measured with acute precision by the width of the smile. And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep .? A quick, momentary expression characterized by an expansive and sweeping upward movement. The tiny creases at the corner of the lips quiver anxiously as a slight hesitation of the flexing muscles traces the contours of an expression in flux, revealing the inherent complexity of an emotion. Somewhere in the deep recesses of the freckle-laden cheeks two soft and symmetrical dimples form . Pale red lips, vaguely sexual, separate to reveal a brilliant set of calcified teeth rooted firmly in the soft, pink tissue immediately lining the mouth. Beyond the teeth lies a never-ending black hole. Above the smile, hairline wrinkles ignite a set of blue eyes turning them into sparkling opals. The expression is at once triumphant and threatening, alluring and confrontational, loquacious and silent.