Orlan and biology based art

I first heard of Orlan a few years ago, when I read an article in Le Monde about how she was suing Lady Gaga for plagiarism.  I came across her again in Arthur Miller's Colliding Worlds, a book about where science and art meet.  She is a French artist.  She has worked quite extensively, but what she is most known for are plastic surgeries she underwent in order to achieve the male artist's ideal of female beauty.  The result of these surgeries is that she will have: the chine of Botticelli's Venus, the nose of Jean-Leon Gerome's Psyche, the lips of Boucher's Europa, the eyes of Diana from a 16th century French painting, and the forehead of the Mona Lisa.

Now these surgeries have been filmed and broadcast to the world.  She was awake for the surgeries, although on some pretty good pain killers.  Probably the most interesting though is the Harlequin Coat, which is a prototype for a tech living skin coat.  Some of the skin is from her own skin cells, and some from people of other races, and completely different species of animals, which are combined for the project.  I believe that she did this project at Symbiotica in Australia.   

This is a link to Symbiotica's blurb about Orlan.

http://www.stillliving.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/pages/artists/orlan.htm


This is an interview with Orlan.  Maybe I should add a warning that they do show a bit of a surgery in this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ1Ph-Pprj4

Jackson Pollock

Now years ago when I was working on my archaeology degree I recall during field school this one nasty guy telling me that it was easy to make it in art, all you have to do is dribble paint like Jackson Pollock.  No.  Jackson Pollock's work is not easy to produce, and is actually quite easily identified because his work contains fractal patterns.  Fractal patterns are the patterns found in nature, it is the patterns tree branches grow in, and the pattern the waves leave in the sand as they recede.  Normal adult humans cannot draw or paint fractally our hands just don't move that way.  The thought is that Pollock was a severe alcoholic, his medical records actually show that he drank himself to the point of damaging his ability to balance.  Now small children when they are learning to walk move their hands in fractal patterns in order to balance, as do tight rope walkers.  The thought is that when Pollock leaned out over his paintings to work it threw his damaged balance off even more, so his hands would move fractally.  Now that is not to say Pollock was just an alcoholic with a paint brush.  He had a lot of years studying painting under his belt, including under Thomas Hart Benton. 

Chuck Close

I was originally just going to write about Jackson Pollock today, but then I started thinking more generally about artists with disabilities and I thought about Chuck Close.  Chuck Close is best known for his photorealistic paintings.  I don't think that most people know though that he actually has prosopagnosia, or in other words he is face blind.  Meaning that he cannot recognize people by their facial features.  I heard an interview with him awhile back on WPR, where he said the prosopagnosia was why he took on portraits.  From what I understand that is also why he has to use his system of gridding that he uses to break the photos down into more manageable parts.  I didn't know that Chuck Close suffered from this condition before that interview, and it makes his paintings way more remarkable.