Orlan (France) http://www.cicv.fr/creation_artistique/online/orlan/

Description:

Orlan is the only artist to use plastic surgery as her medium of choice. Since 1990, she has undergone a series of choreographed "performances" during which her face is surgically morphed through the use of plastic surgery. Her intention is not to become "beautiful" but rather to suggest that the "objective ( beauty) is unattainable and the process horrifying." This is, however, not the only issue or intent surrounding this controversial body of work, which is highly steeped in feminist and psychoanalytic theory, as well as (and in comparison to) art history. Orlan defines her work as "Carnal Art," which she explains as "a self-portrait in the classical sense, yet realized through the technology of our time." Orlan's website is the official home (or database) for her work. The site is well-organized, making it comfortable to navigate. Aside from images from Orlan's projects, the spectator is able to read texts pertaining to her work,listen to audio interviews, and browse through an online catalogue of the artist's merchandise (sales help pay the high costs of her performances/operations).

Biography:
Orlan has consciously decided to keep her history rather vague, not even using her real name. It has been suggested that her anonymity is what projects and maintains her superstar status as a cultural icon. We do know that she was born on May 30, 1947, in St. Etienne, and that she moved to Paris, France in 1980. Presently, Orlan is a professor of fine arts at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Dijon. Beginning in the early 1970's and continuing through to the present, she has relied on her own body as her medium of choice. Influenced by Duchamp, she considers her body a "readymade" and refers to her work as "Carnal Art." Since the outset of her career, Orlan has remained at the forefront of contemporary transgressive art. In 1990, she began a series of plastic surgery operations (or performances), which she has continued throughout the decade. These performances constitute her most famous, most dangerous, and most controversia work to date. Conceptually, her work is placed within the context of art history and psychoanalytic theory,and Orlan has always maintained specific interest in the representation of women throughout the history of art.
Information taken from: www.stanford.edu/class/history204i/Orlan/Orlan2.html

Quotations:
"Psychoanalysis and religion agree in saying: 'One must not attack the body,' 'One must accept oneself.' These are primitive, ancestral, anachronistic concepts. We think that the sky will fall on our heads if we touch the body!"
"Are we still convinced that we must bend ourselves to the decisions of Nature, this lottery of genes distributed by chance?"
Taken from: www.lcc.gatech.edu/~harpold/courses/spring96/lcc3345h/hypermail/0015.html

Critical Text:
Prior to researching Orlan, I had already decided that I was an admirer of her work. I had a basic idea of what her work consisted of but had little clue of what her intentions were. For me, the idea of using plastic surgery as an artistic medium sounded radically fantastic. Someone had finally decided to permanently disfigure his or her appearance in the name of art! My boyish fascination with transgressive practices had been satisfied. I presumed that Orlan's intentions were to invoke some level of discourse pertaining to the idea of contemporary beauty and the drastic measures individuals will take in attempt to attain it. Over the course of my research I realized that my presumption was correct, but that Orlan had a variety of additional intentions. As I continued to find out more about her, I began to feel less positive about her work and more confused when comparing her intentions. It seems as though I preferred Orlan's performances before I read more about them.

"Carnal Art," the term Orlan attaches to her practice, is a "self-portrait in the classical sense, yet realized through the technology of our time." Orlan is celebrating our technically and medically advanced culture, in which the body can be altered or reconfigured through means such as plastic surgery. Orlan is outwardly against Christianity and the idea that the body is sacred. She perceives the acceptance of one's natural self to be a primitive concept, given the technology of our time, and therefore does not believe that nature must be abided.

Orlan views herself as a feminist and perceives her work as following feminist ideals. Through the means of plastic surgery, Orlan morphed different sections of her face to match the facial structures of seven icons of feminine beauty, as projected by male artists throughout art history. For example, two of the seven characteristics are the forehead of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and the chin of Botticelli's Venus. Orlan's intention was not to become "beautiful," but rather to suggest that the male perception of ideal feminine beauty is an impossible feat to conquer. These performances illustrate how ridiculous this unattainable ideal beauty would actually look and how horrific the surgical process is.

So which is it: trust in new age body-morphing technology or resist the temptation to attain ideal beauty through the technology of our time? Perhaps Orlan believes both. Perhaps her moral message is that technical and medical advancement is beneficial-replacing our traditional view of the necessity of abiding nature-so long as it is not used to attain the wrong goals. This is an outlook that I consider valid and respectable.

Where I become weary of Orlan's intentions is in respect to her natural love of attention and aspiration to achieve superstar status through her outrageous work. I am not critical of the fact that she enjoys undertaking these plastic surgery sessions, where she is able to be both patient and spectator. I'll admit, the position must be overwhelming and beautifully horrific. But where do Orlan's intentions become secondary to her personal infatuations with becoming a media star?

Everything Orlan does is for money or publicity. She is a product of mass media and she has turned herself into a commercial commodity. All aspects of her performances-such as photos, videos, costumes and so forth-are sold to high-paying collectors. She has even gone to the extremes of exhibiting and selling viles of liquid flesh drained from her operations. She appears frequently in fashion magazines and talk shows and charges money to be interviewed. Each one of her performances is designed entirely by world-renowned fashion designers, and once the seven operations are complete, an advertising agency will appoint her a new name to replace "Orlan." All the money generated from her work is used to pay her surgery bills, but I do not feel that covering her costs are her main objective.

As I stated earlier, I am a fan of Orlan's work and feel that she has made serious progress in the history of contemporary art. Her art is extremely interesting and highly original. She uses the body unlike anyone before her. My main concern (or rather, criticism) has to do with the idea that there is no difference in striving for ideal beauty and superstar status. An important issue, however, is the fact that Orlan keeps a skeptical sense of humour in relation to the "selling" of her work, which is something to keep in mind.

I am in no sense an expert on Orlan. All the research I conducted came from the Internet, given the nature of the Digitized Bodies Online project, and may therefore be partially misrepresented and maybe even untrue. For these reasons, I wish to include my e-mail address and welcome further discussion and enlightenment on this topic. e-mail: devjer@sprint.ca

Critical text by Jeremy Drummond

Orlan links: http://www.cicv.fr/creation_artistique/online/orlan/ http://www.dundee.ac.uk/transcript/volume2/issue2_2/orlan/orlan.htm http://www.stanford.edu/class/history204i/orlan/orlan2.html