Color Veil (Head series)

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Barbara Nessim

1984

19.5" x23.5"
Cibachrome on polyester paper

Highlights Female Pioneer The Ragnar 100

Description

Color Veil is a striking example of how Barbara Nessim used a computer as a medium for drawing before imaging software was available for personal computers. An experienced artist and fashion illustrator, Nessim brought her interest in archetypal female imagery into a new technological terrain.

Part of her series “Computer Heads,” Color Veil uses minimal means to dynamic effect: a woman’s face is rendered in cutout-like curves of black against diagonal swathes of vivid color. A pale blue wedge slices through the composition, and a jagged black line further enhances the composition’s asymmetry.

Nessim had done editorial work for Time Inc., and in 1982 the company offered her a residency in their experimental “video information services” department. She worked nights, alone, on a Norpak IPS-2 Telidon computer, learning to code arcs, lines, and polygons by trial and error. The program executed instructions in real time with no option to revise or undo. Each image had to be completed in a single session and captured on a 35mm slide. Like traditional printmaking, the process was unforgiving, but in Nessim’s hands it yielded powerful results.