Leo & I

1989

Medium/Materials: fujichrome
Paper Size: 10 7⁄8" x 8 1⁄2"
Image Size: 8 1⁄8" x 6 7⁄8"

Female Pioneer

Description

Lillian Schwartz’s longstanding fascination with Leonardo da Vinci is the conceptual starting point for this work. Throughout the 1980s she investigated the Renaissance artist’s methods, and even proposed through digital collages that da Vinci may have used his own features as a model for the Mona Lisa.

In this digital collage, likely produced with the early Unix-based photo-editing program Pico, Schwartz stages an imagined encounter between herself and her historical predecessor. Their faces are composited onto figures borrowed from a devotional composition, while the watchful eyes of the Mona Lisa preside over the exchange. Between them pass geometric solids paneled with Schwartz’s 1988 collage Mona Leo, transforming that earlier analytical project into a symbolic dialogue. Rather than simply demonstrating technical manipulation, Leo & I positions artistic inheritance as an active, transhistorical conversation, asking what da Vinci—an artist, engineer, and experimenter—might have made of the new digital tools that Schwartz herself was using.

Images Du Futur Poster by Lillian Feldman Schwartz, 1993

Images Du Futur Poster Lillian Feldman Schwartz1993 Print

BIG MOMA Poster (super-sized edition) by Lillian Feldman Schwartz, 1984

BIG MOMA Poster (super-sized edition) Lillian Feldman Schwartz1984 Print

Devil Series #3 by Lillian Feldman Schwartz, 1988

Devil Series #3 Lillian Feldman Schwartz1988 Print

www.beetles by Lillian Feldman Schwartz, 1996

www.beetles Lillian Feldman Schwartz1996 Print

Untitled (EDO Series) by Lillian Feldman Schwartz, 1989

Untitled (EDO Series) Lillian Feldman Schwartz1989 Print

MOMA poster, 1985 by Lillian Feldman Schwartz, 1985

MOMA poster, 1985 Lillian Feldman Schwartz1985 Print

Olympiad Ken Knowlton2000 Print

Mona Leo by Lillian Feldman Schwartz, 1988

Mona Leo Lillian Feldman Schwartz1988 Print