ORLAN: A Vital Life Force Among Us

The French artist ORLAN came to New York City in October a bit like a Category 2 or 3 hurricane, was in three shows simultaneously, released the English imprint of her autobiography, and has now returned home to Paris. These are my thoughts about the shows, her book, and about her person as an artistic force in our midst.

If we made a Venn diagram with Roselee Goldberg, Carolee Schneemann, and Marina Abramovic, and if you’d like, add Valie Export, Joan Jonas, and Cindy Sherman to the mix, ORLAN would be at the center where they all overlapped. Though very different from one another in terms of focus, intent, and energy, they all,—via sharp critiques of our shared culture—made legitimate claims on behalf of women, certainly over swaths of the art world, but also over swaths of the larger geo-political world where we all strive for existence, for voice, and for meaning. Over time ORLAN has cycled through theater, performance, installations, painting, photography, video, and even at times body-modification art. Almost always her work has sharply critiqued male-centric social narratives, and sometimes even misdirected female-centric ones.

To meet ORLAN in person and to see her physically juxtaposed against the backdrop of her work is to see on full display one of the decidedly unsubtle forces of nature that must be contended with. There is no middle ground with ORLAN or her work. There is no room granted for delay or postponement when her work confronts you—you have to decide on the spot how you feel, about how it hits you, about its appropriateness, about your capacity or lack thereof to see and receive her work as it is on its own terms, about what you think she is trying to say, and about the very words and images she utilizes.

Even her name, ORLAN—by design always in all caps—which for her is an affirmation, is for us a kind of alert that her work will not be like the work of other artists, nor will meeting her be like meeting other artists. Even just seeing her across a room is different from seeing any other person, with her shock of black/white hair, her expressionist clothing style, and with her surgical implants above her brow—her overall appearance and manner are absolutely meant to shock you. Not shocking for nothing, though, but yes, shocking in a “I-am-here-to-challenge-your-assumptions-about-art-and-culture” way.

And challenge she does.

At The Opening Gallery in Tribeca were a collection of works comprising an abbreviated retrospective, and among them a photograph titled The Origin of War, which is a true-to-form reinterpretation of Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde (1866), his explicit portrayal of a supine woman’s spread genitalia. But in ORLAN’s rendition, the supine torso is that of a man, legs open, with an erect penis. It is an arresting image, which definitely draws attention to itself. The image is strong, and the ambivalent thoughts it provokes about male genitalia on full display and to what extent war actually derives from the loins of men are equally strong.

At NYU’s La Maison Française are a collection of photographs that ORLAN refers to as self-hybridizations that she has come back to periodically throughout her career. In some she has morphed her face via photo-editing software, and in others she has worn clothing and props to morph her person into the likeness of various women from the pantheon of female heroes, among them Artemisia Gentileschi, Hedy Lamarr, and Marie Curie. Some of the images were included in the reference catalog but NOT included in the exhibition proper for fear at NYU of their susceptibility toward interpretation as cultural appropriation—those of Josephine Baker, Rosa Parks, and one of a Pre-Columbian female figure (which she borrowed from a statue unearthed at an archaeological site). Though made by ORLAN as a way to embrace, emulate, and channel the spirit and likeness of those formidable female figures from history, the images still invite criticism. Yet she soldiers on with her mission of proclamation—these women led the way; hence, we must follow them.

At the Ceysson and Bénétière Gallery on the Upper East Side, ORLAN was in a group show titled Clairvoyant. Her contribution was a large black and white photograph/still of herself from a movement performance where she purposely went against the self-controlled and disciplined techniques that she had been taught many years ago as a young dancer. So in a way this piece is an anti-piece, as many of her images are—anti-convention, anti-properness, anti-societal artifice. It is an image taut with passion and violation. With arms and legs stretched, tensed, and somewhat akimbo, the effect upon viewing is an unsettled and visceral one.

As mentioned, the English version of her autobiography, Strip-Tease: All About My Life, All About My Art was also released on this trip to NYC. At 398 pages, it’s formidable but an approachable read, voiced as it is in a manner that is easy and user-friendly. Within she talks about her steady progress as a young girl, college student, and working artist always at odds with family, institutions, and societal strictures of any kind. She learned early how to be brave, bold, and truthful via her work, even if at times there was a price to be paid later for her candor, risk-taking, and straightforwardness. It seems she could never have done otherwise, despite the outcome.

As a girl she was abused by a family friend, and as a young woman for a long while she lost her ability to earn a living. In 1977, ORLAN performed Kiss the artist (Baiser de l’artiste, a better translation is perhaps ‘kiss with the hope of fucking the artist,’ which explains the strong negative reaction and reprisal she received after) during the International Fair of Contemporary Art (FIAC) in the Grand Palais in Paris. From behind a life-size photograph of her own nude body, which she sat behind, spectators could insert a coin, see it descend to her groin, then receive a kiss from the artist herself. For doing this, she was summarily dismissed from her teaching position and for years found it difficult to find work and pay bills. A few years later, however, ‘Baiser’ was acquired by the Pompidou Center and added to their permanent collection. An edition of this work was included in the ORLAN retrospective, having been borrowed from a collector in Brazil and brought to NYC by Sozita Goudouna, director and curator of The Opening Gallery, epicenter of the ORLAN retrospective in NYC.

Perhaps the most controversial thing ORLAN has done was to find surgeons in the early 1990s to perform a series of nine medical procedures that together physically altered her appearance to more closely resemble traits and attributes that she admired most in several women famously depicted in artworks. She asked for the nose from Diana the Huntress by the School of Fontainebleau (1550), the mouth of Europa from The Rape of Europa by Boucher (1732-34), the forehead of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa (1503), and the chin of Botticelli’s Venus from The Birth of Venus (1485-86). But it was not for their beauty that she asked for these, but rather for the intriguing stories behind them, and for the purpose of literally incorporating ugliness, monstrosity, and undesirability into her appearance by putting implants into her forehead. The last and most controversial surgery was carried out by Dr. Marjorie Kramer in New York. She still has the implants and often decorates them with glitter.

ORLAN’s lifework is not now, nor ever has been, for the faint of heart. She has never taken prisoners, and she has never offered quarter. Her work, her very life, from the outset until now constantly challenges our comfortable notions about almost everything with every opportunity. Hers is a legacy to be contended with, not blithely observed at a remove or ever spoken of in whispers.

She is a vital life force among us, an oracle not always understood when you at first appear before her. But later, when you walk away, it all sinks in that she has gotten through to you, for her message is loud, clear, and in its own way very nearly incontrovertible.

Order Strip Tease- All About My Life All About My Art, ORLAN published by The Everyday Press here. 

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