COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002						The Venus Series
C00009 ENDMK
C⊗;
					The Venus Series
 
 
	The Venus series was started in Paris in 1972 with the production
of the two "Venus s'eleve" etchings.  To symbolize the emergence of womankind
into true human status I contrasted the typical reclining pose of the Venus
with a proto-heroic standing figure -- and groups of female figures of all
races.   Since I spend a lot of time life drawing, I realize the tremendous 
emotive  potential of the pose  itself:  a slack limb projects a different 
feeling than a tensed one; pivot the arm one inch and the meaning is changed.
In "venus s'eleve #1" I used the Velasquez Rokeby Venus with cupid and mirror --
and played with the image by presenting it, in turn, mirrored.  I have used murals 
within paintings for a number of years -- so here you find the whole etching 
existing as if a mural.  The standing nudes are pointing toward an imagined future.  
In "Venus s'eleve #2", here printed with a poem written later, and editioned by me
on a hand letter press, there appears a host of Venus figures from the past: by
Botticelli, Cranach, Ingres, Picasso, de Kooning, etc.   The standing figures
outside the "mural" share our contemporary experience -- and gesture toward 
the future.
 
	In preparation for the large cut-out painting (completed in 1975), I
studied many Venus-type figures from art history -- everything from the ample
Venus of Willendorf to Gustav Klimt's mannered fin-de-siecle women -- and I
combined them in various quick pastel sketches -- trying to memorize the poses
in my finger tips.
 
	Then, in 1974, using the computer facilities of the Stanford University
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and with the technical help of my husband, I
prepared an edition of computer-aided photo-intaglio prints on the Venus theme.
Images such as pen and ink and conte drawings of the Venus of Willendorf are
photographed by the T.V. camera.  An edge program to pick up varying degrees of
contrast then transforms and finally distorts the Venus -- for example into the
many-faceted fan at the bottom, or the twist in the center.   Directed by the 
computer, a special plotter draws the poem in various type fonts and traces the 
fragmented and dancing forms onto opaque copy.  With a copy camera the design is
transferred to kodalith film and then exposed onto a photo-sensitive zinc plate.  A
second soft-ground plate, hand-rendered, is printed in registration with the first.
 
	As the form of the final cut-out progressed, the standing figures turned
into "pretend" sculpture, with observable links to Roman portrait busts.  The old
face at left bears some resemblance to the unfinished heads of Rodin, where one is
in doubt whether the form has eroded from age or whether the artist's hand has not
yet put on the finishing touches.  The right-hand figure is unabashedly heroic,
flanked by her banner (shaped wood made to flutter and furl).
 
	The watercolor study was made between the time I jig-sawed and gessoed 
the plywood and the time I started the actual painting -- in order to loosen some
inhibitions.
 
	Like many women artists, I eschew the pop and funk traditions, trying 
instead for earnest psychological involvement and a kind of lyricism.   In the 
cut-outs (these are but 2 of 10) I've tried to achieve the illusion of real space; 
I've emphasized color changes at the edges to involve the spectator with the 
happenings inside the created space.  Some edges also suggest forms that exist 
just outside the the art-work (usually figures).   Lines defining foreshortened 
planes are usually curved, not straight.  I've tried to push some forms "in front" 
of the picture plane: for example the folded-out area that suggests a folded paper 
at the bottom of "Venus Contained" and the child in front of the mural figures in
"California Wedding Muralization."  By setting up an extreme forward position, and
emphasizing it by a color surprise (sometimes a flourescent or metallic color) I
hope to excite, at least by empathy, the spectator's tactile sense.
 
 
									Edith Smith