When Surgery + Art = Totally Absurd
There’s putting heart and soul into your work, and then there’s going overboard and letting your work get under your skin. Both scenarios describe ORLAN to a tee.
ORLAN is a rare breed. She’s the crackpot artist that appeared on last Sunday’s Tout le monde en parle. She’s the woman with a face so terrifying it would be no stretch to see her playing the lead role in Planet of the Apes. Get the picture?
Behind her surgically altered (read: intentionally disfigured) and—dare I say it?—ravaged face, there lies very sound and generally coherent thinking. In a nutshell, it could be said that ORLAN’s work is the quintessence of performance art. It could also be said that it’s the pinnacle of contemporary readymade, using the human body as both the mannequin and the medium for the art.
Her oeuvre (yes, this is art) is a sharp riposte to the paradoxes of feminism and the resulting societal madness, among many others. The artist must act provocatively to motivate the sadistic acts she brings upon herself.
An eccentric artist who goes under the knife is one thing, but seeing young kids who want to do the same is horrifying, agonizing and makes me feel sick to my stomach! Let’s get one thing straight—it’s only the same on the surface. Deep down, there is no solid rhetoric behind these girls’ actions; just an obsession with body image.
It upsets me that these girls, who are just beginning to blossom decide to get carved up to look like some celebrity (http://www.staragora.com/news/chirurgie-esthetique-une-chinoise-veut-ressembler-a-jessica-alba/384163), or to meet some trend-dictated beauty standards (http://www.webzinemaker.com/admi/exec/print.php3?ident=montrealites&rubr=2&id=325274).
Will plastic surgeons be the sculptors of tomorrow? Will the human body be a fleeting work of art moulded in God’s image? Are we about to witness the birth of a new breed of designers—beauty designers?!
Get real, people!
August 24th, 2010 / 14:19
I mean she was 40 years old when she decided to do this, I normally absolutely hate the idea of plastic surgery but I feel like she had a totally normal idea behind it. Obviously she was very pretty already, and Im sure she knew she was pretty and she was prettier then the face she has now. But yeah she spent a long time with that face, she clearly didn’t have body image issues thinking she would look better being a type of media frankenstein otherwise she would have done it much, much sooner. I think it’s interesting to consider your face changes after middle age anyway as you age and it becomes “uglier” ( supposedly) and woman try to combat it with botox and things that really don’t work, no matter how much science advances it’s still so obvious when I woman has plastic surgery. Orlan decided to do this in her 40s when most woman begin doing botox except instead of trying preserve something that’s dying anyway, she decided to just get rid of it.
February 16th, 2011 / 19:24
i agree with everything she did, she commented on how obsessive our culture is with beauty and the extremes we take to satisfy this beauty..