The Anti-Portrait by Michael Newman

Content warning: This talk includes historical images of decapitation that some people may find upsetting.

Michael Newman (Professor of Art Writing, Goldsmiths, University of London) presents his paper The Anti-Portrait: Susan Morris' Vicissitudes as part of the symposium Standard Deviation: Time and The Body, 30 May 2015 at Drawing Room. Conceived and led by Susan Morris, this half-day symposium looked at ways in which artists have used automated processes of drawing to explore time, the body, and the machinic gesture or trace.

Newman's paper implicates the 'anti-portrait' in the development of the 'traditional' portrait, as explicitly manifested through devices such as the guillotine, the camera, and graphic physiological recording machines.