Janice Gurney

The Black Panels (Les yeux sans visage)

1984
This work is made up of two groups of appropriated images - Photographs documenting early experiments in plastic surgery after World War I and frame stills from the 1959 horror film "Les yeux sans visage", by the French filmmaker Georges Franju, which told of the efforts of a megalomaniac plastic surgeon to remake his daughter's face (horribly disfigured in a car accident) using the skin of living victims. In spite of their different circumstances, the victims resemble each other because of the masks they wear, symbols of the surgeons' failure to repair the damage, and of society's unwillingness to accept their grotesque countenances. Yet this act of grafting the inanimate onto the animate creates an uncanny appearance that is as horrifying, ultimately, as the original injury.
Title
The Black Panels (Les yeux sans visage)
Date
1984
Medium
Photograph
Materials
photostats and dye coupler prints, mounted on rag board or laminated to plexiglas, with acrylic
Dimensions
199.4 x 493.3 cm assembled
Nationality
Canadian
Credit line
Purchased 1985
Accession number
29160.1-16