physiognotrace

A physiognotrace is a machine used to automate the production of silhouette portraits. Previously an artist would cut these out by hand. Although this was actually very quick to do, the demand for these types of portrait in the 1700s was so great that a Frenchman named Gilles-Louis Chrétien invented the physiognotrace (also spelled without the ‘g’) to speed things up even more.

Your subject would sit in profile and the physiognotrace used a pantograph (a metal arm made up of pivoted levers) to transmit the tracing to an engraving needle via an eyepiece. This made it easy to produce multiple copies, as well as aquatints, which are much more detailed portraits. The physiognotrace is considered a precursor to the camera, as it allowed artists to reproduce someone’s likeness in a fairly short space of time.

Physiognotrace is a portmanteau, i.e. two words smooshed together, of ‘physiognomy’ and ‘trace’ (you probably don’t need to be Susie Dent to figure that out).

Before photography, silhouette portraits were the cheapest way to record someone’s appearance. They’re named after Étienne de Silhouette, a French finance minister who was forced to impose austerity measures on France during the Seven Years’ War. Obviously no one liked that, and therefore him, so it wasn’t long before his name became synonymous with anything done on the cheap, including these little portraits, where it stuck.

Here’s a physiognotrace in action (accompanied by some very calming music).

A portrait made by a physiognotrace

I’d know that silhouette anywhere

avant-garde

This is ‘Fountain’ (1917) by Marcel Duchamp. Yup, it’s a urinal. With a signature on it.

If you’re avant-garde you’re usually an artist, intellectual or writer who experiments with work or ideas that challenges cultural norms (so it’s those pieces you see in galleries that make you say ‘I could knock that up at home’, which then go on to win the Turner Prize). But you knew all that already, right? The reason I’ve chosen it as the word of the week is because I found out its origins on this week’s Wittertainment podcast (which, considering it’s supposed to be about films, actually contains a surprising amount of etymology – see, for example, curfew, sabotage and egregious). And I had no idea how literal it is.

So, ‘avant-garde’ is French (naturellement), and translates literally as ‘advance guard’ (AKA ‘vanguard’). It was originally used by the French military to refer to a small group of soldiers that reconnoi… reconoi… reccono… scouted ahead of the main force. In the 19th century it became associated with left-wing French radicals campaigning for political reform. And from there it was then linked with the idea of art as a force for social change, eventually losing the association with left-wing social causes to become the term we know today.

One of the first artworks to be described as avant-garde was The Little Fourteen Year Old Dancer by Edgar Degas. Despite looking pretty inoffensive to us today, she caused an outcry when she was first exhibited in 1881. The public didn’t like how realistic she looked, or that she was a dancer – then considered a profession on a similar level to prostitution. Critics of the time described her as both ‘repulsive’ and ‘a threat to society’. I’d love to know what they would have made of Duchamp’s urinal.

David Bowie doing avant-garde like only David Bowie could