Lillian Schwartz facts for kids
Lillian F. Schwartz (born July 13, 1927 – died October 12, 2024) was an American artist. She was a pioneer in using computers to create art. She was one of the first artists to make almost all her artwork with computers. Many of her amazing projects were done in the 1960s and 1970s. This was long before personal computers and software were easily available to everyone.
Contents
Early Life and Art Training
Lillian Schwartz was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on July 13, 1927. She was the youngest of 13 children. Her family had moved from another country and grew up during the Great Depression, a time when many people struggled to find work and money.
As a young girl, she loved making art with simple things like slate, mud, sticks, and chalk. She later trained to be a nurse during World War II. Her nursing studies in anatomy (how the body is built), biology (the study of living things), and using plaster helped her a lot in her art.
While stationed in Japan after the war, she got polio, a disease that made her unable to move for a while. To help her recover, she learned calligraphy (beautiful handwriting) from an artist named Tshiro. After returning to the United States, she kept trying out new art materials, including metal and plastic for sculptures.
Art Career and Computer Work
By 1966, Lillian Schwartz started using light boxes and machines like pumps in her art. She joined a group called Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). This group brought together artists and engineers to work together. In 1968, her moving sculpture called Proxima Centauri was shown in an important art exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This exhibit was called "The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age." Her sculpture was even used as a special effect in an episode of Star Trek, where it looked like a prison for Spock's brain!
In 1969, Schwartz began working at Bell Labs, a famous research center. She stayed there as a "resident visitor" until 2002. She worked with engineers like John Vollaro and especially with Ken Knowlton. Knowlton was a software engineer and computer artist. Together, they made many computer-animated films. These films were created using visual patterns made by computer programs written by Knowlton. Schwartz then edited these patterns into films.
Around this time, she also took programming classes. She started making paintings and films that combined hand painting, digital collages, and computer image processing. She used early computer graphics languages like BEFLIX, EXPLOR, and SYMBOLICS. By 1975, Schwartz and Knowlton had created ten of the first computer-animated films shown as fine art. These films included Pixillation, Olympiad, UFOs, and Enigma.
At first, she edited these films the old-fashioned way, by physically cutting and joining film strips. But later, she started combining different new technologies. People say her way of putting together various cutting-edge tools was like an early version of what we do today with programs like Photoshop and Final Cut Pro.
Lillian Schwartz also helped with scientific research on how we see colors and hear sounds. She worked as a consultant for big companies like AT&T Bell Laboratories and IBM.
Death
Lillian Schwartz passed away at her home in Manhattan on October 12, 2024. She was 97 years old.
Famous Artworks
Lillian Schwartz often used the works of Leonardo da Vinci, a famous artist, in her computer experiments. One of her most well-known pieces is Mona/Leo. In this work, she compared Leonardo da Vinci's self-portrait with his famous painting, the Mona Lisa.
She matched features like the eyes, eyebrows, nose, and chin of both faces. She even replaced the right side of the Mona Lisa's face with a flipped version of the left side of Leonardo's self-portrait. She drew lines on the image to show how closely the features lined up. This led her to suggest that the Mona Lisa might partly be a hidden self-portrait of Leonardo himself.
Not everyone agrees with her idea. Some people think the similarities are just because Leonardo painted both, so they naturally have his unique style. Also, while the drawing she used is thought to be a self-portrait, there's no definite proof.
In another experiment, Schwartz used a special computer program to study the perspective (how things look far away or close up) in Leonardo da Vinci's fresco painting, Last Supper. Her 3D computer model showed that the lines in the Last Supper did match the architecture of the room where it's painted in Milan. But this was only because Leonardo made some clever changes to how standard perspective usually works.
Awards and Grants
- Winsor McCay Award, 2021
- ACM SIGGRAPH 2015 Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art, 2015
- Information Film Producers of America Cindy Award for the Museum of Modern Art public service announcement, 1985
- 27th Annual American Film Festival Award for the Museum of Modern Art public service announcement, 1985
- 28th Annual New York Emmy Awards, Outstanding Public Service Announcement Award for Museum of Modern Art public service announcement, 1984
- National Endowment for the Arts Grant, 1982
- Pablo Neruda Director's & Writer's Award for Poet of His People, 1978
- Director's & Purchase Award, Sinking Creek Film Festival, for L'Oiseau, 1978
- National Academy of Television, Arts, & Sciences, Special Award for Special Effects for Enigma, 1972
- International ICOGRADA Jury Award for U.F.O.'s, 1972
- Award for Excellence at Festival International du Cinema en 16 mm. de Montreal, for Enigma, 1972
- CINE Golden Eagle Award for Pixillation, 1971
