Hybrid body / portrait

Our bodies affect the attitude of others towards us. A century ago the shape of one’s face and head could become a decisive factor in her/his career, destiny, or even death. In the nineteenth – early twentieth century scientists believed that the shape and dimensions of a skull indicated the intellectual potential of its owner. In ancient Greece Aristotle (384–322 BC) in his opus Historia Animalium asserted that a high forehead indicates a slow person, a low forehead is characteristic of a wobbler, and lunatics have a wide forehead. The theories of physiognomy and eugenics based on skull studies were used to justify ethnic cleansings and the attempts to create a superhuman race. Though theories like these have been recognised as a pseudoscience already long ago, even today one can encounter assessments based on a person’s appearance and a desire to create an ideal human individual. In painting self-portraits based on the skull dimensions of other persons as well as adopting facial reconstruction methods used by criminal investigators, I created hybrids of Lithuanian historical personalities: the poet Kristijonas Donelaitis, the politician and composer Mykolas Kleopas Oginskis, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania Sigismund II Augustus. In my essay I briefly reveal the process and the method of ‘portraying’ the poet Kristijonas Donelaitis, referring to Graham Harman’s idea of ‘the third table’ on the third, parallel, reality of objects that lingers beyond realities as defined both by natural sciences and the humanities