Mona-Leo by Lillian Schwartz

Lillian Schwartz’s Mona-Leo was the artist’s attempt to use computers to analyze portraits of both Leonardo da Vinci and the Mona Lisa. According to Schwartz, “With Unix-based machines, she proved indisputably that Leonardo used himself as the final model for the Mona Lisa.”

More about Schwartz: Pioneer of computer-generated film

Schwartz’s vision to innovate with the latest tools led to a career of genre-shattering experimentation. She had “an intense interest in new materials,” which would remain throughout her career. Mirroring computer art’s own genealogy, she worked in lumino-kinetic, “light box” sculptures before turning to computers.

Her kinetic work brought her in contact with the E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology) group. This led to Schwartz’s “Proxima Centauri” being selected by MoMA for its epochal “The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age” (New York) in 1968.

She then joined Bell Labs as its first female artist, working on her own and with the likes of Ken Knowlton. Here, she would create some of the lab’s most important early work with computers. At Bell Labs, she experimented with computer-generated film, combining traditional techniques with the latest digital methods. Her films were at once modernist and based on abstract geometric forms, yet they generated a vast array of advanced computer imagery.

Schwartz’s pioneering use of various physical and digital media pushed the limitations of technology to embrace the unexpected. Her career showed how, in her own words, "computers can be made to accommodate the entire breadth of artistic thought.”

The work was featured in Frank Popper’s Art of the Electronic Age.