The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 9, 2023

Second Beauty Composite: Jane Fonda, Jacqueline Bisset, Diane Keaton, Brooke Shields, Meryl Streep

1982

Nancy Burson

(American, b. 1948)

America, 20th century

Gelatin silver print

Image: 20.9 x 22.7 cm (8 1/4 x 8 15/16 in.); Framed: 46.4 x 46.5 cm (18 1/4 x 18 5/16 in.)

The Jane B. Tripp Charitable Lead Annuity Trust 2020.73

© Nancy Burson

Location

not on view

Fun Fact

Standards of beauty vary not only across cultures but also through time.

Description

By compositing the faces of female movie stars from two different eras, Nancy Burson helps us see how the type of face considered photogenic and therefore beautiful changed over the space of just a couple of decades. Curiously, creating digital composites of women took Nancy Burson longer than producing composites of men because women’s hairstyles are much more varied.

Inscriptions

Inscription

Written in black ink on recto: "Second Beauty Composite © 1982 Nancy Burson (signed) 11/15"

Provenance
John J. McDonough Museum of Art, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH
March 2, 2020
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Citations
Burson, Nancy, Richard Carling, and David Kramlich. Composites: Computer-Generated Portraits. New York: Beech Tree Books, 1986.
Burson, Nancy, Michael L. Sand, Lynn Gumpert, Terrie Sultan, and Christopher C. French. Seeing and Believing: The Art of Nancy Burson. Santa Fe, N.M.: Twin Palms, 2002.
Source URL: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2020.73