Event Blog 1: Eric Vilain Talk on Forrest Bess: Seing Things Invisible

Date Attended: Thursday, November 21, 2013

I attended a talk given by Dr. Eric Vilain at the Hammer Museum about Forrest Bess’s exhibit “Seeing Things Invisible”.  Dr. Vilain, Proffessor of Human Genetics at UCLA, spoke about the life work of Forrest Bess through the lens of his own research in intersexuality and the genetics of sexual development.

Picture of me at the exhibit.

Dr. Vilain opened with a medical description of gender ambiguity.  He explained that near the beginning of development, the gonads are bipotential and later develop into male or female genitalia.  Sometimes this development is stunted leading to ambiguous genitalia.  Even if surgery is performed at a young age to make the genitalia unambiguous, the children may show psychological symptoms due to the ambiguity.

Dr. Eric Vilain. www.uclahealth.org/EricVilain

Vilain then moved on to Bess’s views on sexuality.  According to Vilain, Forrest Bess suffered a mental breakdown after being beaten in the army for admitting his homosexuality.  After that, he isolated himself from society and began painting.  The majority of Bess’s paintings reflect his views on sexuality.  Bess’s view on sexuality, partially based on alchemy and the theories of Carl Jung, was that becoming a hermaphrodite was the key to eternal life.  He believed this so strongly that in 1960, Bess attempted to cut an opening to his urethra under his penis to achieve his hermaphroditic fantasy.  He failed to do so and ultimately died in 1977 at the age of 66.

Bess’s views on sexuality and immortality are the major themes of his artwork.  For example, in his 1957 painting, “The Hermaphrodite”, Bess draws shapes that, as Vilain explains, depict the gonads.  A lexicon found accompanying the exhibit explain that the color red symbolizes male, and the color white symbolizes female.  The juxtaposition of these colors and a depiction of the gonads properly express Bess’s views on intersexuality as previously discussed.

“The Hermaphrodite”, Forrest Bess, 1957 http://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/detail/exhibition_id/242

After listening to the talk and spending some additional time wandering through the exhibit, I began to reflect upon my experience.  I realized how little I knew about intersexuality both scientifically and socially.  I realized that without the context of intersexuality and Bess's personal life provided by Dr. Vilain, I probably would have been lost while wandering through the exhibit.  I would not have been able to comprehend, let alone appreciate Bess’s artwork.