Amie Siegel
Body Scripts (pgs. 133-136)Gouache on paper27.9 × 20.03 cm ( 10 31⁄32 × 7 7⁄8 inches )
'Body Scripts' are a series of thirty-four framed works on paper, pages from the English translation of Alberto Moravia’s novel 'Il desprezzo' (The Ghost at Noon), which served as the basis for Jean-Luc Godard’s 'Le Mépris' (Contempt). However, only pages of the narrative that focus on the female protagonist are present, those passages further highlighted by their surrounding sentences having been over-painted, and thus blocked out by turquoise paint, producing monochrome blocks whose geometry recalls architectural floor plans, The condensation of the novel’s images and descriptions of the woman’s body form a “script” for the performance of the female figure featured in the related work, 'The Noon Complex', furthering the engagement with presence and absence, adaptation and removal.
The turquoise paint color is a custom mix of the average color of the sea, the medium through which Bardot’s body moves, over time, in the digital transfer of the original cinemascope film.
