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Models, Mannequins, Dolls and Beautified Faces: A Semiotic and Philosophical Approach to the Sense of Beauty

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Abstract

The goal of this paper is to contrast the representation of models in photography (fashion and fine art photography), as well as certain kinds of inanimate beauty (Barbie dolls, mannequins), with the average faces constructed by algorithms serving to identify and reproduce beauty. What are the similarities and differences between inanimate objects, characterized by faces devoid of singularities and comparable to sorts of angelic faces, and the algorithmic parameters through which beauty and attractiveness are calculated and predicted? This paper will apply an enunciative semiotic analysis to photographic corpora, propose philosophical reflections on the categories of beauty, and will show that the conception of beauty changes from corpus to corpus and from one cultural domain to the other (fine art, advertising, entertainment and so on). The end of the paper states that beauty has to do with a perfect gradation between stillness and movement in the case of the models seen in fashion photography, between neutrality and expressivity for mannequins, and between singularity and multiplicity for dolls such as Barbie, and that, in the algorithmic fabrication of beautiful faces, it is linked with an enhancement of the compactness of the structure of the face.

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Notes

  1. See on this topic the production of the photographer Eugène Atget.

  2. On uttered enunciation in the field of image science, see Marin (1993), Fontanille (1989), Beyaert-Geslin (2017), Dondero (2020).

  3. The mannequin has already caused great amounts of ink to flow, especially in commentaries regarding the myth of the automaton: we can only think of the book considered by some to be the first science fiction novel, The Future Eve by Villiers de l’Isle Adam, published as a novel in 1886.

  4. See Simms comments on Rilke’s theory on dolls: “The great fear which the doll inspires is the fear of a silence and emptiness at the heart of our existence. It grasps the possible absence of transcendence, the possible unreality of a spiritual invisible realm, the possible meaninglessness of our life beyond the fragile clearing of the present. While in Rilke's work the angel affirms existence beyond and without human beings, the doll, in her small and silent way, denies being itself.” (Simms 1996).

  5. On ethical kitsch, see Dondero (2007).

  6. This paper explains how to reach an aggregate analysis of the features extracted through multi-level skip connections in order to produce a better transmission of information from shallow layers to the deeper layers of the network system and to devise a better gradient transmission flow between the input (the real face) and the output images (the beautified face).

  7. This kind of beautification process is very different from the image morphing that can be used for producing fake faces: such a technique performs a continuous transformation between two different faces while identifying their corresponding features in order to define an appropriate warp. Regarding the device that is the mask, which, in the context of deepfake generation, designates a mediating figure between one face and another and which is characterized by blurring, see Dondero (2021) addressing the issue of “becoming the other”. In contrast, in the beautification process, the objective is to find the adequate target shape into which the source image is to be warped.

  8. Many thanks to Marco Viola for alerting me to the relevance of this paper.

  9. Original version: « L’embellissement n’est qu’un moment, celui où, sur la figure le facteur souple (yin–) se mêle au facteur dur (yang –) pour l’empêcher de se durcir; puis où le facteur dur (yang) vient à son tour à barrer la route au facteur souple pour l’empêcher de s’amollir et de devenir excessif. […] Quelle est donc la leçon à tirer de cet « embellissement» ? Elle est celle d’un délicat équilibrage par « imprégnation» diffuse […] et « estompement» […], le tout évitant l’éclat. »

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Acknowledgements

This paper is part of the special issue of Topoi “What’s so special about faces? Visages at the crossroad between philosophy, semiotics and cognition”, edited by Marco Viola and Massimo Leone, which results from a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant Agreement No 819649-FACETS).

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  1. National Fund for Scientific Research, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium

    Maria Giulia Dondero

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Correspondence to Maria Giulia Dondero.

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Dondero, M.G. Models, Mannequins, Dolls and Beautified Faces: A Semiotic and Philosophical Approach to the Sense of Beauty. Topoi 41, 785–793 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-022-09809-x

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