Being part of the art - Interactive video displays put viewers in masterpiece paintings

Standing up straight behind the bar in a velvet dress with creme de menthe, champagne and beer set out for her customers, Suzon looked as if she wanted to be somewhere else.

When Allyson Lassiter and Peter Puskas, students from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, sidled up to the bar, checking out their own reflections in the giant mirror behind her, Suzon just sighed and rolled her eyes.

"Hello, hello?" said Puskas, waving a five-dollar bill, trying to get the attention of Suzon, who yawned and looked away.

Suzon and the students were a million miles apart, it seemed. Or a least a century.

In truth, Suzon was a 19th-century barmaid, known only by her first name, who modeled for an edouard Manet painting of a famous Paris beer hall.

The students, on the other hand, were visiting the Dean Jensen Gallery, 759 N. Water St., this week. They were looking at themselves inside what looked like a living version of the Manet masterpiece, "Bar at the Folies-Bergere."

The students were getting a sneak peek at one of the interactive video artworks by Iraqi-born Wafaa Bilal that will go on view tonight for Gallery Night. The works allow viewers to feel as if they are part of masterpiece paintings.

The other two works, still being installed, resemble Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" and Edgar Degas' "The Absinthe Drinker."

When you approach the artworks, they look very much like the originals, down to the size and frame. But the artworks detect when people are approaching, and the painterly figures in them, which are all female, slowly and almost imperceptibly morph into "real" women.

"We are very interested in having the viewer trigger the work," says Bilal, who created the work with the help of another artist, Shawn Lawson.

Bilal's version of Suzon reacts to the body language of the people standing in front of her. Her expression, among the most mysterious and debated in the history of art, can change in 18 different ways.

Usually, she is melancholy or annoyed. She frequently storms away from her post in a huff, not returning until her offenders have left. It's rare, but if you treat her just right, she'll become faintly flirtatious, offering a hint of a smile or a wink.

"What do we see . . . oh my God!" says Bilal, aping how viewers have reacted at other venues. People wave at the woman, try to grope her image in the mirror and just wait and wait after she's left, he says.

Puskas tried to kiss Suzon on the ear and, after she turned on her heel and marched off, positioned his body so it looked as if he had his elbows up on the white, marble bar while he fondled bottles of beer.

"It becomes about them and seeing their reflection in the mirror," Bilal says.

Viewers will appear in the mirror behind Suzon, amid the frenetic scene of the Folies-Bergere, known in the 19th century for its fashionable crowds, prostitutes, circus acts and musical entertainments.

Bilal, who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and who will be at the gallery for the opening tonight, makes a cameo appearance in the work himself. An enigmatic, mustached man from the painting, who stands at the bar, morphs briefly into Bilal before exiting the picture.

Behind the artwork are a false wall, a hidden camera, a projector and a series of computers programmed with complicated algorithms.

They detect how many people are standing in front of the piece and what they're doing, which in turn prompts Suzon to react in different ways. Second, it takes images of the viewers, cuts them out and places them into the artwork, behind Suzon and in the mirror.

The other two works based on Da Vinci and Degas also riff on longstanding ideas about the artworks.

"There is this idea that the 'Mona Lisa' follows you with her eyes," says Lawson. "So we have just sort of exploited that so well, OK, now she does. As you move within the space from one side to the other, she'll turn her head just slightly enough so you can see that she is watching you."

That the figures in the three works are women is no accident, says Bilal. The Manet painting, which raises issues about how women were treated by men, brings the 19th and 21st centuries into contrast and begs the question: What has changed?

"I really, in the back of my head, I think it has a lot to do with watching women . . . a sister and a mother," says Bilal, referring to his family living in Iraq. "I see how oppressed they were and how they did not have a voice."

Suzon and company will linger at the Jensen gallery through Dec. 3.