Fourth Face of Eve

From: “Today’s Inspiration” March 21, 2014 (Leif Peng)

"Series paintings have always been the kind of thing I like to do the most."
- Harvey Schmidt

In early 1958 at the request of Life magazine. Schmidt was tapped to illustrate the true story of a woman with multiple split-personality disorder; the famous "Fourth Face of Eve."

Of this commission, Schmidt said, “This was an unusually interesting assignment for me. Even though the situations to be illustrated were presented by the editors, the main problem - to project the distorted and compulsive world of a woman who had lost contact with reality - was great."

"I saw the original films of the patient taken by her psychiatrist. They gave me an insight into the feelings of constricted gesture and sudden emotional shift which was essential to a visualization of Eve. Then, with the subjects of the drawings decided upon and some background material digested (plus much pondering of the whole theme in odd moments), I began to work on the actual illustrations."

"To create a sense of intimacy, of 'looking in' on Eve's life we planned the drawings as though seen from an angle slightly above... similar to the style of Japanese prints. The difficulties of foreshortening required a model. But after looking over a few cadaverous choices striking high fashion poses, I decided to enlist the help of a friend of mine, a dancer, who seemed to understand exactly what I wanted and could hold difficult poses without tiring."

"To increase the neurotic, tense feeling essential to the situations, I experimented with an angular, uneven line technique: as for example in the drawing of Eve - showing her compulsive 'fourth face' - pocketing a sweater in a department store."