Abstract
In her critical review of Katie Herzog's art installation Transtextuality (Senate Bill 48), Jessica Lee Mathiason argues that the artist's collection of forty-eight portraits transforms the archive into an artwork while questioning institutional boundaries and disrupting its previous stability, position, and purpose. A reimagining of Gerhard Richter's 1972 installation of 48 Portraits of men of letters, Herzog's piece sets itself apart from the original through its commitment to materiality. While Richter removed all brushstrokes from his portraits, making them closely resemble the encyclopedia photographs he used as models, Herzog instead embraces the hand with her long, sweeping, and visible strokes. Using her unmistakable indentations, daring lines, and stylized portraiture to foreground the contractedness of art and the archive, Herzog challenges Richter's methodology and disciplinary modes of historiography, which have systematically excluded LGBT persons from our encyclopedias, textbooks, and collective memory.
