Las Meninas (Maids of Honor)
Based on the spatial structure of “Las Meninas,” a painting by Velasquez, 17th-century Spanish master, Juan Downey has combined a diversity of media (i.e. film, performance, video, and slides) to create a visual exploration of the historical and social contexts of the painting, with narration provided by George Kubler, professor of history of art at Yale University, and with quotations borrowed from Michel Foucault, the French structuralist. Downey also uses the painting as a metaphor for his own mind in the subjective and lyrical mood of this self-reflective work of art about art.
• By Juan Downey. (1975, 20 mins, color)

Venus and Her Mirror
In the Rockeby Venus, currently displayed at the National Gallery in London, Velasquez, in the Flemish manner, explored the replicated image by means of a mirror strategically placed to invert the picture plane. A series of performers stretch the spatial code of the Rockeby Venus “through the looking glass.” In this playful video program, Downey decodes the picture plane examining the figure of the Venus as binary sets of oppositions: front/back, left/right, female/male, black/white, and video/mirror.
• By Juan Downey. (1978, 7 mins, color, three-channel)

Art Herstory
Art Herstory, produced at WNET T.V. Lab, is an electronic recreation of the history of painting from the perspective of a woman looking at the women depicted in various works. Freed, and in some instances supporting “characters,” are superimposed as figures within painting from early Italian to Pop. Studio techniques such as chroma keying and superimpositions are used to electronically mimic the changing treatments of space in painting over time. For example, the flat Byzantine space of early Italian painting gives way to the two-point perspective of the High Renaissance, to the multi-faceted space of Cubism, to the serial imagery of Warhol.
• By Hermine Freed. Directed with Michael Bazadone. With Lizzie Borden, Carol Brandenburg, Peter Campus, Duka Delight, Alan Gerberg, Beryl Korot, Bruce Kurtz. (1974, 22 mins, color)