Mask and Masquerade

from Magritte A to Z, Pg 104-105

“Masks can also be about disappearance, the evanescence of a persona or their transition to a different level of reality. Traditionally the mask elevates the subjective world into a state of objectivity. It allows the wearer to assimilate with the outside world at the same time protecting him or her by concealing their real self. People also hide their weakness behind the mask, in the hope that it may also help them grow beyond themselves. As such, Magritte might be seen to use the mask as a kind of mirror-image of our perceptions, which are torn between semblance and reality. As in his ‘failed portraits’, the mask allows him to avoid falsification: the individuality or a particular figure recedes behind its objectified appearance, with the result that the image is spared accusations of imitation.”

Ways of Seeing – John Berger

An excerpt from John Berger’s Ways of Seeing –

To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men. The social presence of women has developed as a result of their ingenuity in living under such tutelage within such a limited space. But this has been at the cost of a woman’s self being split into two. A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across the room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking and weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.

An so she comes to consider the surveryor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman.
(Page 46)

One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.
(Page 47)

The Progression of Masks – Mapping Comparisons

Masks have evolved from being tangible in early cultures to something intangible in contemporary culture. Social uses differ in present context as compared to earlier context of time. A representation of this could be drawn from the structure of the tree of life, which laid is roots in Dogon culture and African cosmology.

Action: Mobile installation

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For this part of a project, I’d like to make a mobil installation to represent the cosmos but could still map out the comparisons between the tangible and intangible. If there are space constraints, I would probably document the process and the installation which would be housed at a bigger space via video. It would be an added bonus if I can find a special site – making the work very site specific.

Objects in Orbit by Chrissie Macdonald Collaboration with Andrew Rae.
Detroit Gallery, Stockholm, 2011

This installation has a constant object that ‘revolves’ around different elements. Instead of making it literally revolve/orbit the constant object is placed in different environments.

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Mobiles made from everyday objects by Hanna Sandin

The simplicity and elegance of the mobiles are quite an irony to the everyday objects that were used to make them. The artist has a gift of curating these objects, placing them together to create a visual symphony. From this I learn that balance is an important element for a mobile installation. It is pretty much a floating sculpture and the manipulation of air space is important. Mobiles are constantly moving so there are multiplicities when viewing the art work.

An Alternate Meaning – The Displacement of the Face

In Gombrich’s essay, The Mask and the Face: The Perception of Physiognomic Likeness in Life and in Art, masks are seen as “…crude distinctions, the deviations from the norm which mark a person off  from others.” Gombrich has revealed another way of seeing a mask. It might not necessarily take on conventional interpretations.

Action: Sculptural series

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I would like to interpret this series with illustrative pieces that are converted into various three-dimensional objects. The basis of these sculptures would still be a permanent aspect, which is the face – but altered by displacing the elements or reinterpreting them. These masks/objects would be hung, instead of being worn, the act of viewing serves as a reflection – masks are a reflection of our inner beings.

image found on pinterest:

I love the use of the veil as it shrouds the face without actually covering it. There is an added dimension on the face. The embroided features stands out from the rest of the face – exaggerating the actual features.

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Collages done by Trey Wright

The placement of the individual pieces works. Although each of them are flat cut outs, they look rather three-dimensional as they are being propped against a backdrop. I like the idea of using collage to represent the displacement of the face and how the elements could be seen as separate and as one.

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études
what was and will be i will never see
by Lou Benesch

These studies done by Benesch are very charming, making use of organic shapes, their placement and composition works somehow. The shapes could be converted into three dimensional objects and arranged physically.

Original Ideal by Scott Chasserot

Science shows that we all feel this way — that we’d be much happier with the way we looked if we could adjust a few things just a little bit. Photographer Scott Chasserot investigated what it means for us to feel “ideal” through his project Original Ideal. He took straight-on photographs of a bunch of different people and the manipulated them digitally, offering each of his subjects dozens of manipulated photographs (plus their original photographs) to choose from. Some of these photographs had been manipulated to conform to traditional beauty standards, while others were manipulated so that they conformed less.

Obviously, everyone picked a more ‘ideal’ version of themselves. How was Scott sure their choices were honest? Through science, of course! He hooked each participant up to an EEG headset, which detected brainwaves related to positive emotional reactions as they viewed each image.

– Oyster Mag

Lernert & Sander: Natural Beauty

Cheeky directors Lernert & Sander embrace the urge for cosmetic overkill in their surreal short Natural Beauty. Makeup artist Ferry van der Nat and his assistant Vanessa Chan helped to execute the vision, slathering a host of Ellis Faas products on  Belgian beauty Hannelore Knuts, who was recently named the new face of Swiss fashion house Akris. Lernert & Sander began collaborating in 2006; since then they’ve done everything from melt a chocolate bunny with a hairdryer to repurpose household appliances as sex toys in the name of video art. We asked the co-conspirators to break down the shoot in detail.

–Nowness

Picasso’s Ceramics

Takeaway: Picasso’s ceramics are very peculiar and stylised. Almost all are depictions of faces but necessarily in a naturalistic way. Picasso was known for using multiple perspective during his cubist phase. He was had interests in African masks, which were popular amongst European painters during the impressionist movement. It certainly shows through his work, the use of multiple perspective and the interest in masks and the face. This could be a medium I could explore.

For Light and Memory – Painting and Collage by Sergei Sviatchenko

This is an interesting technique where the face is being cut out and you can literally see right through them. Perhaps the face is only a veneer that when removed, it could possible reveal so much more.

Drawing on and harnessing all of the cultural tides he has experienced in 40 years of image-making, Sviatchenko’s oeuvre spans the known and the unimaginable. It cuts through the boundaries of traditional and contemporary visuals to merge pop culture with politics, personal memory with collective histories, and architecture and science with the logic of dreams.

For several years now, Sergei Sviatchenko has produced photo-collages that look like his own and no one else’s. A Sviatchenko piece may consist of only two or three interlinked elements floating on a vividly colored background of blue, yellow, green or pink. One of his periodic series is titled Less and reduction is his unfailing aim. The fewer the images, the more the pressure on each component increases, and the more crucial the acts of selection, excision and montage become, since everything depends on the associations and implications forced from this relationship. The flatness of the backgrounds is jarring and unusual; many collagists prefer to set their images into delicate beds of paper that can be savored for their colors and texture. Sviatchenko’s harshly bright and depthless backdrops deny his images any sense of location and push his constructions forward graphically as sculptural objects. The sharp cuts that he makes around, and into, his often monochrome source pictures give them a blunt, aggressive, anti-realist outline that helps to counteract the otherwise overpowering color. The final outcome is a limited edition C-print, which further flattens the image.

–Design Observer

Despite the disquieting intimations of violence, exploitation and control as the image grapples with itself, this “elephant man” exists first of all to fulfill the collagist’s desire to make another world from the chaotic visual debris of a planet in a state of permanent flux. All Sviatchenko will add is that reconfigurations of this kind create a new “story” in which viewers must discover their own associations: “Then everyone can look for their own reality.”

Takeaway: These collages by Sviatchenko are not overwhelming in terms of the use of elements, instead he uses a few pieces, more often two to three and creating a tight composition that is well balanced. The use of bright solid colours as the background elevates the collage pieces. I am especially interested in the portraits that he did via collage. Displacing the face, it is as if, the more you cover it, the more you are revealing. Not in a literal sense but more of a symbolic sense.

Janus

In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus (Latin: Ianus, pronounced [ˈjaː.nus]) is the god of beginnings and transitions, and thereby of gates, doors, doorways, passages and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces, since he looks to the future and to the past. The Romans named the month of January (Ianuarius) in his honor.

Janus presided over the beginning and ending of conflict, and hence war and peace. The doors of his temple were open in time of war, and closed to mark the peace. As a god of transitions, he had functions pertaining to birth and to journeys and exchange, and in his association with Portunus, a similar harbor and gateway god, he was concerned with travelling, trading and shipping.

Janus had no flamen or specialized priest (sacerdos) assigned to him, but the King of the Sacred Rites (rex sacrorum) himself carried out his ceremonies. Janus had a ubiquitous presence in religious ceremonies throughout the year, and was ritually invoked at the beginning of each one, regardless of the main deity honored on any particular occasion.

The ancient Greeks had no equivalent to Janus, whom the Romans claimed as distinctively their own. Modern scholars, however, have identified analogous figures in the pantheons of the Near East. His name in Greek is ‘Ιανός (Ianós).

Attributes:
Associated with doorways and gates, Janus is the god of beginnings. Since he looks both ways, the term Janus-faced is used to describe someone who is duplicitous. He was also considered the guardian of peace, a time at which when the door to his shrine was closed.

Honors:
The most famous temple to Janus in Rome, on the Argiletum, is called theIanus Geminus ‘Twin Janus’. When its doors were open, neighboring cities knew that Rome was at war. When the doors were closed, Rome was at peace. In his account of his accomplishments, Augustus says the gateway doors were closed only twice before him, by Numa (235 B.C.) and Manlius (30 B.C.). Augustus closed them 3 times, in 29 after Actium, in 25, and a debated third time.

There were other temples for Janus, one on his hill, the Janiculum, and another built, in 260 at the Forum Holitorium, by C. Duilius for a Punic War naval victory.

God of change and time:
Janus frequently symbolized change and transitions such as the progress of future to past, from one condition to another, from one vision to another, and young people’s growth to adulthood. He represented time, because he could see into the past with one face and into the future with the other. Hence, Janus was worshipped at the beginnings of the harvest and planting times, as well as at marriages, deaths and other beginnings. He represented the middle ground between barbarism and civilization, rural and urban space, youth and adulthood. Having jurisdiction over beginnings Janus had an intrinsic association with omens and auspices

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Takeaway: The roman god janus has two faces, symbolising the past and the future, war and peace, beginnings and endings – the start and the ending, basically complimentary elements representing a transition of time. It is interesting to see the connection between his two faces, with transition. In the context of masks, one face has to be the dominant one in order for it to work. I’ve never thought of having two faces not layered, not covering the other but placed from one end of the spectrum to another. Whatever in between symbolising change/transition/movement.

Archetype

How Archetypes Function

Jung’s first answers to the question ‘How does the archetype function?’ was ‘through dreams.’ He made public his discovery that dreams contain impersonal mythological themes as well as martial of a more personal nature. A series of dreams and fantasies were amplified with parallel symbols draw from mythological and religious sources. He called these symbolic ideas archetypal symbols to indicate that these images were the symbolic form of the archetypes (instincts) that gave them form.

Archetypal symbols form a framework of images representing universal human characteristics. He held that they constellate energy (that is to say, they are experienced as drawing energy towards themselves) and that they express libidinally charged psychic structures common to all humans.

‘It is a psychological fact that an archetype can seize hold of the ego and even compel it to act  as it -the archetype- wills’. Jung warned that, in letting oneself be possessed by an archetype, one forfeits one’s humanity. The archetype acts as an amplifier, for example, of the power and effects of the real parent whose image combined with the archetypal representation becomes a divine or daemonic imago.

Archetype as idea

In considering the origins of the idea, Jung stated that it had a precursor, the primordial image. Earlier, he had spoken of both ideas and images as products of archetypes. He clarified this further by calling on his theory or personality differences and proposed that the idea has a dual meaning as both a primary determinant (as in primordial ideas) and as a product. 

Archetype as image

The image functioned as a condensed expression or the psychic situation as a whole. Jung speaks of the image as part conscious, part unconscious – a momentary constellation or elements or the activity of both. The image, then, is a kind of bridge that transcends the conscious and the unconscious. An interpretation of its meaning can only come from understanding the reciprocal relationship between the two.
Archetype as symbol

Jung claimed that mandala symbols were comparable with their ethnographic parallels in both form and meaning. He emphasised that knowledge of the common origin of these and other symbols has now been lost to us, and so it is necessary to read texts from old cultures to understand and elucidate their functions for psychic development. He spoke of historical layers below the surface of the psyche that are alive and continuously active in everyone: perhaps to a degree we cannot imagine in our present state of knowledge.

– Clare Crellin, The Theory Itself, Jung’s Theory of Personality: A Modern Reappraisal, Pg75-81