Problematic Matisse: Large Decoration with Masks

On my second visit to the Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs exhibit at MOMA in 2015, I spent half an hour in the last room, the room with the wall-sized works, the beautiful world Matisse was making with colored paper as his final act.

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At the end of a gallery talk in front of Large Decoration with Masks, the speaker connected the two mask images in the piece to the early emphasis of mask imagery in Matisse and Picasso’s work, and that this is “problematic”. In the context of that room, the comment struck me as unnecessary, as well as inaccurate. Afterwards I asked him why he said it. He gave the explanation I expected, that a current understanding links the appropriation from cultural sources in the “Modern Primitivism” those artists were doing in the 1910s as connected to European colonialism.

I gathered he felt he had to add that comment about the masks, but it wasn’t the social necessity for the statement that bothered me, I understood that, it was my perception of an incorrectness in his description of these mask images.

In this work, these are not really “masks”, these are faces. In modern art, the mask has become a face. In traditional cultural arts, the mask is a disguise and transformation of human identity. In Matisse and modern art, the mask stylization is used to explore/reveal identity in portraiture. In this work, these faces could not be more essentially human. They are the human face boiled down to the simplest form, a set of shapes encircled by a line, just as the flowers are the simplest form of flower shapes. Matisse has gone far beyond the inspirations he found in African mask art.

And to say that the inclusion of two small mask images by an accomplished elder artist nodding back to his inspirations, in this incredible 11′ by 33′ garden of colors, created in a technique Matisse invented, is somehow “appropriation” seemed so unnecessary. Especially in the case of Matisse, whose early mask exploration were just one part of a period of “Radical Invention” (MOMA exhibit 2010, how quickly they forget) as he worked through multiple inspirations to develop them into his original art.

From this experience, and others, I realize that I have an insight into problematic questions about cultural appropriation, and not just in my own problematic career. My work gives me a lens into larger questions. I have been developing stories and performance pieces on such origins, inspirations and appropriations for schools and adult audiences, and this has become my new show:  Talking Art 

Talking Art logo image with two faces painted in mask designs and two quotes: “Men had made these masks for a sacred purpose...At that moment I realized that this is what painting is all about...it’s a form of magic...” — Pablo Picasso and “Brought to life when it is worn, the mask brings gods to earth...conversely, by masking himself, man affirms he is a social being.” — Claude Lévi-Strauss

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Favorite Faces 2017 — Facepainting Gallery

January 11, 2017

#favoritefaces2017   #transformationsny

Starting here with some of my favorite playful faces of the year and examples from Art On Your Face events, followed by faces from StoryFaces performances at festivals, schools and libraries. Below is a second set of photos with more cartooning explorations, animal faces, Halloween and holiday faces.

 

During events I mostly take photos of faces related to designs and techniques I’m working on, so I’ll have records of multiple versions of faces like the “Eaten By…” ones to refer to as I develop them further. This year included continuing to play with putting a cartoon of someone onto their own face, like in the “Smile”  faces, plus cartoons of people as vampires and zombies. Our company project in 2017 was to create “Animals on Faces”, using the face as a canvas (rather than as a mask), like in the “3 Giraffes” or “Rainbow Macaw” faces. And throughout the year I worked to think more like a painter as I painted faces. Fueled by the artface explorations we do, I work to put what I learn from copying artists like Matisse and Modigliani into all the facepainting, to include qualities related to using the Aquacolor make-up more like a painter might: exploring surface effects, for example, like in the four “Alien” faces here.

Learn more about all we do at: agostinoarts.com

Animals On Faces — #animalsIDIC Facepainting Gallery

#AnimalsOnFaces #animalsIDIC — Approaching the face as a canvas and placing an image of the animal onto the face using the inherent shapes of the face. In creating designs to use the curved, living canvas that is a face, I start with exploring where can I place the key element(s) of the animal to create a design that fits the shapes of the face I’m painting and/or allows the wearer to animate the design by using their eyes or mouth. Years of turning people into animals at the Bronx Zoo gave me lots of opportunity to experiment with creating a variety of different faces for the same animal: moving animal images around the face to see where they fit; changing the scale of the images; applying different artistic styles; thinking about creating scenic designs, paintings and graphic images rather than mask-like faces. I’ve collected examples from the past couple decades, starting with my favorites in the top block.

Combinations

Multiple images of animals. Taking a graphic approach in the first examples to confuse the perception of the underlying face and create illusions.

Examples from Transformations

For my book,  Transformations, I drew on years of events at the Bronx Zoo , including special thematic weekends such as Spots and Stripes, or Hidden Animals, that I could use to develop new designs. Working as teams of artists at those public events in which we’d paint hundreds of people, I saw the value in developing a wide range of design techniques, to create different faces for each participant so that each face remained interesting in a crowd of painted faces, and each person painted had their own unique experience. Photos mostly from 2000-2006, a few are older:

Additional Designs

Up through 2016. I’ll be posting a separate Gallery of Animals On Faces 2017 as the photos start coming in.

Learn more all we do at: agostinoarts.com