Category Archives: Transformation Theory

my philosophy of face and body painting

Is A Painted Body Naked? – Pt. 2: Painting Clothing On vs. Painting On Clothing – Demi Moore Vanity Fair

By Christopher Agostino

Why is it that if you paint underwear on a naked model she seems to be wearing more clothes than if you paint almost anything on a model wearing underwear?

My beat up cover from Vanity Fair, August, 1992. Demi Moore, body paint by Joanne Gair, photograph by Annie Liebovitz

There’s a slowly growing awareness of bodypainting in American Pop Culture, and I’d mark its beginning with Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair. Prior to that, bodypainting was for hippies, Woodstock and Goldie Hawn. More than just a masterful exhibition of a makeup artist’s ability, that cover broke boundaries.

Goldie Hawn from Laugh-In

This was a naked woman (a celebrity!) on the cover of a mainstream magazine — yet she wasn’t naked. It was a successful fashion image — yet she wasn’t wearing any clothes. Bodyart functioning as conceptual art, playing with perceptions and expectations of the viewer, maybe you can even connect it to what Man Ray did in his famous “bodyart” photograph.

The year before when she was on the cover naked and pregnant, Demi Moore positioned her arm to cover her breasts. This time, the body paint was deemed sufficient covering for this magazine to be displayed on newsstands, which we can take as a significant statement of “no” in regard to the question “is a painted body naked?”

As exciting for me as that cover was the little bit on the editor’s page about how long it took — demonstrating the serious approach that can be brought to body painting — and the name of the body painter: Joanne Gair. When did you ever see “body paint by” as a credit line before? She has got to be the closest thing we have to a “famous body painter” in mainstream consciousness, and this public understanding of bodypainting as illusion remains prevalent with her work in the very popular annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Regarding SI, I don’t think that anyone could argue that the painted models there are any more (or less) naked than the models in the real bikinis.

There is also a whole realm of Joanne Gair’s work beyond the painted bathing suits — look for her book “Body Painting”(2006).    http://www.joannegair.com/books1.1.htm

I haven’t attempted to paint clothing on anyone since the 80s, my bodyart goals are different. I have though been required at times to paint my art over clothing by clients and convention producers, over a bra or such, and it just doesn’t look right. Maybe because when the women is naked, or just in nipple shields, the paint can better pull off the appearance of being  a costume than if you can see the bra straps telling you that somebody is standing in front of you in their underwear. I’ve come to tell clients that this just doesn’t work right, so if they need real modesty we should have some kind of minimum clothing and work it into the design rather than try to hide it.

A few years back I was hired to do some “sexy” painting on a couple of models for a cd release party in a night club, with nipple covers and enough paint that they wouldn’t seem naked, plus the cd logos thrown in. One of the models showed up and wouldn’t take her bright blue satin underwear off — the client had hired the models and I don’t know what he told her to expect. She explained to me that she didn’t need to take her top off because she had seen photographs when body painters put fake clothing on naked models, so I should be able to make her look naked while she kept her bra on.

These days, there are also all those nifty prosthetic pieces from people such as BodyFX that make disguising the body parts part of the design  — like “starfish boobs” for your topless mermaid. From their website: “BodyFX Prosthetics are new and innovative products that will help you to create artistic and discreet body paints. Instead of painting bra’s, you can use an artistic solution. To overcome the nudity factor, BodyFX Prosthetics can be glued over the whole breasts or just the nipples. Using BodyFX Prosthetics, you will find more clients (and models) are willing to try body-art as a means of entertainment.”  http://www.bodyfx.co.nz/products/prosthetics.htm

Learn more at my Body Painting Page https://thestorybehindthefaces.com/body-painting/

To learn more about our programs and performances:  http://www.agostinoarts.com  Christopher Agostino

follow me for the face of the day:  https://twitter.com/#!/storyfaces

Related articles
Related articles

The Nuba Bird Dance at Bodies Alive! – Nao Dance Collective

The Nuba Bird Dance, performed by the Nao Dance Collective as part of our Bodies Alive! show at the Face and Body Art International Convention (FABAIC) in Orlando, 2008 — in black and white bodypaint designs based on the analytical sketches of James C. Faris in his book "Nuba Personal Art"

by Christopher Agostino

The underlying creative intention behind Bodies Alive! was to explore how movement and performance can bring bodyart to life, so we sought to create a modern dance piece inspired by bodypainting. In any previous opportunities I’d had to bodypaint dancers for performance my task was to create designs to support an existing theme and concept. For this dance the makeup design came first.

Nao Dance Collective  http://www.naodance.com/  is a structured improvisational company under the direction of Linda Eve Elchak — just the kind of group we were looking for to create a brand new piece for a single performance. We discussed the project and I sent the music, sketches for the bodypainting and some insight about the functional effect of this type of tribal bodyart: that the use of hard-edged  geometric designs is intended to break the human form and destroy recognizable individual identity, and thereby create a new unified tribal identity. I suggested the dancers could take advantage of this visual confusion by contrasting movement as a group with movement as individuals. From that, they created the piece. It was thrilling for me to see what these elements had led to in the rehearsal before the Orlando show. We didn’t paint them for the rehearsal, so they had some concerns about what performing in bodypaint would be like, particularly if they had to be careful not to smudge it by touching each other — and I reassured them that I wanted the paint to be alive, to change and to smear and to transfer from one dancer to another as it would in a tribal dance.

The dancers were painted by a group of experienced bodypainters following my designs (see their foto below, and the video of the bodypainting room). Bodies Alive! required the participation of dozens of models and performers, along with teams of designers, painters and assistants — a resource we might only have found at an event like the Face and Body Art International Convention (FABAIC) http://www.fabaic.com/ , celebrating it’s 10th anniversary this year, and I will be there again.

Putting the music together for this piece involved some serendipity. Although I wanted something tribal, I was taking these body designs so far out of their original context that I didn’t want anything directly connected to the Nuba or African culture. The chant is listed as “Kecak: The Ramayana Monkey Chant  from Bali” on a cd of Indonesia music from Nonesuch Records‘ Explorer Series  http://www.nonesuch.com/artists/explorer-series-indonesia Once you hear it, it stays with you. I had it stuck in my head for this, but didn’t think it was enough to build the dance around and was looking for alternatives when I heard “Surfer Bird” by The Trashman on Bob Dylan’s radio show. The pieces fit, the rhythm was right and there is that iconic Nuba face design of the ostrich over the eye to seal the deal.

See the previous post, and search “Nuba” on this site for more information.

Nuba Bird Dance Painters: Paola Paredes-Shenk, Leah Reddell, Kerry Ann Smith, Diane and Theresa Spadola, Pam Trent, Jeff Edney, Deidre MacDonald

Learn more at my Body Painting Page https://thestorybehindthefaces.com/body-painting/

Related articles

Traditional Bodyart – Nuba, Sudan, Africa- 2: Nuba Personal Art

by Christopher Agostino, published April 2011

The Southeast Nuba people of Sudan, Africa practiced an extraordinary tradition of bodyart, available to see primarily in two books: “Nuba Personal Art” by James C. Faris (1972) and “People of Kau” by Leni Riefensthal (1977). Although the second one contains the more accomplished photography, it is Faris’ book that yields the most information to a bodypainter. Through detailed visual analysis of their bodyart and interviews with the artists over three field sessions among the Nuba from 1966-1969, Faris decodes the visual language and,  more valuably for a working body artist, explains the methodology and principles that led to such a stunning variety of designs. It is the most insightful and rigorous study of bodypainting (tribal or otherwise) that I’ve read.

The book contains sketches and charts by Faris encapsulating his analysis of Nuba bodyart patterns, with references to actual examples among the extensive photographs of painted individuals— the chart on page 47 is reproduced here. In addition to these formulas for generating bodypainting designs, he gives unique insights into otherwise impenetrable aspects of the images of the Nuba. For example, explaining that although they often use animal imagery there is no totemic connection to the animal’s powers (as there might be in Amazon or Native American bodyart). The animal imagery is chosen entirely for its value as a design element and how well it suits the forms of the body it is painted on.

Applying this analysis to one of the faces photographed by Leni Reifensthal, we can tell that this ostrich image is not chosen to give the wearer the speed of an ostrich but because the shape fits the eye socket so well. The long linear neck looks good going up the individual’s tall forehead and, by being placed precisely on the bridge of the nose, it keeps this asymmetrical design balanced. Further, Faris describes how Nuba artists manipulate the imagery to make it a pure design element by devices such as continuing the diagonal lines of the ostrich wings all the way into the hair line. He explains that if the lines continue off the face they are subjectively perceived as a design, while if they stop they are perceived more as a concrete object such as a wing. Finally, the removal of the literal interpretation of this design as “ostrich” is completed by outlining of the black design with a lighter yellow, a color which signifies that the design carries no meaning beyond its aesthetic appearance.

This is the quality that sets the Southeast Nuba apart from other traditional body arts, including the body arts of other Nuba cultures: the aesthetic value of the design and, especially, its ability to enhance the human form, transcend any meaning or ceremonial content in the design. When this art was practiced within their culture, young men in their prime would spend hours each day together, painting themselves and assisting with the painting of each other, creating unique designs daily — celebrating the human body by turning it into a work of art.

“Whatever the source of the designs used on the body, the critical factor is that the body must be emphasized, complemented, enhanced. No design or artistic treatment must detract from the presentation of the physical form itself — the chief reason, after all, for the personal art rests in the proper cultural exposure and celebration of the healthy body.” — James C. Faris

And he states that without dependence on symbolic content, “the most meaningful element is the medium on which it is … produced — the human body. This culturally proper exposure can be, perhaps as [anthropologist] Levi-Strauss has suggested, the essential expression of culturalogical man as opposed to the biological individual.” Which is to say that it is their personal art that signifies their identity as a social being.

Click here for a pdf of a tribal bodypainting guide I use in workshops, which includes my notes on one of the charts from Nuba Personal Art:  Bodypainting_Tribal_agostinoarts

Learn more about all we do at: agostinoarts.com

Nao Dance company in Bodies Alive! Bodyart patterns based on nuba designs

See the video of the Nao Dance company in Bodies Alive!:  The Nuba Bird Dance

 

 

 

 

“Picasso Nuba” from my Modern Primitive Art bodypainting series.    Combining a “nyulan” design type from Nuba bodyart with the cubist painting Seated Woman 1953 by Picasso

Related articles