Abercrombie & Fitch Spring Quarterly 2000 cover, photograph by Bruce Weber
In October of 1999, the photographer Bruce Weber saw me painting animal faces in a mask-like style at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine’s annual St. Francis Day Fair. He hired me to do bodypainting for a photo shoot for the Abercrombie & Fitch Spring Quarterly 2000. Survivor was a hit on TV, so they were going for that, with the models like castaways — he gave me one instruction, “Lord of the Flies”, and when I told him I knew what he meant, he let me paint. I painted 19 models in about 3 hours in a swamp in Florida. He photographed each of the models separately (for the cover and an interior 4 page spread), and then the full group as the sun was starting to set. The foto he chose for the cover was of a model painted in a baboon spirit mask design I had been experimenting with all that summer, as we had been incorporating African mask styles into our faces for the opening of the Congo Gorilla Rain Forest at the Bronx Zoo that year. This gallery includes some of his photos (scanned from the quarterly), and a few of my own snapshots from that session. Return to our main website: agostinoarts.com
George Clooney had himself arrested to bring attention to the one-sided warfare being inflicted by the northern Sudanese government on the people of the Nuba Mountains—and he has done much more than that, he has set up the Sudan Sentinel Project to monitor the ongoing human-rights abuses. The crux of the problem is that the Nuba Mountains are located north of the newly created border with Southern Sudan, though the people there are aligned with the southern Sudanese. New Yorker online: FREEING SUDAN—AND GEORGE CLOONEY
The traditional body arts of the Nuba have been a major inspiration for my work (see related articles below). In addition to the destructive actions of years of civil war and government aggression, their traditions have long been under cultural attack. In my research for the article on the Nuba for my book in 2005, I read in a National Geographic Magazine that the body art traditions have pretty much vanished from their culture. The religiously conservative Sudanese government was against traditional nakedness and bodypainting, and were working to eradicate those traditions—a primary method they were using was to put satellite TVs into community centers, to lure younger members of the tribal groups into a fascination with modern culture and away from their traditions. Continue reading →
In November, at the Kids-for-Kids Family Carnival to benefit the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation http://www.pedaids.org/, we had another opportunity to develop new face designs in support of an event theme. This year the event had a travel theme (“Journey to End Pediatric Aids”), so we offered to paint in our “World Mask” theme of styles from world cultures. The client asked us to go further and feature specifically the countries in which the foundation has its programs: the U.S.; several nations of Africa; and India. For U.S. faces we would include some iconic scenic designs like the Statue of Liberty and for Africa I have an extensive resource of mask and bodyart images which I could mine to find images from the specific countries involved. So I took this thematic opportunity to do some new research into inspirations from India. In addition to collecting some additional imagery from the elaborate theatrical makeups of the Kerala region, I did some image research into the art of Rangoli. Rangoli is a folk art that relates directly to facepainting, featuring floral and nature designs that are bright, colorful and very ephemeral, painted on the floor with colored rice, flours, sands or flower petals as an auspicious act, creating sacred welcoming areas for Hindu deities.
The first third of my book, Transformations! The Story Behind the Painted Faces, chronicles my investigation of cultural sources of face and body art, and how I have incorporated those discoveries into my work.
I painted the rangoli style peacock on the left, Naoko (I think) did the one in the middle, and on the right, Lorraine abstracted the peacock and mixed it with the images of the girl's shirt
Dimitrea painting a Kerala styled design
face by Dimitrea
My version of a classic bodhisatva image
Holi Festival cancept
Naoko painting
I took this makeup for the god Shiva from a traditional illustration of Hindu writings
an example of the theatrical makeup from the Kerala region of India
from the Holi festival or "Festival of Colors"
Holi Festival
Jennifer had the really brilliant idea of using the figures on one of the foundation's posters as the inspiration for these two faces
Lorraine painted one the musician's performing there in a Spirt Mask
based on a Ngere face design
Buffalo Mask, Bobo people
Jennifer and I were both experimenting with putting the full masked dancing figure on the face, rather than just imitating the mask
A Yoruba design, associated with healing
Jennifer's Yoruba inspired design
Surma people, Omo River region
Omo River region
Omo River region
The face styles of the various Omo River cultures are a continuing source of new designs
