Tag Archives: bodypainting

Li Chi Slays the Dragon — LIVE at PIFA — storytelling

Li Chi Slays the Dragon — a Transformation Tale by Christopher Agostino, from an ancient legend of China

One of my favorite tales, Li Chi Slays the Dragon, from a performance on April 30, 2011 at the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts street fair, presented by The Kimmel Center. It was a truly beautiful day, the first one after some rainy ones, so the street was packed and a crowd formed instantly as I started up. I painted a couple of people to demonstrate the transformation story-faces concept and to focus the crowd, and then picked a volunteer and launched right in.

The tale of the brave maiden Li Chi who volunteers to be sacrificed to the dragon in order to kill it is an especially fun one to tell. My source is a brief folktale nearly 2,000 years old, written by Gan Bao (or Kan Pao), found in the book “Chinese Fairy Tales & Fantasies” edited by Moss Roberts, 1979, Pantheon Books. Like most of the stories I perform, it has been gradually re-written through the course of presenting it to modern audiences — though the heroine Li Chi’s chiding of the previous girls sent to the dragon for not taking care of him themselves, that comes right from the original version. 2,000 year old advice: take care of business or you might get eaten.

The source image for my depiction of Li Chi, the female hero from a Peking Opera production

Hero Tales like this are the original motivational speeches, encouraging all of us to take care of business, and this is why they survive (in addition to the pure fun of telling them). I made Li Chi Slays the Dragon a centerpiece of a special show I designed this summer about why we tell stories, for a series of performances at libraries to fit the Summer Reading Club theme of “One World, Many Stories”. Kids need to hear Hero Tales, to know they can defeat a dragon if need be even though they are kids. I especially like to share tales like this one in which the hero is young, or small, or misfit, with no superpowers, fairy godmothers or magic swords (just the faithful family dog.)

Sketch for Li Chi and her faithful dog as a bodypainting design for the back of the performer portraying Li Chi in the Bodies Alive! production.

The tale and the telling of it has also been a source of inspiration for face and body painting designs exploring the Chinese Opera imagery of the female hero and of dragons, particularly as I expanded the visuals from one face to full bodypaintings on a group of performers to create the mountains and the full dragon as well as several changing images of Li Chi for the Bodies Alive! show at the Face and Body Art International Convention in 2008. http://www.fabaic.com/

See my “Shows” page with the tab at the top of the post for more information on my Transformation — Storytelling shows

In addition to my performing at PIFA, we also had a team of facepainters there. To see the faces:  https://thestorybehindthefaces.com/2011/05/03/facepainting-event-modern-art-faces-in-philly-pt-1-britt/

and https://thestorybehindthefaces.com/2011/05/04/facepainting-event-modern-art-faces-in-philly-pt-2/

to learn about that event: http://www.kimmelcenter.org/events/pifastreetfair.php

Li Chi's figure as a face design

From Bodies Alive!, with Li Chi, as a painted hand-puppet, approaching the temple on the top of the mountain

Prior to the Bodies Alive! production I worked out some of the designs and did color tests on people's faces at our events. I've always preferred doing such explorations for new designs on actual faces and bodies at our regular events, as well as sketching them out in advance.

One of the sources of inspiration for the dragon face. This image came from a book brought back from China by one of our artists, with dozens and dozens of face designs from the Chinese Opera.

The cast of the Bodies Alive! full body production, from 2008 at the Face and Body Art International Convention in Orlando.

http://www.agostinoarts.com

To learn more about Transformations Storytelling Shows see: https://thestorybehindthefaces.com/storytelling-show/

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“Facepainting” or “Face Painting”? The Medium is the Message

by Christopher Agostino

“Facepainting” or “face painting”?  “Bodypainting” or “body painting”? I tend towards the former term in both cases, making it one word rather than two — to the consistent consternation of spell check and search engines — because I believe that within this field what we paint on is as intrinsically important as the act of painting. Without the body there is no bodypainting, so, truly, the medium is the message. It is the face, the body, that gives the painting its value, its reason for being.

If the face is removed from the facepainting the result changes. I got to thinking about this as we began to use a new Dega-inspired promotional postcard design in which the art is more apparent than the face, so at first glance most people see it as just a painting, rather than as a facepainting (despite the text indicating otherwise).

Each year or so I select a new photo for our postcards, emblematic of our current creative explorations. We’ve been focusing on taking inspiration from Modern Art recently, so I looked for one of those images for the postcard. I painted this face at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, NY   http://www.hrm.org/  , where we appear regularly. To suit the venue I was spending the day re-creating famous paintings on museum visitors, surprising each with my choices. The Degas image was painted on one of the museum’s volunteers. Two of their volunteers came to get painted when there was a lull in the line, and I took my time to work more subtly towards the painterly quality of the originals, and not just a copy of the image, as I made one into a Monet waterlily painting and the other into these ballerinas. In working with real paintings as inspiration for face and bodypaintings, my artists and I have all noticed that trying to capture the way a true master works the surface of the canvas is the real challenge (building up layers of color, working with the texture of the paint, etc.), and it’s something I may try to do when taking hours to paint a model in a studio, but not usually while facepainting with a line at a gig.

At the event, on their faces, the finished waterlilies face looked better than the ballerinas, and when I decided I wanted a modern art face image for the newest postcard I remembered that facepainting and thought I’d use the photo I took that day. But, cropped to postcard size, with the face less apparent, it didn’t work as well. It lost its identity as a copy of a recognizable painting, and looked more decorative, less transformational. It is something we have noticed when painting these modern art faces at events: they don’t always look like facepaintings in the same way that turning someone into a tiger will, they don’t always look like a face transformed. And they don’t always photograph as well as they look live, for I had a number of faces I had remembered painting that I thought might work for the postcard but didn’t, when cropped, because they lost their identity as a face.

Conversely, this Degas image worked for me as a postcard, I think, because it does function more as a painting than as a painted face, especially in a close crop like this. Looking at the finished face when I painted it, I felt the Degas painting job was ok enough, but that the image as I placed it didn’t take the best advantage of the curves of her face so it only looked good straight on, which limits the attractiveness of a face design — so the same quality that made me disappointed in this face seen live at the event makes me like it seen flat on 5,000 postcards.

A painted body, a painted face, viewed live is a very different art form than that same painted body in a photograph. They are two distinct works of art, and they carry very different intrinsic values, they function by very different aesthetic rules. In viewing them, the observer brings a very different context to what they are seeing, and so much of the value we accrue to an object depends on context, especially perhaps to objects of art. My understanding of this was enhanced by a recent Ted Talk by psychologist Paul Bloom about how our beliefs about the history of an object change how we experience it, as in why a watch owned by our deceased grandparent is irreplaceable in our mind even though there might be many other watches available of the very same type. Part of his illustration of this was the story of a Vermeer painting, “The Supper at Emmaus”, which, based on its aesthetic quality, was revered as one of his greatest accomplishments and worth millions, until it was revealed to have been painted in 1936 by the master forger Han van Meegeren and not even the copy of a real Vermeer, at which point it lost all of its value. Very much the case of “the story behind the painting”.     http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_bloom_the_origins_of_pleasure.html

So for me it is “facepainting” and “bodypainting”, especially when viewed live on the person that is painted, for the living person carries that intrinsic value that gives the painting meaning. They are the story behind the face. Seeing the painted face looking back at you, talking to you — seeing the painted body move, change. On a postcard, in a photograph, maybe then it is a “face painting” or a “body painting”, but viewed alive the person can not be separated from the art.

The Monet waterlilies face, which looked very nice on this young lady as she walked around the museum, but didn’t work as well as a foto cropped for the postcard.
Usually I prefer photos with the subject’s eyes open — I refer to them as canvases with eyes — but in this case it worked better for me when it was more like a painting, with the eyes closed, and less like a face.
Another Monet inspired face from the same day, and probably my favorite face of the that day’s painting, because I painted it very quickly but still managed to get the Monet-esque colors right, but cropped tight the image was not something that most people would recognize.
This was another favorite from that day’s painting. An image inspired by a Paul Klee painting. He’s an artist whose work relates very directly to face and body art — but, again, no one would recognize this as inspired by a famous artist, in the way people might recognize Degas’ ballerinas or Monet’s waterlilies.
This postcard from a couple of years ago was the first one in which I chose an image that specifically said “art on faces”, with a painting inspired by a Picasso cubist portrait in combination with a Nuba inspired tribal image. I don’t think I have ever painted a better face design than this one.

http://www.agostinoarts.com

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Shipibo – Conibo – Stetebo: Patterns cover the Universe

Face pattern from the Conibo culture. (Photo from the book "Body Decoration" by Karl Gröning)

by Christopher Agostino

The intricate rectilinear and curvilinear designs that cover the faces, clothing, houses, ceramics and other objects of the cultures on the Ucayali River of the upper Amazon in Peru derive from the origin of the world, when everything in the universe was covered with such lines in a continuous unified design. The original patterns were lost, or obscured, due to misdeeds of failed proto-humans, but they are still present everywhere if one can see them. Male shamans can reclaim the patterns through hallucinogenic visions and relay them to artists who bring them back into the world through the decorations they create on objects. The women artists are aided in realizing the intricate patterns by placing the colorfully veined leaf of the iponquene plant over their eyelids before they start — the plant is named after a complexly patterned armor-headed catfish. These harmonious designs are associated with human cultivation and prosperity. In rituals, shamans can sing the tunes of songs from this labyrinth of lines.

How’s that for “the story behind the faces”, huh? And it is a story that keeps growing, as I encounter additional information about these cultures, the Shipibo, Conibo and Stetebo, which are related cultures in the headwaters region of the upper Amazon. The story above is pieced together from the Marks of Identity exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History  http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/bodyart/index.html , from the information in the book Body Decoration by Karl Gröning (see “Books” page on this blog), and from the current Infinity of Nations exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/infinityofnations/

Shipibo pottery

The Infinity of Nations exhibit (which spoke specifically of the Shipibo) added some fascinating pieces to the puzzle. For one, that women are the primary artists, which is rare amongst indigenous cultures, and that bit about how they put a leaf on their eyelids to enhance their ability to make the patterns — which fit in so perfectly with the previous information I’d gleaned about the connection between these patterns and cultivation. It also described the technical process of creating the distinct glossy appearance of their pottery, which is achieved not by a fired glaze, but rather by coating the pot with a special tree resin while it is still hot from the kiln so that the resin fuses with the clay surface.

Wooden doll, Shipibo culture, from Infinity of Nations exhibit. The exhibit text states: "Although this doll wears bodypaint, Shipibo people never paint their full bodies, but only their faces, necks, and the tops of their hands and feet.

Like so many native cultures, their traditional lifestyle has been disrupted by the modern world, as commercial fishing companies have moved in to their region and harvested so much of the fish that the Shipibo can no longer feed themselves (as relayed by a member of the tribe in a film at the exhibit). They have turned increasingly to selling ceramics and attracting tourism as a way to survive. Do a Google Image search of “Shipibo” and it leads primarily to sites that sell their pottery, along with images of them in costume and with decorated faces on tourist adventure sites. The exhibit also points out that this need to create a market for their ceramics has altered the style of their work and led them to producing more decorative objects and less utilitarian ones. So much of what we see when we look at the art of traditional cultures is created under the influence of the modern world.

The intricacy of geometric patterning on all these objects remains remarkable. After first seeing it in the Natural History Museum exhibit in 1999 I tried to paint a few faces like this at events, without good results. Partly because I had to work too quickly for that level of detail, but also because I didn’t quite understand the formula. I had a similar experience when I first tried to imitate Southeast Nuba face designs. It wasn’t until I’d read an anthropologist’s account of the design process that I could then follow that process to create my own designs in that style. The text on the Infinity of Nations website includes a description of the process the Shipibo artists follow, so I am going to give it another try.

They start by laying in the primary, heavier lines in a pattern that is always symmetrical and “infinitely expandable in any direction” (now there’s a challenge), then they add a secondary set of smaller lines and finally the very fine lines that fill in the pattern. I note in the examples that only the primary lines are completely symmetrical, the others are not.

One thing I have always retained from my initial exposure to this unique cultural art is the concept that you can sing the design on someone’s face.

Shipibo ceramic, from the book "Body Decoration".

One of the faces I paint back in 2000 after first seeing the example of these patterns in the Natural History Museum exhibit.

A recent example of a face inspired by these patterns.

http://www.agostinoarts.com

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