Tag Archives: Christopher Agostino’s Transformations

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

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Is a painted body naked?

by Christopher Agostino

Is bodypainting just a way to get naked women out in public? I saw the promotional film for a documentary in the works that’s about bodypainting as a fine art, and in it an artist takes real umbrage when the filmmaker asks him if bodypainting exploits women. Although I sympathize with the artist’s annoyance with the question, since we work in a field that is too often represented by disturbing images from Key West showing up in your emails, or lots of naked painted people on bicycles, I can understand why an interviewer would ask it. In a group discussion a few years back with the genius behind Pro-shields (designed to protect the innocent by thoroughly covering nipples on female models to be bodypainted) the question turned to why such trivial items as whether the outline of a nipple is visible or not under the paint can determine whether people find bodypainting offensive or not. I heard a phrase often repeated that in body art the painting is what is meant to be looked at, not the body, and that folks that are just seeing (or voyeuristically enjoying) the nakedness of the body are missing the art. Speaking as a bodypainter who puts painted people (male and female) into the public view, I think this is disingenuous and it puts too much of the burden on the viewer when it is us, the body artists, who choose to present this as our art. Bodypainting is certainly not clothing, and therefore does not objectively remove or cover the nakedness of the model, however much it transforms their identity (and I do feel that a well painted body looks more fully clothed than, say, a women in bikini at the beach). Clothing protects the body and it changes and disguises the shape of the body. Bodypaint celebrates the body, specifically it celebrates the beautiful form of the human body — or we would be painting on flat canvas instead. So when someone looks at the model we have painted they should be seeing the model, the body, as well as the art.

Painted at the Face and Body Art International Convention, 2009, on a beautiful model.

The idealized human form in Greek and Roman art — naked.

In Western Culture the veneration of the human form is exemplified by the prevalence of the naked body in art and painting, which goes back to the Classical Greek conception of the naked human form as being the symbolic representation of the perfection of Nature. Athletes, we are told, competed naked in the ancient Olympics. In fact, as the influence of the Classical Greek culture spread, body arts declined in Western Cultures because the marking of the body was seen as a disfigurement of the perfect form of the naked body. Perhaps it is a sign of our continuing cultural progression that bodypainting has begun to enter the main stream of public perception again, for this is an art form that reaches beyond the Greeks. The return of body art into Western/European Culture is a world-inspired expansion of our understanding of art.

The tradition of celebrating the human body continues in Western art

The underlying reasons for traditional body art — meaning the use of bodypainting, tattooing and scarification in traditional cultures — are in its social and ritualistic functions. As cultures evolve over time, these ritualistic functions gain aesthetic values as well, they become art. In “Primitive Art”, Franz Boas writes about how, once the symbolic requirements of the mask (or bodyart) are achieved, the mask maker’s goal is to make the object beautiful  — the “artfulness” is always important.  When we look at cultural examples in which body art has progressed past ritual to the point where it is done for more purely aesthetic reasons, when it has become a “fashion”, at the foundation of those acts is a desire to celebrate the innate beauty of the human form. Through art, to pay homage to what God (or Nature) has made when he made man. This is the cultural explanation for what is perhaps the most profound use of body art that can be sited: the body painting of the Southeast Nuba culture of Sudan, a tribal culture in which individuals turned themselves daily into living, painted works of art as a veneration of the wonder of creation, demonstrated in the perfection of the human form. This was done when the individual was in their youth, their prime, their bodies in peak form. The older or the infirm did not paint themselves. 

“Whatever the source of the designs used on the body, the critical factor is that the body must be emphasized, complimented, enhanced. No design or artistic treatment must distract 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 Farris, Nuba Personal Art

I compare this to our modern body artists, and suggest we should own up to it. If we are not celebrating the beauty of the human form when we paint bodies, why do we predominantly paint ideally shaped models, female or male?

This is not an exploitation of models, women or men. No more than Alfred Steiglitz was exploiting Georgia O’Keeffe in his photographs. This is a celebration. This is art. This is art painted on naked people, and there is nothing wrong in that, because people are beautiful whether they are naked or not.

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

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

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

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Traditional Facepainting – World Masks Workshop

by Christopher Agostino

This week brings an opportunity for teaching a group of High School students how to paint faces. In conjunction with a performance of Before Cave Walls…The Transformation Lecture, I will be doing a hands-on workshop with a group of art students who will then have the pleasure of painting several classes of elementary aged students. We present these programs in schools within a cultural context, and so the face patterns I will be bringing into these workshops are traditional designs from world cultures.

Click on this link for the pdf guide sheet for this World Mask Workshop WorldMasks_facepainting_agostinoarts

From the magazine article that first fired my imagination about painting faces based in cultural traditions

Choosing which cultural examples to present students is always a conundrum. There is an infinite wealth of source materials, and I recognize that the limited selections I present may seem to represent a much larger world than they can. The examples I present in a workshop setting are different than those I might demonstrate in a lecture performance, as I want to give them designs that a novice facepainter can emulate. (For example, in presenting this program to experienced makeup artists I will include the classic female role face from the Chinese Opera which requires a facility with blending colors that is difficult for beginners.) I also use examples with minimal pictorial imagery because I want the students to work free from the idea of trying to create a realistic portrait of an animal or such. The less complicated the design examples, the more they can focus on what it feels like to transform a human face. And that is the primary goal of this workshop, to give these students the experience of being the mask maker.

Here are the 6 faces I am using as the key cultural examples.

Amazon: A Mayoruna matriarch wearing markings and whiskers signifying a powerful cat like a jaguar

Africa: Surma people, from the Omo River area of Ethiopia.

Papua New Guinea: Example of traditional face art from a highlands culture, painted for a festival

Native American: Portrait of “Fast Dancer” of the Iowa culture, by George Catlin, with the hand symbol signifying he is a warrior

Africa: An example of the asymmetrical bodyart of the Southeast Nuba, Sudan.

Japan: The “suji-kuma” pattern to portray a samurai

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See a video and images from the workshop:  World Masks – Facepainting Workshop