Tag Archives: Franz Boas

From a Mask to a Painted Face — Face Painting from Cultural Sources

Geo Magazine, 1980, contained a few dozen photographs of Chinese Opera faces

Painted in 1983. In addition to learning to blend from copying a design like this, these Chinese Opera faces gave me an understanding that facepainting can be a true art, truly transformational, and not just a decorative art.

By Christopher Agostino

Taking a mask image from a cultural source and painting it onto a face is a primary methodology I use for expanding my understanding of what is possible on a painted face. My first steps in that direction were 30 years ago with Chinese Opera faces I saw in an issue of Geo magazine. When I start with images like these that are already makeup designs and re-create them on a face the lessons I am learning are primarily about finding new ways to fit designs to the structure of a face, a new range of imagery, and exploring different application techniques — for example, it was as I tried to imitate the way the red over the eyes fades into the white on the check in this Chinese Opera image that I first learned how to blend — and from Chinese Opera designs I moved onto similar explorations with other cultural sources of painted faces such as those from the Amazon and Papua New Guinea.

Paul Kirk's book "Man as Art" is an inspirational and definitive statement about he remarkable possibilities of bodyart in world cultures.

One of the earliest truly tribal designs I painted on a person (an adult) in a regular party setting - at a corporate family picnic in 1996

A different process is required — and different lessons learned — when the traditional image I start from is a physical mask rather than face or bodyart. Re-creating a physical/sculptural mask as a facepainting brings different challenges because you have to somehow transfer onto the organic shape of a human face the plastic form of the mask, such as the exaggerated geometric shapes on certain African masks, or the extended beak of a wooden Haida thunderbird mask. Here are lessons to be learned about how to place hard shapes on a softly curved face, and to create illusions that seem to alter the structure of the face. I think that the most useful lesson I’ve gleaned from trying to re-create a sculptural mask design, however, is in learning how to boil a mask down to its essence. Since I can’t really duplicate the full mask on a face, what can I achieve with facepainting that has the same impact as the physical mask?

“Spirit masks” is a somewhat generic descriptive term applied to masks from a variety of African cultures worn to bring supernatural spirits to life in traditional rituals. Such masks are intentionally bizarre in appearance with the features of faces and animals distorted into geometric shapes and graphic patterns. Since I can’t make eyes that are cylinders sticking 8″ off the face using just makeup, I’ve had to translate that idea into what I can do, so I’ve focused on using strong geometric linework to make the face startling. As I’m about to start a design like this on a kid I may ask them if it’s ok for me to make them look really, really strange — and usually get an enthusiastic “yes”.

An early attempt at a Spirit Mask, from the event at the Bronx Zoo in 1999

Another early attempt at a Spirit Mask

I have found the complexity of the masks of Native American Northwest Coast (NWC) cultures the most challenging to re-create. Part of the struggle is due to the intricacy of the symbolic imagery on the masks. Whereas masks like the African “Spirit Masks” primarily employ geometric signs and patterns to carry symbolic content — patterns which be simplified and imitated to have the same visual affect even if they don’t have the precise cultural content — NWC masks employ recognizable and pictorial animal imagery much more difficult to duplicate simply.  A traditional NWC mask-maker learns very specific forms to symbolize the mythic characters they depict — such as the precise shape the eye must be for Kwikwis, the eagle of the undersea in the Kwakiutl culture. As Franz Boas states in his book Primitive Art, once the proper symbols are included the artist’s concern becomes the unity and aesthetic achievement of the overall design, and they do it with a remarkable finesse of design style, beautifully fitting the complex imagery onto the shapes of the mask. Like African masks, and the masks of so many cultures, the NWC wooden transformation masks are sculptures worthy of the museums where they sit in cases and hang on walls, but their true raison d’être is just the same as the “Spirit Masks” — to be worn in performance at rituals to bring the gods and myths to life.

I had quite a number of examples available of faces painted at events for the article in my book on African “Spirit Masks”. We spent the summer of 1999 at the Bronx Zoo painting faces inspired by traditional African art for the opening of the Congo Gorilla exhibit, and this style of design has been part of my usual bag of tricks ever since. For the article on Northwest Coast masks, however, I had few examples from faces at events, and none that were successful, so I painted a model in my studio for this one. There is a fundamental cosmology the underlies much of NWC mask culture, and it includes the concept that there was an earlier time in which celestial beings lived on earth and then departed to live in the heavens. These celestial/ancestral beings can return to earth in the guise of humans, and they are depicted in these masks both in their celestial form and in their human form, which is dramatically demonstrated in ritual performances in which these wooden transformation masks will open and alter their shape through ingenious devices to show first the ancestral being and then the inner human. In the NWC coast example for my book, I relied on the humanity of my model (as we facepainters do) and her eyes to exemplify this concept of transformation, from celestial eagle to the eagle in human form.

The Eagle in celestial form, inspired by Northwest Coast Indian culture transformation mask

The Eagle in Human Form

From the Nuxalk culture of the Pacific Northwest, the closed image depicts a celestial bird figure of some sort.

When the mask opens during the ritual performance, revealed inside is the figure in human form (notice how the beak for example is now depicted more like a human nose), and the humanized bird-face is surrounded by a sun-like orb indicting its celestial nature.

Edward Malin's book "A World of Faces: Masks of the Northwest Coast "includes very useful simplified analytical sketches of the traditional mask elements

An early Spirit Mask attempt in which I used this geometric approach to create a specific animal, a baboon face

More recently I have been making Spirit Masks that are more deliberately spooky, and not just strange

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.

To learn more go to: https://thestorybehindthefaces.com/books/

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

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Tribal Facepainting Concept

by Christopher Agostino

STEP 1 – Basic Tribal Facepainting Transformation

Above are re-creations in black and white on one model of patterns you can find in traditional tribal facepainting. The first four are from Amazon examples depicted in the book Body Decoration by Karl Gröning. The next eight are basic patterns of the Southeast-Nuba of Sudan, Africa, from  a set of analytical sketches in the book Nuba Personal Art by James C. Faris. They illustrate what I see as the first step to painting a tribal face: divide the face into areas of color with bars, stripes or strong shapes like triangles.

The quickest way to alter a human face is to put a hard line on it. Human faces have no inherent hard lines or edges, so lines or strong geometric shapes immediately make the face “nonhuman” and ready to become “other”. They disguise the face. They change the shape of the face. They turn the face into a mask. In his analysis of the “underlying raison d’être” for all tribal body painting, Michel Thévoz in “The Painted Body” states: “the skin decoration is functionally designed to dehumanize, depersonalize,…to baffle identification. That is why…it makes play with anti-natural elements such as straight lines, triangles, circles and all rigid geometric figures which stand in conspicuous contrast with the mobility of facial features [and] the organic curves of muscles.”

Notice how these designs effect the appearance of the eyes, how the model’s identity seems to change from design to design. Just as in the approach of any modern makeup artist, the designs center around the wearer’s eyes because our eyes control the perception of our identity. By placing patterns to bring attention to their eyes, you give the wearer control over their new identity. Their eyes turn the design into a living mask.

From a modern facepainter’s perspective, think of all the different things you can turn designs like these into. Whereas the first goal of tribal makeup is to disguise the wearer, or more precisely, to remove his individual human identity, the ultimate goal is to create another identity — to turn them into something new.

That identity might be a social one, conveying one’s membership within a specific tribe, as in the face of a Kayapo child of the Amazon, or one’s achievement of a certain step within a social hierarchy. In such a case, in conjunction with the “dehumanizing” geometric shapes, symbols or graphic markings might be used that could be read like a written language within the tribe.

Signs, symbols and icons might also be used to expand the human identity to include supernatural or animal elements. Some face art, for example, is designed to turn the wearer into a mythic character like a god, so the wearer can impersonate them in ritual. Some face art allows the wearer to acquire animal attributes and powers, as in this photograph of a Mayoruna woman wearing markings around her mouth and whiskers signifying a powerful animal like the jaguar, in addition to the red shape across her eyes — a color which also symbolically represents power and vitality.

STEP 2- Tribal Approach to an Animal Face

Using colors, symbols, icons and design elements over a basic tribal geometric pattern to “signify” an animal.

Click on this link for a pdf handout of the Teacher’s Guide for this “Totem Animal Mask” design project:   TransformationsSchoolProgram_TotemMaskProject_agostinoarts

The anthropological study of masks and tribal art by writer’s such as Franz Boas and Claude Lévi-Strauss explain that in “primitive” art, the aim is not to imitate the appearance of an animal (in the way a photograph does) but rather to SIGNIFY the animal through symbology (in the manner of a visual language). The actual appearance of the animal is subservient to the imagery that signifies it. So to design a tribal animal face (or mask) you need to determine what features or symbols will make the face “mean” that animal — the distinctive signs that make it that animal and no other — rather than trying to draw a picture of the animal. We will use a snake design as an example:

Begin by creating a background that transforms and disguises the face by dividing it into areas of color using horizontal or vertical stripes, and/or strong geometric shapes; choosing the background colors for symbolic content (like red and white for a dangerous snake).

Over that background, add symbols and imagery to signify the animal. Pick a few simple images that make you think of that animal. For a snake it might be fangs, forked tongue, snake eyes, the s-curve of the snake body – in any combination and in any place on the mask. If it is a very poisonous snake, for example, you might choose the fangs as the primary element and you might make them larger than usual, or repeat them in several places on the mask. (Lévi-Strauss points out that it is also important not to put elements on a mask that may confuse it with other animals, so you wouldn’t put feet on a snake mask or fangs on a bird mask).

Finally, add decorative elements or linework to unify the face as a complete design. Boas points out that decoration and aesthetic appeal is as important as interpretation in primitive art, so the final step is to make the design look good. Decoration can be achieved by taking things like the pattern of the snake’s skin (spots, stripes, etc.) and repeating it, or adding additional line work in support of the imagery (like multiple fangs). Overall, keep it simple.

Here are some examples: For these first two examples I created a background with geometric divisions based on the triangle. The first (A) began with a basic Nuba pattern of triangles over the eyes, the second (B) uses the bright  coloring of the Papua New Guinea faces, with an “abstract” snake coming down over the eyes. Then I turned them into distinctive snakes by adding a graphic representation of fangs and eyes. For the next three I divided the face with vertical or horizontal stripes to start. Over that I added black line work or simplified imagery to indicate “snake”. One (C) is a sinuous line style loosely inspired by Maori face patterns that is meant to “feel” like a snake. On the other two (D + E) I used simple iconic representations of a snake.

This approach leads to endless creative ways to make face/mask designs – without requiring complex painting or drawing skills, thus it is an effective approach for getting students to move beyond realistic depictions of animals in mask designs. The use of strong colors in an interesting pattern for a background makes almost anything you put on top look good. It presents an experiential understanding of abstract and symbolic art – how to make a work of art that isn’t intended to look realistic.

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