Traditional Bodyart – Nuba; Sudan; Africa – 1: changing my perceptions

by Christopher Agostino

In the ’80s as I began to seek out cultural sources to better understand this art of transformation that I was engaged in I found “The Painted Body” by Michel Thévoz in the Strand bookstore. One photograph in the book stood out. The design was black and white, the gaze of the subject so direct. Most striking, it was strongly asymmetrical. Yet, still, balanced and beautiful in a way so different than any faces I was painting, or the Chinese Opera and Kabuki designs I had been studying. I wanted to learn how to paint a face like this.

Thévoz’s book remains unique in its focus more on the sociological significance and psychological underpinnings of transformational art than on its methods and practices. This photograph was only identified as “Nuba face painting, Sudan”, with no information about it in the text. It was at a place in the book exploring a subject that drew my attention because it related to what I was trying to achieve by painting people in designs from other cultures — the question of why our modern response to a painted face is fear and discomfort. He discusses Freud’s reasoning that we have “a reaction of dread at what we are nevertheless obliged to recognize as intimately our own, a reaction which in fact signals ‘the return of what we have driven back.'” Freud’s succinct phrase for this modern response to the primitive transformation: “disturbing strangeness”. To this day, I make it a point of painting at least a few faces that are disturbingly strange at even the nicest of events — it keeps people on their toes. I am glad that Michel Thévoz and Freud have given me an insight into this impulse, and I connect this photograph to that understanding.

When I first saw it, this black and white Nuba face reverberated with many connections to concepts I was trying to work out. It’s the same colors as the hundreds of KISS faces I had painted over and over on Friday and Saturday nights at Adventureland Amusement Park in the late ’70s, but it’s a KISS face as painted by Picasso. It was 30 years before I fully realized that particular connection in a design blending these two influences, but even at the time I saw that this “primitive” “tribal” face was very “modern”. As I began to do educational programs in High Schools on the history of masks and makeup, I found that these Nuba faces got a great reaction from the teens, just as the KISS faces did a decade before.

That black and white Nuba face is also so bold and so simple, another push in a direction I would pursue throughout my endeavors. And just the fact that it stood out as so very different in a book full of bizarre looking humans helped me to see that anything is possible in a facepainting design, there are no rules. That lesson has been pivotal for me.

My fascination with the bodyart of the Southeast Nuba of the Sudan only increased as I began to learn the story behind their faces, and from the initial inspiration of this one image a lot of work has flowed. The photograph in Thévoz’s, for example, was taken by Leni Riefenstahl, and there certainly is a story in that.

Search “Nuba” on this site for additional posts about this subject.

It only occurred to me as I was writing this that transforming hundreds of teens into KISS faces at an Amusement Park in 1977 may have been my first experience of tribal facepainting.

Why Body Painting? – 4: Radical Act – The essential celebration of our humanity / the ultimate modern art (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
Face Painting – Kids for Kids Event – Inspirations from Africa and India, including Rangoli (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
Kumadori – Japanese Kabuki Theatre Makeup (thestorybehindthefaces.com)

Tribal Facepainting Concept

Apr6

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.

Jaguar Helmet Masks – from Aztec and Maya to Diego Rivera, from Hercules to Knights in Shining Armor…and Hockey Masks (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
Kumadori – Japanese Kabuki Theatre Makeup (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
Face Painting – Kids for Kids Event – Inspirations from Africa and India, including Rangoli (thestorybehindthefaces.com)

Body Painting Fashion Show: The Odd Ball at Real Art Ways

Apr5

In April of 2009 Agostino Arts had a chance to try something new at The Odd Ball, the annual benefit party for Real Art Ways, an arts center in Hartford, CT. We brought a team of our Transformation bodypainters and a mountain of Aquacolors and got a group of their visual artists to join with us in creating a painted body fashion show.

The goal was two-fold: to create an unusual and fun performance art event for the benefit as entertainment for the guests, and to generate some excitement within the community of artists associated with Real Art Ways by giving them this opportunity to explore a new, living medium. Real Art Ways recruited the artists and volunteer models. Prior to the event I sent the artists some information about what kind of makeup we’d be bringing and the basics of how it applies, plus some blank body forms and the like that we use when designing new bodypaintings. The design process was left completely up to each individual artist. I also sent some information along for the models as to what they could expect.

We began the evening with a short workshop session to demonstrate the basic application techniques and some of the tricks of the trade, so that each artist could realize their own concept without feeling limited by any lack of previous experience. Aquacolors go on so easily that in the hands of painters it didn’t require much instruction to get them all going. Some of them had painted people before, and we had a number of our artists there to paint our own designs and help if needed. Bodypainting is fun, especially when it is being done just for its own sake like this. It is such a tactile and ephemeral process, and so collaborative between you and the model, that I think most artists experience a visceral sense of the creative act as they paint — and with a bunch of artists all together in one tight room painting away at a party it makes for a real good time. For me, it was especially exciting to see how artists used to painting on canvas and other medium brought their own style to the bodypainting.

We brought along a videographer, Ann Orrin, to document the process, and Real Art Ways had a studio photographer (Steven Laschever) shooting the finished results and a second photographer (G. Russell) also recording the process.

See the video: