Tag Archives: World Masks

Japanese Demons and Kabuki Spooky

by Christopher Agostino
see also: The Eye of the Demon — a StoryFaces Performance to learn about the stage presentation I do based on the legends of the samurai and the demons that they fight
I paint a lot of demon faces this time of year, many inspired by Japanese imagery and folktales. In 2008 particularly, I put an effort into exploring new face designs based on Japanese masks and kabuki makeup. That year I was painting at the Transworld Halloween Show http://www.haashow.com/ for Kryolan Professional Makeup www.kryolan.com and took the approach at the event to paint horror faces based on world mask designs, as a contrast to the traditional zombies and skulls, so most of the examples here are from around that time.
     This mask is a contemporary example of a Namahage Demon from the Akita Prefecture. It is worn for a traditional Lunar New Year celebration which sounds like Halloween in reverse, as young men wear the masks and visit people’s houses to scare their children and admonish them to listen to their parents—or the demons will come back! The parents reward the young men with sake and food. Although frightening, Namahage are said to be gods who bring good fortune, an example of the beliefs connected to spirit worship traditions in which powerful demonic spirits can become protective when they are appeased. Check out the Japanese movies Onmyoji and Onmyoji 2 for a fun depiction of demonic possession and the Ying-Yang master that has to restore the balance.
      In folktales, Japanese demons come with various descriptions. Some may be red or blue faced, with fangs, horns and one, two or three eyes. In the tale of the famous samurai Raiko and his battle with the Goblin Earth Spider, he is attacked by an army that drops out of the storm clouds, including animals that walk like men, beings with three claws and three eyes—one with eyes in its hands—and long serpents with human heads. There’s a few ideas for facepainting. At an exhibit of prints by the artist Kuniyoshi last year at the Japan Society I was very jazzed to see two illustrations of Raiko vs. the Earth Spider with imagery that has re-invigorated the way I tell and depict that tale through faces.
     

Example of Kabuki makeup, from the book “Body Decoration” (see the book page for info)

The prevalence of such beliefs within the medieval Japanese culture allowed for the growth in Edo province of “Aragato,” the style of Kabuki theater which produced the famous makeup for its samurai hero and for the ghosts and demons he would battle. The origin of Kabuki and other Japanese theater in shamanic ritual and spirit worship is evident in the hero’s ability to do the impossible because they have allowed themselves to be possessed by a powerful kami (“supernatural deity”) and thus have become hitokami (“man-gods”).

       In the book Japanese Tales, edited by Royall Tyler, from Pantheon Books  http://pantheon.knopfdoubleday.com/ I found a scary tale called “The Bridge”, which included a description of the face of the demon that haunts the bridge in the story: “a red face with one amber-yellow eye as huge and round as a cushion.” A folktale that comes with its own special face design included is like finding gold for a storytelling facepainter, and it has become the tale I tell called “The Demon on Omi Bridge”, here in a performance I did for NYC Parks Department a few years ago — a tale that is now substantially different than the original in the book, as all tales evolve and change in the telling, especially as I work to choreograph the facepainting into the tale in performance.

I did a “how to paint a demon segment” on The CBS Early Show last Halloween

I find these multi-eyed demon faces are fun to paint on Dads at family events, their kids get a kick out of Dad looking so weird

I don’t know much about it, but I have heard that Japanese tattoo traditions can include using a demon image to “watch your back”

In addition to masks, I have looked for inspiration in theatrical makeup designs in Japanese horror and fantasy movies, and this idea was from a rougher sort of depiction of a demon I saw in a film.

Turning a demon concept into a vampire on a little girl

Ghost makeup from the Kabuki theatre. Color symbology is key, with reds being the colors for heroes – depicting their positive use of energy – and blues and greys signifying the stunted and misdirected energies of the evil, villains and ghosts

  

Painted at the Transworld Halloween Show, for a photographer from Hour 13 magazine — a blend of the Kabuki samurai pattern with the demon imagery

From the master printmaker Kuniyoshi, a detail from “The Earth Spider conjures up demons…” 1843. His work is full of imagery I have used to conjure new designs. The story behind the print, however, is that Kuniyoshi frequently used traditional subject matter like this to tweak the powers that be, and this print was read by the pubic at the time as a satiric attack on the government, with various of the demons being identified as caricatures of public officials.

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Halloween Groove – Face Painting at Materials for the Arts, NYC

Our goal is to surprise and delight the people we paint and the people who see the people we paint. To that end we work to keep facepainting an adventure, and because people like to be part of an adventure it puts them in the frame of mind to give us the freedom we need to be as creative as we want to be. After I posted the previous video (“Faces at Play”), a facepainter contacted me to ask if we paint faces like that at regular parties or if I only paint like that for my storytelling shows. The basic answer is “yes”, we paint like this all the time, from small parties to public events. I thought I’d post this current example of the full run of faces at one event as an example of the process. Here is just about every face I painted, in the order painted, at one of my favorite Halloween events — the annual Masked Marvelous Cocktail Party at Materials for the Arts, NYC. http://www.mfta.org/
For me, facepainting is a collective, kinetic art. More important than any one face I paint is the collective effect of all the faces I paint at an event. As important to me as the way a person I paint feels when they look into the mirror is the way they feel as they walk around the event and see how everyone responds to their new identity. This is the reason why the artist should take the creative control in the process of painting someone’s face, choosing the design to paint and surprising them rather than asking them what they want to be, or painting them to match a photo of a previous face design — to give the participants the experience of a real transformation. Their suspension of control, their giving in to an artist’s creativity, moves them further beyond themselves into this sense of adventure, this experience of having a new, surprising identity at the event, in much the same way as the traditional use of mask arts allows a performer to assume a supernatural identity in world theater and ritual (or in our modern special effects movies). My hope is to see the people I paint “inhabiting” the mask, bringing their new face/new identity to life, showing off, performing.
At the MFTA event a woman asked me how I decide what to paint on each person. Much of the process is intuitive, matching colors to their eyes and clothes, working towards the shape of their face, how their hair looks, etc., and I interact with each person, asking them a question or two such as “do you want to be nice or spooky?” As I explained to the woman, though, much of my process is like any artist working on a canvas in their studio: what do I want to work on, what are my current thrills and challenges, what can I paint that people will respond to, and even — just like a “real” artist — what am I trying to say with this painting. In the faces from this event, you can see some examples of what we call “classics”  (face designs we know work, like the “Night Queen” and “Moon and Stars”, or something that I know a little girl will like such as the “Zebra Nose”) in combination with explorations of my current creative challenges, the things I have been working on (such as the use of fineart images as source material, like the Picasso and Matisse faces; the continuing effort we are all putting in to adding more figurative imagery, like “Swan Lake” and “Devil Eyes”; and my current attempts to “mash-up” these avenues of exploration into new Halloween designs like the “Zombie Attack” and “Picasso Zombie”).  And from face to face I concentrate on creating diversity in style and concept so the faces are a surprise in the progression of designs, as well as individually.
Materials for the Arts is one of the more remarkable organizations we have ever had the privilege of working for. They are a vital part of the arts and arts education communities of New York City, and just one of the venues that makes it so exciting to do what I do in a place so full of creative energy and artistic freedom as New York. Please check out their website: http://www.mfta.org/

From their web site:

Founded in 1978, Materials for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, provides thousands of NYC’s arts and cultural organizations, public schools, and community arts programs with the supplies they need to run and expand their programs. MFTA gathers materials from companies and individuals that no longer need them and makes them available, for free, to the artists and educators that do. In the process, hundreds of tons are removed from the waste stream every year and kept out of landfills, which helps sustain our environment, promotes reuse, and reduces waste. MFTA helps artists realize their visions, provides students with a richer educational experience and furnishes businesses and individuals with a simple and efficient way to enhance the cultural life of their city.

              

http://www.agostinoarts.com

New Faces – October 8 + 9: Zombies, Halloween, Vampires, Save the Turtles and Art on Faces

"Zombie Attacke" painted at the Mill Neck Manor Fall Harvest Festival

This weekend offered more opportunities for creative adventures in facepainting, made even more fun by the wonderful Indian Summer weather here in New York. All of our outdoor events were packed with happy people. ‘Tis the season for facepainting, as we move past too hot summer weather and approach Halloween — the international holiday for celebrating transformation (haven’t you noticed that people are more willing to go wild in October?). My artists and I are collectively working on new ideas, egging each other on into new directions and working particularly on bringing more imagery onto the face, i.e. treating the face more like a canvas, and reaching further into other styles of art for inspiration. And, as we get increasingly enthusiastic about being more creative, we find an increasingly receptive public joining us in the adventure. All weekend long I heard people on line saying they thought it was cool and exciting that we would be surprising them with the faces we painted, with nary an indignant demand for a Spiderman face.
Here are faces from three events:

"Ballerina"

The 50th anniversary of the Mill Neck Manor Fall Harvest Festival (http://www.millneck.org/news/fall_festival/fall_festival.html) where we’ve painted for many years — at this event the organizers do charge people to have their faces painted, yet we still get to surprise them with our designs.

The Wildlife Conservation Society “Come Out of Your Shell” Run for the Wild at Coney Island’s Aquarium, raising funds to save turtles (http://e.wcs.org/site/PageNavigator/RFTW_AQ_homepage.html). Here we only painted variations on turtle designs on the adults and kids running the race.
The Parrish Art Museum Family Festival (http://www.parrishart.org/) in South Hampton. Whenever we paint at a museum we see it as an opportunity to present facepainting as an art. For this event our theme was “Art On Faces” as we were turning the participants into images from famous artists and paintings, while talking with them about the painting or about the artist and their style.

"Demon From Hell"

Two angels, from a William Blake painting

"Picasso Zombie"

from a Monet painting of Venice

Irises, from a painting by Van Gogh. This was the final face I painted at the Parrish Museum event, a nice way to end the weekend.

"Vampire Bite" - adapting an idea from cultural sources, the Jaguar or Serpent helmet mask designs from Aztec and Mayan examples

Impressionist Landscape - Sailboats from a Monet painting. I painted two sailboat landscapes (seascapes?) in succession, one this Monet image and the 2nd a Fauvist" style image from Andre Derain

Favist landscape, from Andre Derain's "The Red Sail"

from a foto of a Hawksbill turtle surrounded by fish, painted at the Run for the Wild in Coney Island

This was from a scene I remembered, snorkeling off of St.John many years ago I watched a sea turtle skimming along the turtle grass and occasionally rising up to gulp air at the surface. I tried to paint it in the way one sees things underwater, a little obscured and unclear.

We ended the painting at the Run for the Wild with this group of five young women. For this event, I was painting with Jennifer and Laura.

http://www.agostinoarts.com