Masks and other Art

[Buster's Uncle]

As soon as I posted the helmet pics I realized I hadn't gotten a face-forward shot - so I took one, but needed to wait until I found time to take a lot more pics before I went through the waiting for the slow camera to show up as a drive to upload - it's not worth it for just one shot.

Anyway...

[Buster's Uncle]

So I've got a couple I just took and already size/cropped - but I realize I need to search my email and see if I can find pics of the Guernica masks, 'cause they're how I came to create the components of the two shots of a mask I have ready, and they're a better story...

I notice that a couple of the key bases I use have yet to turn up - I wanted to lead with the current version of Dead Mylochka, and place all the half masks on it for photographing, so more digging for me...

[Buster's Uncle]

So in mid-October of 2007, I got this email from my sister and already established frequent collaborator (I came up with a line she used on a colleague who was going to review a show I did the masks for that masks transform the performer from a person on the stage to a more universal iconic figure representing an idea) Dr. Mylochka, saying that a colleague at work was doing a show around Picasso's Guernica painting:



You've all seen it, and the cow was what I always noticed in the shot, and that's what Dr. Coworker wanted a mask of.  I had a month and a ridiculous offer of $25 for a high-skill time-consuming custom job.  No sweat, though they knew not what they were doing to me wanting those horns, and I did.  I had an animal snout, because Buster, that would almost have served fine, but I had to make from scratch to add the gaping mouth and lower lip.  [shrugs]  It was a pain, all of it, and they wanted two, so I had to go through the agony of getting it off the horns and then closing the slit back up twice.

I figured out how to do the Picasso eyes-both-on-the-left effect without leaving the actors blind (white gauze behind the eyeholes, of course, and paint the Picasso eyes separately), and after Mylochka improved the paintjob I did with some subtle shading and shine to further the eye camouflage, we has this:



Also attached is a red bull I did off the same appliances.  I'm gonna have to photograph a bunch of those for Uno once I find the bases they were made to sit on...

(Fortunately, I found what Frida Kahlo mask pic I have while looking for the Guernica, so that's next...)

[Buster's Uncle]

Still looking through old emails, and nothing to do with masks, but I cast the resin pieces of the set, and the board is a square bit of pine I shaped and Mom and I painted the squares on...

[Buster's Uncle]

The Frida Kahlo show and the masks I did.

The full-face of her sucks, not least because that nose was designed for the half-masks versions and I had to do some tapdancing not entirely successfully on short notice to work around those edges.

You will also notice the monkey masks I did.  Some minimally decorated featureless white ball masks appearing are not my work.

[Buster's Uncle]

Mylochka did an interesting thing in this show - it heavily featured reproductions she did of Kahlo's paintings, and she got the cast and crew involved in spotting blacks and such because a lot of paintings and work - which had the unanticipated effect of causing them to become very invested in the paintings (to the point of nearly fighting over who got to keep which one after the show) and the show itself.

Note the large man (and an actress in the third pic) sporting my Diego Rivera mask -a good likeness.

And you can imagine my considerable annoyance that I did a truckload of Frieda half-masks that were pretty good, but they were either never used, or I got sent no photos of them in action.

[Rusty Edge]

Those Guernica masks are cool. That had to be a challenge transforming that surreal 2-D image into 3-D. That super-imposed face and profile. Great interpretation!

I don't care for Picasso, mostly. Don't seek him out. I know he's talented, but I'm convinced he's lazy. Whenever I see his Spanish bull stuff, I see him in an entirely different light.

He's captivating. I get it. He's not the most over-rated artist of my life-time. He's a transcendent genius.

Thanks for sharing! I haven't seen this painting since...30 or 40 years ago.

[Buster's Uncle]

That's my face as the base of the bull masks.  (And I think maybe the monkeys are just more ball masks Mylochka painted [very well, BTW, though Frida and Diego needed less shine in the finish] to match the ones frequently in Kahlo's work, and nothing of mine at all.)

They like to say that Picasso learned how to paint properly before he started fooling around with the minimalist both-eyes-on-one-side stuff, but I've never seen any of those. [shrugs]

You know, an angle you'd find interesting here is that a lot of the modern art movements that sneer at stuff like prettiness and demonstrating technical mastery of portraying anatomy and perspective (particularly Dada) - were all born in the ashes of the horror of WWI, a truly awful affair, being Vietnam for Europe, long before the Vietnam war.  People by the millions had (barely) survived stuff no one should ever have to even see, and it warped them, turned much of a generation into nihilists.  -And thus, Dada, and all the other artistic portrayals of/protests against the horrors of a world that had hurt them so...

[Buster's Uncle]

Here's a base I'm rather unusually proud of, an old person face done in sculpey for the first show I masked for Mylochka in roughly 1997, on Mayan folktales (and modern tourism and performance of native culture for tourists - you'd have loved it, Uno).  -Obviously, it was a little dirty.

I broke the nose off later making a plaster half mask off it - and the bit of wire you can see a little in the nostril was a hanger I contrived for display that pulls up and doesn't show on the walls.  Not my best lips to date, either, but otherwise solid work, I think.

I need to do a mold and casting of this one -not so fragile- to make paper mâché masks off, 'cause this is some of my better base work, and the full mask for the show rocked hard - there was also a version with different painting and the bottom of the chin out to make room for a male actor w/ beard to talk.

[Rusty Edge]

That's my face as the base of the bull masks.  (And I think maybe the monkeys are just more ball masks Mylochka painted [very well, BTW, though Frida and Diego needed less shine in the finish] to match the ones frequently in Kahlo's work, and nothing of mine at all.)

They like to say that Picasso learned how to paint properly before he started fooling around with the minimalist both-eyes-on-one-side stuff, but I've never seen any of those. [shrugs]

You know, an angle you'd find interesting here is that a lot of the modern art movements that sneer at stuff like prettiness and demonstrating technical mastery of portraying anatomy and perspective (particularly Dada) - were all born in the ashes of the horror of WWI, a truly awful affair, being Vietnam for Europe, long before the Vietnam war.  People by the millions had (barely) survived stuff no one should ever have to even see, and it warped them, turned much of a generation into nihilists.  -And thus, Dada, and all the other artistic portrayals of/protests against the horrors of a world that had hurt them so...

That is interesting. Didn't know that.

Some stuff affects people, hard to see how it wouldn't. Usually, you don't know what it is torments the artist, or leaves them permanently twisted.

[Buster's Uncle]

Gas.  It was poison gas and the sight of dead bodies in the street.  I believe Mr. Picasso was exactly the right age...

[Buster's Uncle]

Several variations of this are in the pipeline, one already photographed and size/cropped.  Look for the plaster half mask version later today.

[Mylochka]

I think you posted this one before too... but is shows a lot of masks

[Buster's Uncle]

I had that shot in the queue to post, yes, but you just saved me the trouble.

Since so much of your work is featured here, I'd really really really like you to go through the thread thus far and make comments on this and that as the fancy strikes, not least on the show masks for shows I didn't get to see and don't know much about...  You can img-link pic attachments for clarity of what you're talking about in the posts by copying the shortcut and pasting into tags with ";image" added to the end - or just ask me to edit them in...

Pwese for your baby?

[Buster's Uncle]

Here's the plaster half-masks.  The sculpey base original I gave to Dr. Mylochka back when I made it in the late 90s, so most of the time it was hanging on a wall slightly over 1,000 miles away from me, and I only did half-masks off the plaster one for the paper mâché versions.

I don't think she has wall-space for it anymore, and although I think I did a credible job of putting back the detail on the thick plaster, the original is better even for future half masks...

I already have a bunch of pictures of the latex version I still have, and I'm about to take some of the latex-painted mâché version that looks pretty similar.

Uno, I had an idea I never ended up using in the renfairs employing the plaster copy and the latex one - and I think it's pretty you.  I'll relate when I repost the latex ones...