Modernist Disguise: Masquerade in Modern Performance and Visual Culture 9781474470070

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MODERNIST DISGUISE

Edinburgh Critical Studies in Modernism, Drama and Performance Series Editor: Olga Taxidou Editorial Board: Penny Farfan (University of Calgary); Robert Leach (formerly of Edinburgh and Birmingham Universities); Ben Levitas (Goldsmiths, University of London); John London (Queen Mary, University of London); Laura Marcus (University of Oxford); Marjorie Perloff (University of Stanford); Kirsten Shepherd-­Barr (University of Oxford); Alexandra Smith (University of Edinburgh) Published The Speech–Gesture Complex: Modernism, Theatre, Cinema Anthony Paraskeva Irish Drama and the Other Revolutions: Irish Playwrights, Sexual Politics, and the International Left, 1892–1964 Susan Cannon Harris Modernism and the Theatre of the Baroque Kate Armond Beckett’s Breath: Anti-­Theatricality and the Visual Arts Sozita Goudouna Russian Futurist Theatre: Theory and Practice Robert Leach Pina Bausch’s Dance Theatre: Tracing the Evolution of Tanztheatre Lucy Weir The Federal Theatre Project, 1935–1939: Engagement and Experimentation Rania Karoula Modernist Disguise: Masquerade in Modern Performance and Visual Culture Ron J. Popenhagen Forthcoming Greek Tragedy and Modernist Performance Olga Taxidou

www.edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/ecsmdp

MODERNIST DISGUISE Masquerade in Modern Performance and Visual Culture

Ron J. Popenhagen

Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-­edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © Ron J. Popenhagen, 2021 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun­– ­Holyrood Road 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in Sabon and Gill Sans by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 7005 6 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 7006 3 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 7008 7 (epub) The right of Ron J. Popenhagen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations vi Series Editor’s Preface ix Acknowledgements x Introduction 1 1. Impressions of the Covered Body 14 2. Facing Change and Changing Masks 34 3. Reforming and Uniforming the Body 60 4. Feigned and Distorted Bodyscapes 88 5. Actors’ Effigies and Photo-­Portraits 115 6. Fractured and Effaced Façades 162 7. Other Places 186 List of Exhibitions and Websites 218 Bibliography 222 Index 240

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 5.1  Full-­face mask, Eskimo dance performance, Alaska, North America. South-­west, Inuit Peoples, possibly Aleutian Islands. Symmetrical and harmonious mask. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, B-­31-­811 144 Figure 5.2  Carnival mask and masquerade, District of Stara Zabora, Bulgaria. Kazanlăk Region, Pavel Banja. Social life: dance. Kukeri, masks of spring. (Don du Comité d’Amitié et de Relations culturelles avec l’étranger de Sophia.) © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, E-­69-­2087 145 Figure 5.3  Helmet mask, woman’s ritual mask and masquerade, Sierra Leone. Masquerade expressing beauty, Sende and Humei peoples. Mende wooden mask for priestess of Bindo, worn by and for women, costumed with camouflaging, draping raffia. Social life: secret initiation for young women, secluded in the bush. Height 42 cm. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, C-­65-­2354-­493 146 Figure 5.4  Botanical full-­body masquerade, theatre in gallery, New South Wales, Australia. Moss figures. Contemporary installation art and performance, Garden Palace Promenade. Powerhouse Museum, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney. © Renata Popenhagen 147 Figure 5.5  Full-­face mask, Dhaulagari Zone, Dolpo-­Tarakot District, Nepal. Religious dance mask, ‘gin’ or ‘kin’. Pulp painted white, vi

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representing dead person. Forehead death-­head skulls with cranial ‘sutures’, sculpted by a monk. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, D-­69-­3006-­493 Figure 5.6  Pierrot-­derivative masking, theatre context; fictional scenographic space is Siberia, Russia. Camouflage masquerade non-­verbal performance. Winter season hunting mise en scène. © University Theatre, Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Kansas Figure 5.7  Nose armour/throat defence device, nineteenth-­century warrior mask, Japan. Lacquered iron, gilded brass, with silk braids. Mask and statue: modern Samurai war masks. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Col. R. Pasquine, Paris, C-­63-­599-­493 Figure 5.8  Hopi helmet mask, soft-­form cagoule, Kachina, south-­west [Arizona] North America. Painted hide (animal skin) and horse hair. Outdoor performance representation. Intermediary figure possibly representing bird, place, animal, plant or ancestor. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, Col. Le Corneur-­Roudillon, C-­68-­2495-­493 Figure 5.9  Articulated face mask, Buddhist dance ritual performance, China. Lamaist. Blue-­painted moulded cardboard with white marks and hair. Three-­part articulation. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, Col. R. Pasquino, C-­62-­676-­493 Figure 5.10  Half-­mask, theatre and dance performance, Java, Indonesia. Social life: theatre. Wayang topeng face masks, traditional gestural performance. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris. Don. C. # 1, 38-­2328 Figure 5.11  Full-­face mask, dance performance, West Bengal, Purulia, India. Social life: dance, Chhau dance mask, India. Peacock-­god Kartikya dance ritual. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, Col. M. Salvini: 1969-­70, C-­72-­2976-­786 Figure 5.12  Half-­mask, Italian comedy figure, theatre context; fictional scenographic space is France. Clown and commedia dell’arte in contemporary theatre. French circus arena context. © University Theatre, Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Kansas Figure 5.13  Plank mask on crown of head, ritual masking, Mali (Sudan). Dogon performance mask, Mali (Sudan). Masque du Dama, timmu (cross). Mopti region, Cercle de Bandiagara, Sanga du Haut-­ Ogul du Bas. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, Collection Griaule, No 241, D-­36-­1599-­41 Figure 5.14  Half-­mask, comedy figure, theatre context; fictional scenographic space is Iowa, USA. Commedia dell’arte popular performance tradition, Arts Midwest Touring Theatre. © Barb Cech

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Figure 5.15  Articulated transformation mask, Kwakiutl, British Columbia, Canada. Painted wood mask, ritual performance. Closed-­ form presents beak of large raven or crow. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, C-­79-­265-­493 Figure 5.16  Full-­body painting, ritual dance performance, Northern Territory, Australia. Social life: dance. Body paint, body decoration, ritual adornment. Rosewood, NT. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, Collection Australian News, C-­49-­59-­574 Figure 5.17  Swiss full-­face carnival mask, theatre context; fictional scenographic space is Lithuania. Carnival de Bâle character mask adaptation, Switzerland. Non-­verbal mise en scène. © University Theatre, Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Kansas Figure 5.18  Crown of head mask, full-­body masquerade, Dahomey, Benin. Social life: secret society, Benin. Mask of the Kere Society, South Department, Ouidah. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, C-­34-­5975

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SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE

Edinburgh Critical Studies in Modernism, Drama and Performance addresses the somewhat neglected areas of drama and performance within modernist studies, and is in many ways conceived of in response to a number of intellectual and institutional shifts that have taken place over the past ten to fifteen years. On the one hand, modernist studies has moved considerably from the strictly literary approaches to encompass engagements with the everyday, the body, the political, while also extending its geopolitical reach. On the other hand, performance studies itself could be seen as acquiring a distinct epistemology and methodology within Modernism. Indeed, the autonomy of performance as a distinct aesthetic trope is sometimes located at the exciting intersections between genres and media; intersections that this series sets out to explore within the more general modernist concerns about the relationships between textuality, visuality and embodiment. This series locates the theoretical, methodological and pedagogical contours of Performance Studies within the formal, aesthetic and political concerns of Modernism. It claims that the ‘linguistic turn’ within Modernism is always shadowed and accompanied by an equally formative ‘performance/performative turn’. It aims to highlight the significance of performance for the general study of Modernism by bringing together two fields of scholarly research which have traditionally remained quite distinct­– ­ performance/theatre studies and Modernism. In turn this emphasis will inflect and help to reconceptualise our understanding of both performance studies and modernist studies. And in doing so, the series will ix

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initiate new conversations between scholars, theatre and performance artists and students.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Research for this book began with an early-­ career Kade Fellowship in Theatre in France; I remain grateful to the Fulbright Foundation and the Institute for International Education for this opportunity. I am also grateful to the University of Kansas for past Faculty Enrichment Grants and International Affairs at California State University Channel Islands. I appreciate the assistance offered by the following libraries: Aix-­Marseille Université’s Bibliothèque des Fenouillères, the Bibliothèque Méjanes (Aix) and Interlibrary Loan at Broome Library, Channel Islands. I am appreciative of the resources provided by Paris museums as well: the Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie, the Musée de l’Homme, the Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac and Le Centre Georges Pompidou. I extend my gratitude to postgraduate students and their collaborations in Sydney and Northridge (Los Angeles). I also appreciate the inspiration offered by the Conservatoire Darius Milhaud, the Ballet Preljocaj and the Festival d’Aix (Aix-­en-­Provence), the Festival d’Avignon, the Edinburgh Festival, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and Luther College (Iowa), where I learned that performance is interdisciplinary study in practice. I am grateful to Bert O. States for providing a theoretical framework for my thinking on theatre practice; I thank Michael L. Quinn for his friendship and guidance which directed me to doctoral work with States. I am indebted to Jacques Lecoq for twenty years of dialogue on performance training, history and practice. Unfortunately, these mentors, and also Herbert Blau, did not live xi

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to see this manuscript. Thanks also to the late Fay Lees Lecoq, and to Pascale Lecoq, for research assistance in Paris. Summer Seminar/Institute Grants for University Professors (National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, DC) advanced my interdisciplinary study of masquerade. Research projects presented to seminar colleagues on the Arts in the Great War Era, Irish Sea & North Sea Literature, Modernism in Paris and Modernist/Postmodernist Performance Theory taught me to integrate varied disciplinary approaches to body masking. I thank Seminar/ Institute leaders Herbert Blau, Maria DiBattista, Elizabeth Frierson and Charles W. MacQuarrie, as well as former Center for 20th Century Studies administrator Kathleen Woodward, for their insights. Their encouragement and guidance in Belfast, Cincinnati, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Milwaukee and Paris stimulated invention. Joseph Falaky Nagy, also a seminar leader, coached my writing and helped structure my thought. His mentoring following consultations in Douglas, Isle of Man, is greatly appreciated. Series Editor Olga Taxidou’s perceptive, precise and polished critiques provided the analytical eye needed for the completion of the manuscript. Thanks also to Jackie Jones, Ersev Ersoy, Fiona Conn, Caitlin Murphy and all at Edinburgh University Press for their support throughout the process. Copy-­editor Andrew Kirk’s fine, thorough reading was also very helpful. Finally, I am most indebted to Luda Popenhagen for her long-­term assistance, support and promotion of this project. Modernist Disguise is dedicated to Luda, Renata and Darius, who all believed that its completion was essential.

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INTRODUCTION

An Other Place The human figure in disguise is defined by the covering of a segment, fragment or selected extremity of the body with a masking device. The device can be amorphous such as fabric, fixed-­form such as some masks or adaptive such as face or body paints. Full-­body disguising is identified by its concealment of the entire aggregate body as a wrapped form or as a form encased by a second skin, shell or temporary habitat. Such masquerading is more than a cover-­up; it is a construction layered over or upon the individual, sometimes as an adornment or, in other circumstances, as a total-­image substitution. While concealment of the face is assumed in human-­form masking, it is only one of many alternatives for disguising the person. The masquerade construction, however, always requires a living body. Dissimulation requires that there exist an individual who is hidden, obscured or dissembled. In some modernist masquerades, the disguised human figure is an abstracted expression in the form of an interior state of being: an unambiguous passion or, in complete contrast, a nebulous, ill-­defined state of mind. The concept, built with costume, forms or objects, becomes the exterior, material manifestation of an interior persona who surfaces reformed and vital­– ­fully shaped and fully volumised. Masquerading is both character play and self-­display. It allows the actor or the actant to toy with becoming part mannequin, puppet, doll or part machine. The masquerader transforms, it often appears, into a masked outsider who has 1

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visually changed, as if transported away and recently arrived at an Other Place. The masquerader looks at others differently, while actually seeing differently from behind or within the construction. Of course, some disguises are minimalist and discreet, barely noticeable. The alteration of the wearer’s interior state, nonetheless, may be sizeable and perceptually substantial. The masquerader may experience a sensation of renewed vigour and animation from the playful identity hide-­ and-­ seek. When the actor imagines and embodies an ‘other’ body, the actor changes patterns of behaviour. With the masquerade­– ­the disguise itself­– t­he material masking elements serve as go-­between agents which separate the former self from a new, invigorated persona. The acting persona may view the world with a higher, refreshed level of consciousness where perception is different. French actor and director Antoine Vitez speaks of an actor’s capacity as seer or medium in a ‘mediumistic state’,1 a precise and insightful way of seeing which makes deeper contact with other people and things. Perhaps this is the gaze of Vitez’s avocation: photography. Modernist Disguise traces the performativity of masqueraded, camouflaged or renovated identities in performance history and representations in the visual arts. Beginning in the mid-­nineteenth century, when the photograph surfaced as an alternative means of theatrically displaying the self, staging the body in disguise became a permanent component of the visual culture of Modernism. This study investigates the modernist usage of masking through an investigation of the artefacts which remain from performance itself, and from performative impulses apparent in masking objects and in representational images such as paintings. The methodology complements the contemporary point of view exhibited in ‘visual dramaturgy’, as recently theorised in reference to ‘material performance’, an aspect of puppet and marionette studies.2 In my analysis, however, the human body’s importance surpasses that of the object. The photograph is central to my argument, as a primary source of reference. In my discussions on masking, I attempt to give equal status and emphasis to non-­verbal performance, word-­based theatre and two-­dimensional representations of theatricality. I highlight the interplay between actual performance and visual manifestations of the body theatricalised. Live performance examples include modernist developments in circus, dance, drama, mime, opera, popular theatre and scenographic, object-­oriented performance. The visual culture elements of the discussions feature museum studies where gallery displays are treated as performative as well as informative in the same manner that a photo-­ essay makes statements. The museums most frequently cited are fine art collections, cultural anthropology museums, collections on the performing arts and festival culture, as well as special exhibitions particularly pertinent to this study. As with the theatre references in Modernist Disguise, Paris dominates as the primary reference point for the visual culture elements; 2

introduction

secondarily, the French cities of Aix-­ en-­ Provence, Avignon and Marseilles recur in the discussion. Urban culture in Modernism is regarded as metaphorically linked to masquerading in the sense that cities do act up and dress up in theatrical ways; this is especially apparent when considering ‘festival cities’ such as Edinburgh and Salzburg (Aix and Avignon, as well). As performative sites, ‘other’ places, cities can present themselves as disguising individuals, who, as Heike Geissler notes, are capable of making themselves ‘available in a multitude of variations’.3 In her personal narrative on disguise, Geissler explains that she exists in two places at the same time. In my personal experiences and regional lexicon, the ‘other place’ was literally a second site where one could freely go to break the daily monotony. It was, in essence, an alternative extension of Heimat (home-­ ness); this alternate space, a second farm, projected itself in a different light. Gradually, over time, masked performance work was increasingly experienced as a visit to an ‘other place’, where time passed at a different tempo. Festival culture, always masquerading in some capacity, welcomes temporary, substitute experiences in short durations with a ‘time out of time’, as theorised by Alessandro Falassi.4 Performance commentary begins in Europe in the nineteenth century; discussions radiate from the Parisian scene to other centres of modernist experimentation: Berlin, Vienna and St Petersburg. In the twentieth century, theatrical activity beyond Paris extends to Barcelona, Naples, Kiev, Copenhagen, Glasgow and Zürich as modernist activity flourishes and encompasses the Americas, the East and the Southern Hemisphere. Each chapter moves forward in time without strict adherence to a sequencing of the ‘isms’ of Modernism or to developments in political history. The Pierrot figure, with origins in Italy, reappears throughout the book as an actor in disguise and as a subject for studies by painters and photographers, in particular. Pierrot, a role undertaken by women and men in many locations, showcases continual change and adjustment as decades pass. Pierrot’s entrances recur like a leitmotif in all the chapters. The Pierrot figure serves as a fixed point of reference which allows stylistic variations in the structures and construction of disguise to be more easily identified. The openness of the often melancholy persona­– i­n performance and in representation­– ­exhibits a flexibility and range of interpretation which is not apparent in other roles derivative from the commedia dell’arte. Even when not designed to represent Pierrots, stage figures in contemporary work continue to read as citations of this ‘mask’­– ­Robert Wilson’s presentation of Mikhail Baryshnikov and Willem Dafoe as clown-­faced mirror images in The Old Woman, adapted from Daniil Kharms by Darryl Pinckney (2013), for instance. In the unfolding of Modernist Disguise, pictorial representations of Pierrots and other figures from itinerant theatre in southern Europe emerge in paintings 3

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which are described within the discourse. The reader is asked to imagine the painted image as recounted in words or, when it seems imperative, to search for the image online. Displaying images with words is taxing, if not impudent; however, I feel that it is necessary and practical in the context of this series of essays. I attempt to convert the pictorial image into a precise word-­picture. A fundamental aspect of disguise is its visuality, which equates with or overpowers its spoken text, should it have one. Often the disguised figure communicates through expression that is unvoiced or intentionally silent. The unsaid­– ­le non-­dit­– ­frequently stands out as a noteworthy element of the masquerader’s agenda. Emphasis on the body figure in silence contributes to the ambiguity which often surrounds disguising. In many instances, the vital text is shown rather than stated; as artists discovered long ago, it is more difficult to censor that which is seen than that which is spoken. In some instances, that which has not been stated is the most imperative. Breaking with decorum, but not voicing the indecorous, typifies some select and highly effective moments of modernist masquerade. Herbert M. Cole, in reference to African masquerade, identifies the disquieting issue that preoccupies spectators of disguising. He emphasises the central transformative issue of identity-­disguise with his title: I Am Not Myself. This departure from what is seen as the individual’s ‘true’ identity is a crucial factor in looking at disguise. Is it also meaningful when considering the significance of the masking of the body in Modernism. In conventional contexts, to not be oneself is not perceived as a good thing; it has disturbing connotations. Arthur Rimbaud, in 1871, stated: ‘Moi c’est un autre …’ (My-­self is an-­other).5 Rimbaud underscores the fact that he sees himself as different and, very likely, marginal. The phrasing also insinuates multiplicity, which disquiets others as well. The phrase was turned once again in 2005 with Alain-­Michel Boyer’s work on the mask object itself and the object in performance: ‘Je est un autre’ (I is an other).6 This awkward, jolting word sequence shifts the reader or listener away from the first person as it suggests a third-­person perspective on the self. It demands a second hearing, or second look, with its intentional disagreement between the subject and the ‘being’ verb. This title, also, is a declaration of ‘otherness’ rhetorically presented, a self-­portrait in disguise as a word-­form. Boyer’s usage is in reference to the function of mask objects and their magical qualities of transformation which affect the wearer of the mask. Boyer’s ‘other’ is the mask itself, more than the masker who, in performance, objectifies the self. The modernist artist, in the widest scope of the term, progressively employs disguise in radical fashions which become more about the act of masking than about the mask object itself. Cubist painters, expressionist dancers, surrealist self-­portrait photographers and constructivist theatre scenographers stunned (and occasionally traumatised) spectators with outrageous representations of 4

introduction

character-­figures that debunked traditional human-­figure display. In instances of puppetised or roboticised bodies, the human figure became part material object. Object and person complicity was worrying for some spectators, as it attempted to fuse the real with the unreal. A display and contemplation of an ‘exotic’ mask was one thing; literally embodying an ‘other’ body was quite another. While masking and ‘otherness’ were established partners in social masquerades and carnival festivities, extreme body-­form makeover seemed another step further away from the real: over-­the-­top Futurism. Certainly kinetic objects, proposing haptic and optic interaction with the human, moved abstraction to a dimension beyond drawing on paper, painting on canvas or sculpted simplifications of the human in blocks and planes. The body abstracted into a functional, uni-­form suggested giving life to a still-­life thing or resuscitating la nature morte into a three-­dimensional shape. Rather than the human governing the object-­thing in motion, the actions of the living person could, conceivably, be dictated by an object-­form, submitting to its demands. Robert Storr notes, with regard to images or objects in modern art, that ‘if an image disturbs, it has struck a chord, proving that something forceful in it has touched something alive in the viewer’.7 When the unnerving element becomes a living actor, the unsettling element intensifies. The theatrically staged figure reminds the spectator that the human body itself is potentially mutable and alterable. Mask, Figure and Camera Masquerading gets serious when it extends beyond the playful and becomes ominous disguise. Grotesque, frightening creatures are not a modernist invention; medieval visual culture, for instance, displayed the fantastic with a robust variety of hybridisations of the human form. Part animal human figures and even bodies intersecting with plants and wooden objects are not uncommon. In addition, throughout Modernist Disguise, two-­dimensional images are analysed when discussing the three-­dimensional subject of body masquerading. While not claiming that photographs and paintings ‘carry the argument’,8 as Kress and van Leeuwen suggest, my methodology is influenced by what Sunil Manghani terms Image Studies. Manghani’s examination and acknowledgement of the ‘pictorial turn’, in the words of W. J. T. Mitchell, and Mitchell’s statement on the ‘rediscovery of the picture’, certainly confirm that I am looking at disguise ‘through the lens of the pictorial turn’.9 For example, Man Ray’s black-­and-­white photograph Moving Sculpture (1920), ‘a still image of laundry on a clothesline billowing in the wind’,10 evokes storm-­tossed flying figures of late nineteenth-­century symbolist imagery. The dancing, phantom-­ like white sheets, as if in a Paul Verlaine poem, are a band of Pierrots pursued by death. The dark background of the photograph, an ominous landscape, 5

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foregrounds the bleached costumes, an example of Man Ray’s ‘remaking the object’ by photographing it.11 In his contemporary discussion of ‘the poetic’ in photography, Catalan writer Llorenç Raich Muñoz elaborates upon statements about poetry made by Octavio Paz. Raich Muñoz discusses the Paz comments on the ‘other voice’ and the ‘other gaze’ as a means and preparation for introducing his own concept of the ‘poetic gaze’, a renewed and revised photographic Modernism.12 The commentary proposed by Raich Muñoz reads like a theory of masquerade where, I propose, the ‘looking at’ and the ‘looking from’ suggest a dialogue between the camera and the masquerade composition. The masker, housed in an Other Place, regards the photographer, partially hidden by the shooting machine, in a moment of investigation and, sometimes, complicity. The mirroring of the two masked ones plays with the potential of a ‘poetic gaze’. Spectators of the resulting photographic image­– ­in another time of viewing­– ­may sense the similar and shared concealing–revealing game of modernist disguise and modern, technological image making (or mechanical reproduction, as Walter Benjamin would have it). For Raich Muñoz, the poetic gaze is focused upon going beyond the limit where language can no longer sufficiently express the sense of the seen­– ­a gaze, perhaps, with an extra-­perception of the invisible. Raich Muñoz concludes: ‘The Poetic Gaze is the Otherness of Seeing.’13 The relationship between photography and masquerade is developed throughout the chapters of Modernist Disguise. Masquerading has proven itself photo-­worthy from the first decades of photographic history, but it is only in the twenty-­first century that the joint project of masking device and camera becomes most apparent. A masquerade is a temporary life in the same way that all lives are temporal existences. The short-­lived masquerade’s apparition­ – ­as transitory disguise­– ­vanishes quickly and persists mostly as memory. When photographed, however, the ‘imagined self’ persists as an image. In Eduardo Cadava’s discussion of Walter Benjamin’s essay ‘A Short History of Photography’, he remarks that ‘we are most ourselves, most at home, when we remember the possibility of death’.14 For the masquerader, an animated life in the Other Place is impermanent. The identity-­disguise is created, presented and soon discarded; its immanent death is assumed and assured, always an element of its raison d’être. Masquerading, then, can be viewed as a foreshadowing of the inevitable passing; when the disguise is lowered or dropped, the gesture is, metaphorically, a rehearsal for dying. The playing-­at-­being of masquerade invites the end of being elsewhere, and the inevitable return to the ordinary. The Other Place is held hostage in ‘the twilight zone between seeing and not seeing’ as image: the photograph.15 Cadava clearly asserts that, in the future, ‘we will only be here the way we have always been here, as images’.16 A photograph of an individual in disguise preserves a moment when the actor is elsewhere. The enactor, possibly capable of representing multiple iden6

introduction

tities, is fixed in one form by the photographer. If an extravagant masquerade, the actor may be indistinguishable, hidden and separated by remote access. Since masquerade reception is greatly shaped by the culture of the viewer, the discomfort experienced varies considerably from one spectator to the next. For some, manipulations of identity-­ images remain provocative, however. An association of masqueraders with troublesome individuals is not uncommon, as sudden changes in demeanour suggest subversive action or societal degeneration to some. The modernist artist, as Christopher Butler asserts, often possessed a notable or infamous ‘willingness to distort, fabularize, and mythologize reality’.17 As outsiders who challenged social expectations, modernists and avant-­gardists were attracted to masking, disguising and masking metaphors. The notion of masquerading and the mask as symbol represented otherness; a mask served as an imaginative departure from the quotidian and the mundane. A connection with masks and masking, or the presence of mask objects in one’s surroundings, suggested an awareness of or knowledge about alternative places and other levels of being. The domain of the mask as an Other Place implied deeper understanding and a willingness to challenge convention. Even holding a mask object and gazing into its empty gaze promises an experience that is out of the ordinary. A quality mask object, despite its attention-­ holding presence, is neither a disguise nor a masquerade; it is a masking device. A masquerade cannot appear, cannot be photographed and cannot be remembered without the agency of the human body. In discussions on carnival disguising, anthropologist Yannick Geffroy concludes that a masquerade has two aspects: it is a designed and constructed ‘mise en scène of the body’ and it is also the event­ – ­the performance­– ­where this creation is displayed.18 The masquerade figure may appear as an elaborate costume (an assemblage of fabric and objects), a non-­representational structure, a body mask container or a head-­helmet or face mask. The taxonomy of masking devices is vast and ever evolving. The essential factor of the masquerade, most critically, is the presence of one or more living persons within or behind the mobile mise en scène. Without the human body, the masquerade construction is a sculpture, an effigy or a marionette whose manipulator is absent. A disguise only exists when the disguised one is present during its presentation. The masquerader­– ­the enactor­– ­is the agent who plays with visibility and invisibility. The visual artist depicting disguise, in a sense, enacts a masquerade in the act of disguising the human figure while representing it. Already in 1872, Édouard Manet conceals his model behind a black fan in Berthe Morisot à l’évantail, presenting a dark-­eyed lady in a black dress who shields her face and veils her gaze from the painter and spectators. In the new century, Käthe Kollwitz hides her grief by masking her face with her own hands; in another moment she transforms the façade of her face into a flat, Dalmatian-­coloured 7

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mask, which directly confronts the viewer with its mournful, open eyes (in a woodblock print from 1922–23). The obscured gazes of these modern women impose authority as they look back at their artist-­creators. They question the viewer like the character of ‘Woman’ in Oskar Kokoschka’s avant-­garde drama, Murderer the Women’s Hope (1907), when she asks: ‘“Who is the stranger who has looked on me?”’ [The woman stands tall, dressed in red clothing.] She continues: “Why do you bind me, man, with your gaze?”’19 Still-­ life figures in frames who return the gaze of the spectator do not appear as passive subjects on the walls of galleries; they present themselves as performative figures with agency. When disguised, neither the painted or photographed subjects’ physical presence nor the power of their gaze is necessarily reduced; an ability to communicate and to occupy space often remains in the representation in two dimensions. As if onstage, Columbines and Harlequins masquerade as if aware that spectators are reading their masks or faces and gestural expressions. One does not disguise to disappear; one disguises to appear, but to appear differently. To dissimulate is not to evaporate. In Modernist Disguise, attention is focused upon the disguiser as much as the masquerading materials. And since disguises are not only looked at but looked from, there are separate points of view to consider in this discussion. The eye of the scholar shifts from the spectator’s outside viewpoint to the perspective of the person behind or within the disguise (the subject); the masked, contained or entombed one has a point of view as well. The inside-­the-­masquerade viewpoint is not really that of an ‘outsider’ in the interplay of gazes. Viewers must acknowledge that the hidden one who is looked upon may sense the gaze of others upon the surface of the masquerade, and if the architecture of the structure allows, the insider looks back towards the spectator. The disguiser not detached or fundamentally distanced from the viewer. Sarah Bernhardt as Pierrot looks one straight in the eye. Who is actually outside of this gaze-­event? It is not Bernhardt or the photographer; it is not the viewer accepting her gaze in the Paris gallery. The outsider is the spectator of this looking-­exchange, also present in the space of display, waiting for the other tourist to move on, allowing another to get a close-­up view of the framed photograph. Bernhardt the subject is enlivened by the back-­and-­forth fashion of her perpetual display. Like a theatre of images, moments of disguise in this study arrive in a series of word-­pictures, analyses and descriptions, rather than as a book-­gallery of photographs. The intention is to theorise masquerade by referencing selected image-­artefacts with word-­illustration portraits rather than the images themselves. Human figures enter and exit while modernist literature lurks in the background, as film images of Charlie Chaplin, golems and R. U. R. robots fade in and out. Loïe Fuller­– ­and images of her magical fabric masquerades­ – ­also appears to animate the stage. The masquerading rarely stops in the twentieth century; it mirrors the anxious, recurring displacement of people 8

introduction

in Europe. Disguises come and go in a demonstration of how ‘creation and destruction are inextricably linked’, as architectural historian Richard Weston notes.20 Like buildings, disguises are temporary structures which are often conserved as photographs. If representation is, as Pablo Picasso describes painting, ‘a sum of destructions’, perhaps masquerade itself is a part of a pattern to create, destroy, discard and reassemble.21 Masquerades are assertions in physical space; they carve silhouettes; they inhabit a spatial zone that is changed by their presence. Such disguises are separate vessels with seemingly altered volumes from the quotidian body’s form; they connote a leap away from the ordinary to the distinctive. Like houses borne on the backs of peasant-­figures in Marc Chagall’s sketches, home base is always nearby. The departure and return aspect of masquerade provides stability. To be, and to temporarily not be, enhances and develops the actor’s or disguiser’s capacity to more fully sense the body’s occupation of public and private spaces. Masquerade as a ‘mise en scène of the body’ extends disguises into the realm of moving architecture as sites of of temporary habitation. In contemporary wearable art, fashion and installation work, masquerade draws inspiration from popular performance traditions; contemporary work also invents unexpected links with soundscape and landscape. In its most innovative manifestations and operatic dimensions, the disguised body appears on wide-­open, proscenium stages where stylistically diverse theatre artists present magical forms inhabited by dynamic actors. The work of Ariane Mnouchkine, William Kentridge and Simon McBurney provides excellent present-­day examples of such character-­masking display. The performance and image studies of disguise connect with visual communication studies and with aspects of the social sciences, including social and cultural anthropology. Its interdisciplinary focus links also with art history, fashion, gender studies, museum studies and scenography. In order to accommodate this circumstance, an adaptable, crossover vocabulary is required. In Modernist Disguise, I assert a critical lexicon for disguise-­in-­practice and theories of masquerade as performance, which is presently in process as interest in the field of study expands. I suggest that the term ‘masquerade’ is more specific than ‘disguise’; it often suggests more layering and complexity as well. ‘Disguise’ is a general naming given to a vast array of face and body concealments; disguises do not necessarily incorporate object-­forms, as even quotidian make-­up disguises. ‘Masks’ are usually fixed-­form objects in this study. It is more complicated than that, however, as a ‘mask’ can also be the human body-­form and its physical attitudes that comply with a fixed character person, as in the commedia dell’arte. ‘Masking’ is the act of putting on and wearing a mask form; it is also a thing, in the sense that ‘masking’ can refer to the objects, fabrics and materials employed to cover the face or body. This usage of ‘masking’ aligns with the concept of masking or covering the wings 9

modernist disguise

or backstage areas of a performance space. To mask is to cover or dissimulate; generally speaking, to mask is to disguise. Use of these terms is fluid, even within this study, where on occasion one term appears more accurate for the circumstance than another. I employ these words and others in a manner which is not dogmatic. In this regard, my word selections build upon other contemporary scholarship, including Efrat Tseëlon’s critical study of Fashion as Masquerade. My terminology builds upon her work while seeking a lexicon that is appropriate for performance theory, visual culture studies, visual arts and performative practices. In the present millennium, ‘masquerade’ is emerging as the preferred term for contemporary, interdisciplinary discussions. The increasing visibility of the word, I suggest, is the result of its more inclusive and less Eurocentric connotation, as illustrated by its appearance in studies on Central African, Caribbean and Maghreb masquerades (Christine Falgayrettes-­ Leveau’s Mascarades et carnavals, for example). Masquerade as the word for describing presentations of masking, masked acting, masking events and constructions of disguise maintains its implications of material-­object covering of the body. Masquerade as formal, social event, such as the costume and masked parties of past eras, is already clearly established. (Colleen McQuillen’s study of fin-­de-­siècle Russia, The Modernist Masquerade, is another example.) A broader, contemporary use of the term, however, is gaining momentum. Masquerade as an open-­ended term bypasses the more restrictive earlier terms which feature the fixed-­form mask object as the supreme representative of the act of masking. When masquerade includes The Mask, as one of the profound symbols of classical theatre and Modernism, costume and body painting masquerades are lifted to a status more equal to the mask object. Masquerade may be a more democratic term, since it actually contests the hierarchy of masking where fixed forms are higher in status than veils or maquillage. For one to be fully pluradisciplinaire and respectful of cross-­cultural discourse on disguise, masquerade is the word of choice in this study. Already prevalent in criticism and scholarship in the French language, its use is increasing in English. In popular parlance, the word still holds frivolous and superficial connotations. This is gradually changing as awareness of world indigenous performance traditions increases. * * * Chapter 1 and Chapter 7 serve as bookends of modernist disguise. The first chapter looks at the foundations of modernist invention in the mid-­nineteenth century, including the launching of photography as a new technology and art form. Performing Pierrots are featured and, in visual culture imagery, skulls replace heads and veiling the body becomes commonplace. Ghostly figures signal an increase in representations of death. Chapters 2–6 encompass the two world wars and concurrent social and political upheavals. Death masks 10

introduction

and the mask as object and symbol are discussed in Chapter 2, which also includes insights on masquerade in indigenous cultures and ‘Primitivism’. Pablo Picasso’s groundbreaking paintings are introduced; Picasso, like a mutating Pierrot, appears and reappears throughout this study. His visibility cannot be suppressed since as soon as he fades slightly out of the limelight, a new photograph surfaces which assures his celebrity. In Chapter 3 the work of Alfred Jarry and Gordon Craig is theorised, and Dada performance is viewed within the context of actual and artistic battlefields. Camouflaging the body is considered as utilitarian disguise and as a ‘remaking’ of theatrical objects. The interwar years of the 1920s are discussed in Chapter 4, where an explosion of multi-­art, collaborative performances links the visual arts directly with theatre, dance and opera performance. The importance of the human form and challenges proposed by stage objects is discussed. Chapter 5 looks at self-­portrait masquerading, further developments in disguise captured by photography and progressive developments in masking the body at the Bauhaus. Chapter 6 approaches new thoughts on the body and masking, as well as issues related to movement, masking the head and silent performance. Antonin Artaud features in this section, as do other post-­war performance practitioners. My twenty-­year association with the actor pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq complements comments on French theatre practice, as noted in Chapters 6 and 7. As a kind of postscript, Chapter 7 is an essay on contemporary practice which includes a collection of names and places where masquerade flourishes during and after Modernism. This chapter further develops the linking of camera and masquerader, and the elevating of masquerade to its current prominence in visual culture. The examples cited illustrate the expansion of masking into daily life, as well as the infiltration of theatricality into aspects of culture which were not previously perceived as performative. In contrast, the terrors of violent, anonymous masking are documented to complete the twenty-­first-­century mosaic of disguise. Masquerade teeters between what Nathalie Gauthard calls the ‘lawful and the unlawful’ (le licite et l’illicite).22 For many modernist spectators, disguising was a dangerous preoccupation; perhaps it remains so for some contemporary viewers. In the context of Modernism, disguising the body and face upended established orders of facing up and saving face. Marie-­Pascale Mallé concludes in Le Monde à l’invers (The Upside-­down World) that alternative ways of being­– ­ masquerades­– ­ stimulate invention and permit transgression. The elements of risk grounded in acts of transgression disturb and unsettle. For Mallé, this misbehaviour and disobedience is a positive factor, advantageous because it questions the status quo. Going still further, Gauthard proposes that transformational experiences enacted upon the body open doors to ‘transcendance’,23 a need sometimes fulfilled by the carnivalesque and festival culture. 11

modernist disguise

For modernists drawn to spiritualist ideologies (Theosophy, for instance), the masking of the body was a means of surpassing the daily and the commonplace. Masquerade as an alternative identity experience could harbour transcendence or even communication with the dead; it could be the path that leads to ‘the mediumistic gaze’. Disguising indexed an openness to other ways of seeing and imagining; it provided an Other Place to visit where a chance encounter or epiphanic discovery might randomly surface. Fashioning, inhabiting and publicly displaying a masquerade costume­– ­and substitute identity­– ­permitted the actor or artist to align with the marginal and, in practice, to reinvent the self via a ‘critique of identity’, in Tseëlon’s words.24 In Modernist Disguise I speak about the reception of pictures or performances when a moment becomes memorable or significant, appropriately perceived as iconic for the spectator. The ‘visual turns’ recounted rotate around the cultural hub of Paris; I do not assume, though, that Parisian culture is exclusively French culture. The internationalism of Paris as a gathering point of the displaced, the migrant and the expatriate is vital to the way of looking at the human figure postured here. As an aide-­mémoire, I bookmark the modernist period­– ­of monumental status­– t­ hat is presented here with two buildings that changed Paris’s topography: the Eiffel Tower (1889) and the Centre Georges Pompidou (1977). La Tour Eiffel, as modernist signpost, is a craftily engineered broadcast tower dressed up as a building. Le Centre is a fancy-­dress building masquerading as an oil refinery. Both affirm and uphold their motion-­in-­stasis dynamic and their brash reputations as upsurging monsters from the swampy banks of the Seine. While framing eighty-­eight years of façades, the Eiffel and Pompidou structures illuminate while they fascinate; the appeal of each architectural statue is the secrets which lurk within. As mysterious containers, they hold attention; as urban monuments, they promise ‘public happiness’.25 Notes  1. Antoine Vitez, ‘Un regard médiumnique’, Alternatives théâtrales, 52/53/54, pp. 15–17.  2. See Eric Bass, ‘Visual Dramaturgy’, in Posner et al. (eds), The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance, pp. 54–60.   3. Heike Geissler, ‘In the Company of a Bear’, in Hoedt, Once a Year, p. 7.  4. Falassi, Time Out of Time, p. 1.   5. Rimbaud quoted in Raich Muñoz, Poétique de la photographie, p. 92.   6. Alain-­Michel Boyer, ‘Je est un autre’, in Butor et al., L’Homme et ses masques, p. 13.  7. Storr, Modern Art Despite Modernism, p. 35.   8. Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, ‘The Semiotic Landscape’, in Manghani et al. (eds), Images: A Reader, p. 121.  9. Manghani, Image Studies, pp. 7, 63. 10. George Baker, ‘Keep Smiling’, in Dickermann and Witkovsky (eds), The Dada Seminars, p. 210.

12

introduction

11. Ibid., p. 211. 12. Raich Muñoz, Poétique de la photographie, pp. 79–84. 13. Ibid., p. 84. 14. Cadava, Words of Light, p. 90. 15. Ibid., p. 89. 16. Ibid., p. 90, Cadava’s emphasis. 17. Butler, Modernism, p. 89. 18. Yannick Geffroy, ‘Le masque et la liberation des pulsions’, in Boiteux and D’Ayala (eds), Carnavals et mascarades, p. 181. 19. Kokoschka translated by Michael Hamburger, in Gale and Deeney (eds), The Routledge Drama Anthology, pp. 220–1. 20. Weston, Modernism, p. 19. 21. Picasso quoted in ibid., p. 19. 22. Nathalie Gauthard, ‘Les avatars de carnaval’, in Gauthard (ed.), Fêtes, mascarades et carnavals, p. 25. 23. Ibid., p. 20, quoting Mallé, Le Monde à l’envers, pp. 41–4. 24. Efrat Tseëlon, ‘Fashion and the Orders of Masking’, in Tseëlon et al. (eds), Fashion as Masquerade, p. 5. 25. Wagenaar, Happy, p. 3.

13

1

IMPRESSIONS OF THE COVERED BODY

Veiled Exposures Theorists and historians of Modernism are familiar with paintings of the face transformed and photographs of the head disguised. An image of total effacement, such as René Magritte’s veiled Lovers Kissing, fixes attention for a longer period of time than does the naked face. The viewer’s gaze rests upon the fabric’s lack of transparency; one contemplates the absence of facial skin. Suddenly, the commonplace embrace, an everyday occurrence, is made extraordinary; the woman and man remain hidden in their otherwise public intimacy. Likewise, in the performance context, the concealed face of expressionist dancer Mary Wigman shifts the viewer’s gaze to all extensions of her angular body attitude. Spectators peruse the body and its gestural statements to secure a glimpse of the displaced face: the hands like eyes, the listening feet, the breath of the torso. Draped in yards of fabric and masked by a wood-­carved sculpture, the dancer extends and recoils in choreographic shocks, eccentric rhythms and erratic tempos. Wigman’s death-­ dance disguise is a restless, private struggle on display. The silence, broken only by her stomping, drapes heavily on the Totentanz, the dance of death. In both ritualised moments of masking, the veiled or masked ones communicate a presence, or an imminent death, through fragments of exposure, as if faceless. Out-­of-­the-­ordinary treatments of the human body, individual assertions of difference, abound in modernist visual culture. The body is covered and uncov14

impressions of the covered body

ered; it is masked and unmasked, dressed up and dressed down. Searching beyond the limits of traditional costuming, modernists explored the possibility of totally rebuilding the human frame­– ­in fantastic fashions. Hide-­and-­seek games of disguise were familiar to spectators of nineteenth-­ century stage and circus clown traditions. French audiences were aware, also, of decades of Pierrot performances in Paris. The heightened frequency of dissimulation imagery as the century waned was uncharacteristic, however. Peter Conrad’s mammoth study Modern Times, Modern Places documents scores of instances where masquerade, masks and Pierrots featured in Berlin, Moscow, Paris and Vienna. Discussion of French Pierrots, the subject matter of the upcoming ‘Playing Pierrot’ subsection, considers progressive transformations of the Pierrot masquerade in the nineteenth century as recorded in photographic portraits. Fading images of hidden and forgotten actors behind the Pierrot façade verify Eduardo Cadava’s inference that ‘the home of the photograph is the cemetery’,1 here mostly Père Lachaise, the burial site of many actors referenced in this study. A face covered with white make-­up does not fully conceal facial aspects. As an amorphous material, its impact upon the skeletal form of the head is marginal; the skull remains. Illusions of actual change in the structural form are possible, but maquillage highlights more than it builds. The painted Pierrot mask is temporary, ephemeral and virtually immaterial. It accentuates or subdues the given facial form while it disperses focus to the extremities of the body, particularly the gesture and movements of the hands. As a second skin upon the skull, the Pierrot mask fascinates visual artists; its popularity rarely disappears. Its form and detail evolve, however, alongside or over the changing silhouette of the Pierrot actors: men and women. As le geste lyrique, in the words of Chantal Cazaux, in reference to opera performance, matured and aged in the nineteenth century, it became maladroit, possessed by a contagious malady that tainted youthfulness.2 These ‘Phantom Pierrots’, addressed in the third section of this chapter, are not well represented by the lyricism of Claude Debussy’s dreamy Claire de lune; they are anxious and agitated, more given to nightmares. Head and body disguising at the turn of the century and into the twentieth century utilised both paint and an assortment of tangible materials and objects to construct a masquerade; examples included flexible forms and fixed forms. The fixed-­form mask object itself is perhaps the most complete and the most fully prepared to be activated in a masquerade. Such a mask is a tool of the trade; its primary function is to serve as a masking device, although, it­– ­the object itself­– i­s not the masquerade. A masquerade cannot happen, appear, be remembered or be photographed without the agency of the human body. As noted earlier, psychologist-­anthropologist Yannick Geffroy explains that a masquerade is both a mise en scène of the body and the event which features 15

modernist disguise

its performance.3 The displayed figure­– ­the masquerade­– ­may appear as an elaborate costume, an assemblage of fabric and objects, costume and painted skin or a sculptural construction worn or built upon or around a living person. Examples range from clothing adaptations to oversized geometric forms created with fabric or stiff materials. Mask forms are frequently elements of masquerades, but it cannot be assumed that a mask is always incorporated into the making of the changed-­body figure. Costume events such as masquerade balls (bals masqués) have been part of European drama and opera since the Renaissance. Festive masked parties of this sort featured social masking which characteristically employed loups or a bauta or other half-­mask disguises popular in urban eighteenth-­century traditions; the disguises evolved alongside the body-­mask typologies of the Italian commedia dell’arte. It is atypical, however, to speak of masquerade in European (or North American) theatre performance beyond this ‘event’ usage. The term ‘masquerade’ is clothed in negative connotations that imply frivolous, superficial or even amateurish theatricality. One could go so far as to state that an ‘antitheatrical prejudice’ accompanies the term masquerade. Use of the word in theatre contexts is not without precedent, however, particularly when referencing African performance and diasporic displays of the carnivalesque in Haiti, Martinique or Trinidad, for instance. The mask cultures most admired by cubists and surrealists continue to employ the term masquerade in performance description and criticism, free of pejorative connotations. In this sense, masquerade has always been present in modernist visual and performance cultures. On the other hand, it has been absent from both the theatre practice lexicon and from performance theory. The ‘mask’, symbol of theatricality and fundamental element in many modernist actor-­training methodologies, has been the central disguise agent in modernist thought. Mask theory and criticism has been out of fashion for quite some time, however. It does not feature highly in recent discussions of theatricality; masquerade barely gets a mention in Reading Contemporary Performance, for instance.4 Interest is growing steadily, however, in other disciplines such as dance, fashion, body art, photographic portraiture, curatorial culture and museum performance work. When discussing Loïe Fuller’s scenographic fabric-­in-­motion constructions, Sonja Delauney’s fashion costumes, Sophie Taüber’s mask performances and Pablo Picasso’s temporary sculptures for Parade, masquerade is a useful term for performance practice discourse. Some masquerades move beyond elaborate or innovative costumes and enter a realm where the whole activated figure functions like an object; the actor-­animator within or behind is virtually forgotten in such performances. Still, the manipulacteur is the integral operator of the scenographic happening.5 The human participation within the living image-­ object of a masquerade allows the possibility of dialogue with the image; this 16

impressions of the covered body

imposes a complication for the viewer. ‘The viewed object is also a spectator; the subject returns the gaze. And it is often an anonymous gaze, an unseen and discreet gaze.’6 When the manipulacteur is not visible and remains unnamed, the viewer communicates with an ephemeral unknown. Who is hidden there? Any back-­and-­forth gaze dialogue and reciprocal acknowledgement between viewer and the ambivalent figure remains shrouded in ambiguity. Musée Dapper exhibitions and publications provided documentation of contemporary masquerade performance when the museum was still in operation. In Paris today, the Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac and the Musée de l’Homme remain committed to increasing awareness and understanding of the relationship between ritual objects and masquerade performance.7 With respect to the social sciences, the work of Efrat Tseëlon supports my assertion here that use of the term masquerade is invigorating and productive across disciplines from anthropology to psychology, gender studies and performance. The benefits of a common language for the arts, social sciences and visual arts are yet to be fully discovered.8 As noted above, there is no customary, time-­honoured method of referencing masquerade as a recognisable form of public display and performance in Western ‘high’ cultures, even though mascarade (French), mascarada (Spanish and Portuguese), Maskarade (German) and mascherata (Italian) are long-­established terms in African and Caribbean cultures. ‘Mas’ is also used in some Caribbean and Mediterranean Creole cultures.9 It breaks traditional nomenclature to suggest that selected performance events in the past two centuries could now be described as masquerades; such an assertion sounds odd or even eccentric to many. Still, the possibility exists that it could highlight some aspects of mask performance, while clarifying the nature of others. Masquerade (the event and the performance figure) is aesthetically and socially complex, multidisciplinary and politically significant. Masquerade is distinctive both materially and conceptually; it stands out from the pre-­modern to the post-­modern era as self-­conscious, image-­making identity play. In the Brazilian context, Michel Agier refers to masquerade as a splitting of the self into two (un dédoublement de soi).10 In the European context, Efrat Tseëlon states that masquerade ‘challenges the whole discourse of difference that emerged with modernity’.11 Disguise in performance during the gesturally rich nineteenth century provided fertile terrain for individual image making. Statements made by photographs suggest that interest in the presentation of secondary identities existed and was communicated through the increasing presence of public display and private role-­playing research. Playing Pierrot During the years preceding the Paris Commune of 1871 and Modernism’s full-­fledged manifestation, Parisian popular performance was concentrated on 17

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the ‘Boulevard du Crime’ near the Enfants-­Rouge district of the Right Bank Temple quartier. The site was documented by Louis Daguerre’s cityscape photo of Boulevard du Temple in 1838. The evocative daguérreotype image exhibits the famous avenue of theatres in an iconic picture containing one of the first photographic recordings of the human form.12 The diminutive, static figures along the boulevard footpath are not performers; the unknowing subjects photographed from a window above are a shoe shiner and his gentleman customer. The calm of the spring morning suggested by the empty street beyond provides no hint of the onstage assaults and spectacular, acrobatic leaps enacted within the performance venues: violent melodramas, romping pantomimes, circus acts and assorted ‘fisicofillia’, in Peter Conrad’s word.13 The building façades masked the death-­obsessed denizens of the structures’ interiors, like architectural skins hiding the skull-­shaped, spectator ‘houses’ of these performance spaces. At the Théâtre des Funambules, the role of Pierrot ruled the repertoire in a variety of guises, both in plays and in authored pantomimes. Jean-­Gaspard Deburau was the most celebrated Pierrot in the first half of the century, certainly the most noted interpreter of the persona during the Romantic era. A bohemian actor and mime­– ­by origin and character­– ­Deburau transfigured and personalised the Pierrot-­as-­bumpkin role that had previously appeared at the Foire Saint-­Laurent in a neighbouring north-­east Paris district in the late eighteenth century and after. The popular theatre quarter of Deburau’s Boulevard du Temple encompasses the intersection where today’s 3rd, 10th and 11th arrondissements conjoin, surrounding the Place de la République. Born Jan Kašpar Dvořák in central Europe (present-­ day Kolin, Czech Republic), Deburau assimilated fully into Parisian culture as Jean-­Gaspard and assumed yet a third identity as ‘Baptiste’, a stage name affectionately given by devoted spectators. Baptiste (later also referred to as Deburau père to distinguish him from his son Jean-­Charles) demonstrated the adaptability of a migrant performing artist with shifting nationality and multiple identities; the pattern of his complex biography becomes more common with expatriate, modernist bohemians at the fin de siècle. Deburau performed as Pierrot for nearly twenty-­five years before his death in 1846. While never photographed, Deburau is an icon of the pre-­modernist era. Sketched, painted and represented by many, including Auguste Bouquet’s lithograph Le Repas de Pierrot (en Pierrot gourmande). Deburau, slim, tall and lithe in all illustrations, swims within a voluminous white cotton blouse and wide, white pantaloons in this image. The costume incorporates greater elegance and simplicity than earlier renditions of the Pierrot role; the decorative ruffled collar and peasant hat from the late eighteenth century have been eliminated. Deburau wears a black skullcap­– u ­ ne calotte noir­– ­which provides the head with clean lines above a long neck. In urban vernacular, the look is 18

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svelte. The light and graceful image of an extended body in horizontal motion across the stage apron slows in the later years of the nineteenth century, as subsequent Pierrots rely less and less upon restraint and gestural ambiguity. Pierrots gradually transition from silent, non-­ word-­ perfect (language-­ less) acting to pantomimic gesture where most hand language can be translated to verbal language equivalents. The Pierrots get larger and the face speaks more, with word-­like grimaces. The gestural code of Deburau was, for many, a bit too poetic; it was too vague and open-­ended. It was miming that could be felt but not read as a set code of signs. His acting was, of course, sustained and supported by live music; it was speechless, but not silent. The image itself­– t­ he masquerade­– w ­ as nonetheless ‘un objet silencieux’, as Édouard Papet brands the nineteenth century’s perception of masks in performance.14 Among the century’s Pierrots, only his son Jean-­Charles, Deburau fils, maintained Baptiste’s expressive but terse control. It is through the photographic portraits of Jean-­Charles Deburau that one can most securely imagine the jeu of the father, his manner of playing. A prize-­winning series of photos taken by Adrien Tournachon, Nadar jeune, in the mid-­1850s helps ground or anchor any fanciful reverie regarding the look of the unphotographed Jean-­Gaspard in movement as Pierrot. Pierrot in the style of Jean-­Charles is deeply concentrated and minimalist in facial gesture; there is a total absence of grimace meant to charm or of too obvious, fixed facial expression. Neither the mouth nor the eyes draw unwarranted focus; in the Tournachon image Pierrot photographe, for example, the gaze is subdued to the point where the eyes are only vaguely visible, suggesting only narrow, quarter-­moon dark holes that resemble those openings found on a fixed-­form mask. Neither the Deburau fils Pierrot nor, by leap of faith, the Jean-­Gaspard Pierrot is exclusively about the face and its eyes; the concentration of thought and energy embedded in the visage moves the gaze of the viewer outward to the extreme extensions of the gestural actor. The Deburau masquerade is a body with a face, not a face with a body.15 The Tournachon-­Deburau Pierrot’s white, softly painted or floured face and neck imply a masking that displays transparency; the skin in the photograph is merely veiled with a pale colour. The expressive hands are ungloved and unpainted. The whole body speaks as one unified image; the integrated, whole-­body picture of Pierrot photographe is virtually architectural, with its constructed rapport between standing actor (most weight on one foot) and standing camera (supported by a tripod). The Jean-­Charles Deburau presence­ – ­a masquerade citation of the absent Jean-­Gaspard­– ­shows Jean-­Charles deferring his gaze (with an indexical gesture of four fingers) to the eye of the camera directly facing the viewer. His gaze is directed to the photographer Tournachon and his camera eye. Pierrot and Deburau are looked at as two levels of one image and jointly and indirectly look back at all who eye them. This dynamic looking game converts Jean-­Charles Deburau the actor into a 19

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memorable, fixed image; Jean-Gaspard Deburau’s Baptiste stage figure also achieves permanence in the same icon-­object. The masquerade figure of Deburau-­Pierrot stands as an image with object qualities face to face initially with the camera-­photographer object. When the image becomes a displayed photograph, Deburau-­Pierrot looks directly at the viewer-­consumer of the iconic photograph. The photographic image created by Nadar jeune remains alive with its eternal, active looking back. The viewer’s gaze replaces the photographer’s gaze. The captured moment is a mise en scène assembled in a controlled, portrait-­studio setting.16 The effective interaction between photographer Adrien Tournachon and model Jean-­Charles Deburau made this modern man-­and-­machine image a success. The mime’s silent acting ability with active interior motion is apparent in the image-­text. It is a photograph that allows and encourages long looking; the spectator is thoughtfully engaged in seeking a complete understanding of the complex proposal. By association, the viewer is compelled to imagine the performances of this actor’s father and accept that the work of the original Baptiste was equally as intricate and engaging as this Pierrot. The son’s collaboration with a professional image-­ maker in the photography studio was a significant moment of modern myth making as Jean-­Charles Deburau enhanced his father’s and his own image-­identity; the impact of this photo series continues to resonate. Tournachon was the younger brother of the famed Parisian photographer Félix Nadar. Both together and individually Nadar and Tournachon created portraits of scores of famous nineteenth-­ century personalities. The 2018 Bibliothèque national de France exhibition Les Nadar carefully documented the family’s innovations and accomplishments, including the work of Paul Nadar (the son of Félix) and Marthe Nadar (the daughter of Paul); their photo studio production work continued well into the mid-­ twentieth century in Paris.17 Commentaries in the recent exhibition clarified that the Jean-­Charles Deburau Pierrot photos were indeed the work of Adrien Tournachon rather than that of Nadar, as credited in many publications. The Pierrot photo sitting, suggested to Deburau by Félix Nadar while he and Tournachon were working in partnership, received a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle of 1855. The award, however, was presented exclusively to Adrien Tournachon as Nadar jeune. Pierrot photographe is the first photo in the series, which includes images of Deburau surprised, pleading, laughing and listening. Even today the bold statement of these photos is impressive; the contrasting postures overlap, accumulate and repeat until the viewer visualises the silent stage figure in motion. The sharpness in contrast of the white costume against the black studio backdrop is a fabrication that results from new technology. An actual onstage performance in a Boulevard du Temple theatre by either Jean-­Charles or Jean-­Gaspard Deburau could 20

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not have displayed the actor in such finely controlled lighting. Therefore, an imagined film clip of the great Baptiste-­Pierrot is itself an original construction enabled by these photographs. The actor’s collaboration with the photographer allowed the fabrication of a memory and a permanently adjusted identity-­ statement about both father and son Pierrots. Movement is implied in the still, full-­body portraits of Pierrot. The state of mind of the actor instils this suggestion of liveness with dimension which negates the flatness of the image on paper. Félix Nadar, the first established Nadar photographer, attempted to accomplish a similar effect with his twelve-­ shot self-­portrait Autoportrait en douze poses, Étude pour une photosculpture (1861–67). His modern interest in showing all sides simultaneously is intriguing; the collection of fragments has a cinematic effect. The experiment creates movement but does not bring increased interest in the portrait subject and his identity play. Nadar’s exploration, however, predates by fifty years Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 of 1912, where motion is implied on a painted, flat surface. Nadar’s goal of three-­dimensional photographic representation was more successful in his multiple images of George Sand (1864). In this image sequence the viewer can accumulate and layer separate distinctive looks of Sand and bring the subject to life as a complex identity, albeit still trapped in two dimensions. Early photography provides other fine images of actual masquerading. The self-­portrait of Félix Nadar in, it seems, authentic North American Inuit costume does not succeed as a masquerade or diguise, however. In 1863, Nadar printed the image of himself in Native American dress: Autoportrait en costume d’Esquimau. This lacks presence; it survives as a high-­tech, historically early snapshot of Nadar costumed inappropriately. There is no apparent transformation of Félix the photographer. Nadar in fancy dress, or anyone in fancy dress, does not fully function as masquerade. There is no evident impulse to transform or to become someone or something else. Documentation of the nineteenth-­ century fascination with other cultures is curious and notable, however. Powerful monarchs and heads of state from cultures beyond Europe arrived in Félix Nadar’s Paris studio for professional portraits. In 1862 Léon Crémière, a Nadar contemporary, photographed a delegation of Tuareg leaders from the Sahara. The portrait displays three individuals with fully hidden faces and bodies; the three men are placed upon an ‘orientalist’ fabric piece and an animal skin. Two men are standing and one is seated; each holds a thin, light spear. Draped and wrapped in heavy garments, the faces are nearly entirely covered. The viewer sees only three eyes in total. The authenticity of the clothing and the undisclosed faces of Les Chefs des Touregs mystify.18 An early modern fascination with the fashion and function of the dress of indigenous peoples increased as Europeans encountered more and more images of global 21

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cultures. Some of the enthralment with the artificial framing of real people transferred into public disguising and masquerading in an orientalist fashion. Félix Nadar’s son Paul built on this disguising impulse by amassing a series of self-­portraits of himself-­the-­photographer dressed up as someone else. The series features Paul’s surrogate professions. As a frequent portraitist for opera singers and an avid supporter and enthusiast of the Paris Opéra-­Comique, Paul created numerous self-­portrait images as actor-­singer in the lyric theatre (Autoportraits en acteur), completed between 1880 and 1885. In response to a growing interest in other cultures, Nadar fils also portrayed himself as an adventurer (Autoportrait en explorateur, 1892), posing like one of the world explorers that he frequently photographed in his studio. There is no question about the identity of the poseur in these photographs; they are clearly portraits of Paul Nadar as Paul Nadar in fancy dress. No illusion is achieved. There can be no duality of presence (player and role) when the actor person never partially disappears. The viewer is not offered the experience of recognising and not recognising which holds attention. Nadar’s portrait of Pierrot-­actor Jean-­ Charles Deburau in street clothes presents this situation in reverse. The public identifies Deburau as the actor in white-­face masquerade; the same public is little aware of the unmasked, away-­from-­Pierrot Jean-­Charles. Nadar’s portrait of Deburau out of costume in the street is out-­of-­character and, therefore, intriguing as an image of the unpainted one (Pierrot photographe or Charles Deburau en costume de ville, 1854–55). Pierrot, a masquerade without a mask object, is a ‘mask’ in the sense that the role is an ancestor of the servant roles in the Italian commedia dell’arte. These roles, many of which are masked characters, are often termed masks rather than characters or roles. This terminology emphasises a fixed typology, thereby facilitating categorisation. The Pierrot mask evolved dramatically after its arrival in France, particularly as the nineteenth century progressed. Paul Legrand, contemporary to both father and son Deburau, set about liberating the role from the classical restraint of the Deburau-­Baptiste. The humanising of the role, as it is sometimes described, was a shift to a Pierrot more in line with realism. The ensuing trend to play Pierrot in a more natural manner was a transition away from a Romantic, form-­conscious Pierrot to a less contained and more approachable, sentimental Pierrot. The ‘porcelain’ Pierrot, as Jacques Lecoq characterised it, lingered at the edge of lamentation. This Pierrot figure was far more facially expressive than the Deburau-­ Baptiste. Containment declined further as the persona is overcome with anxiety, alcoholism and homicidal tendencies as the end of the nineteenth century came into view.19 As one looks at the demise of the grand, emotion-­embodied physical attitude on the pantomime stage, a parallel narrative emerges in the history of photography. As performance viewers begin to look more deeply at the human face of actors, photographers pull in and frame their subjects with only partial views 22

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of the body, often eliminating the lower body and feet. If we look at the evolution of the portraits following Tournachon’s Pierrot series, the wide context, full-­body shot begins to disappear. Félix Nadar’s mid-­century ‘standing’ shot of Charles Baudelaire spares a portion of his legs, but there is already a move to get closer to the face. In the collection of Baudelaire images by Nadar (1855–57 and 1862), plus the gripping Baudelaire portraits photographed by his contemporary Étienne Carjat (around 1863 and shortly before Baudelaire’s death in 1867), the move inward to the eyes of the photographed subject is clearly demonstrated. Years later, in the twentieth century, Jean-­Paul Sartre made a remark concerning the eye presence in these early photographs. He states that long after their deaths, the gazes of Nadar’s subjects remain; they are still looking (‘leur regard reste’).20 The move away from imaging the whole body figure continues as the head is ever more thought to be the location of the essential. Visual artists and photographers become intrigued by the head on the shoulders (and the face on the head) and less preoccupied with the human figure in the landscape. In many ways the Baudelaire gaze is only seriously challenged in its attention-­holding capacity by a self-­portrait by Gustave Courbet which was created over two decades earlier: Le Désespéré (1845). This painting is a portrait staged as if it were an in-­action photograph; it anticipates future cinematic shots. (Of course, technologically, a photo of this nature was not possible in Courbet’s lifetime.) Courbet challenges the viewer in a mute direct address­– ­an unquestionably modern regard (gaze) that is highly theatricalised. This image, Romantic in gestural action and costume, jolts with its confrontational tone; it speaks as if Courbet stares straightforwardly into the lens of a camera. The shocking aspect of the painting is its lack of pretence; it does not conceal the subject’s interior state of mind. There is no masquerading of the subject, as any social mask has been dropped. The viewer is at the eye of the storm; one sees an anxious man whose facial expression pushes back at the painter-­portraitist himself. The head, guided by the eyes, presents a gestural force which represents the entire body. Courbet exhibits his inner state in one bold statement, as if anticipating an expressionist tone. This Courbet unmasking in the open air departs fully from ambiguity; the tempest is imminent. The interior storm in the portraits of Charles Baudelaire is withheld and contained. The Courbet actor in Le Désespéré is the antithesis of Jean-­Gaspard Deburau as performer; he is perhaps not so different from some fin-­de-­siècle Pierrots, however. Courbet’s frozen state of open-­eyed desperation triggers the viewer to gape in return; initially gesturally repelled by the image, the viewer suspends motion and rests in a breathless gaze in still complicity with the persona. If one accepts the window-­to-­your-­soul cliché, Courbet has lifted the shutters and thrown open the French doors; he airs his soul. In stark contrast, Jean-­ Charles Deburau, in the Tournachon studio photographs, pulls the curtain and 23

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veils the soul of Pierrot. In the Deburau full-­body actor image, an embodied masquerade, Pierrot’s eyes neither reveal nor conceal. The reciprocal gaze of Pierrot is not housed in the face; it is transferred to hands, feet and trunk. Later in the nineteenth century, Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin provided another shuddering example of the framed eye in his Self Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle (1872).21 Painted without sentimentality, Böcklin presents himself shadowed by a lurking, skeletal death figure that leans upon his left shoulder. This pre-­fin-­de-­siècle image anticipates the morose obsessions and the plethora of airborne bones of the 1880s and 1890s. The artist looks back at the viewer, brush in hand, aware of an uninvited presence; perhaps he is waiting to actually see or hear something from what he senses. Alternatively, he may be requesting confirmation from voyeurs of some presence pressing up close to his own head (the gleeful skull). Death’s arrival is felt, but not yet heard. The viewer reads the grotesque, disturbing image of implied, vigorous violin playing by the skeleton, while Böcklin stands silent and subdued. Everyone is looking­– a­ djacently, obliquely and back and forth. The skinless skull veils nothing; Böcklin’s skin vibrates from the fiddling. The observer waits to see him turn and face the music. Böcklin the subject converts to a skull disguised as an artist. One can read this moment as a citation of, or representative of, the ‘Deburau effect’. This phenomenon captures a moment when someone listens for an expected, imminent sound. (The gestural actor often leans at an oblique-­angled physical attitude towards the sound’s source, posing the hand just beyond the ear.) The whole body, including the gaze, is in listening mode. The noise, music or voice, however, does not arrive. It is permanently delayed. The essential of this ‘effect’ is that attention is drawn to the listening gesture of the actor; should the sound be pronounced, all interest in the suspension would be lost. (Deburau’s live performances were accompanied by music; ultimately, they were not fully silent events.) Böcklin’s attentive gestural presence communicates his expectation of sound from an enigmatic source. From the viewer’s perspective, the painter waits for the music that remains unsounded. The ‘Deburau effect’ references Jean-­Gaspard Deburau’s moment in court when Paris populaire waited for the revelation of words voiced by the silent mime artist Baptiste; it was rumoured that Deburau would speak in court in his own defence, regarding a charge of murder. (He had whacked a young, bullying rogue over the head; the boy was aggressively attempting to prompt Baptiste to speak out loud. Unfortunately, Deburau’s blow to the youthful skull with his walking stick killed the adolescent. The boy was in the company of a group of intoxicated, taunting adults.) The picture-­perfect, gentle, naïve and wise public image of Pierrot­– ­à la Deburau père­– ­was clearly not a thorough representation of the Deburau identity. The actor actually harboured considerable hostility, an unacknowl24

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edged trait, it appears; he was obstinately troubled by the public’s confusion, wilful or actual, about the separate entities of performer-­person and stage figure. The Baptiste persona is a nineteenth-­century icon; the Jean-­Gaspard Deburau person is a mystery. Street violence and manslaughter of disguisers is not uncommon; this particular instance of masquerader assault by an out-­of-­ character and dis-­guised mime is atypical.22 The evolution of the Deburau story did not wane with the end of the nineteenth century. Its most widely distributed manifestation is in the form of a 1945 film directed by Marcel Carné after a scenario written by Jacques Prévert. Produced during the German Occupation, Les Enfants du Paradis features a narrative about actors and popular performers in the theatres along the Boulevard du Crime in the era when melodrama, circus and pantomime shared performance venues. Jean-­Louis Barrault created the Deburau character and his famous Baptiste-­Pierrot role. The film facilitated an encounter between a century-­old popular performance tradition and modern French actors formed by collaborations with and influences from Jacques Copeau, Charles Dullin, Antonin Artaud and Jean Vilar. Subsequent theatre partnerships such as that of Madeleine Renaud and Jean-­Louis Barrault extended the Deburau narrative to Roger Blin’s Samuel Beckett and Jean Genet productions; the Renaud– Barrault collaboration assisted. In Beckett, actors faced new challenges when confronted with Deburau-­effect pauses. Theatre with silence as protagonist arrived in Paris in 1953 with Waiting for Godot. Acting transformed to listening as actors and audience lingered in suspension, anticipating some word or some sound to rupture the quiet. Phantom Pierrots The twentieth-­ century Pierrot was a rehabilitation of the troubled Pierrot of the late nineteenth century. Even by mid-­century the Pierrot mask was in transition. The long draped sleeves and wide, seemingly empty pantaloons associated with the Deburau family became more close-­fitting. The new look resembled fancy, white costume clothing. The adjustment and replacement of capacious blouse and voluminous pantaloons was already underway with Jean-­Charles Deburau’s rival Paul Legrand. The Tournachon photo of Legrand (1860) already suggests subtle changes; a second photo, by Étienne Carjat, a work often erroneously listed as a Nadar photo, exhibits a grimacing Pierrot miming an emotional response to an image of a woman on a paper that he holds. Legrand narrows his eyes, twists facial muscles and sticks his tongue out of the corner of his mouth. Perhaps amusing to some, the expression is unquestionably deficient in subtlety. The Pierrot persona is sardonic and slightly lascivious; it is neither innocent, as in the Deburau tradition, nor does it suggest or embody naïvety of any sort. Further structural changes introduced to the masquerade included the 25

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return of a ruffled collar for the neck, and a more thickly painted face beneath a wide-­brimmed black hat. The whole look is much more theatrically stated and defined. An alternate photographic portrait of Legrand, of unknown date and anonymous photographer, displays an even clearer transformation at play. Long body extensions at oblique angles are now rounded and curved inward; facial expression is even more identifiably language-­ based, in the sense that words could replace what the body is stating in ironic turns. The insinuation is that the gestural range is more extensive and commonplace while the gestural dimension is smaller and more inwardly focused. A spatial engagement with the wide and tall exterior world is greatly reduced. Legrand is also more full-­chested and generally rounder than the lithe Deburau look, which appears to shorten movement and diminish its far-­reaching impact. This Pierrot is more the butcher than the candle-­maker. Tournachon’s photograph of Legrand maintains a good deal of his personal, clean-­edged photographic style, implying that the photographer knew precisely what he was looking for in the portrait. The alternative portrait, much less tightly framed, presents Legrand presenting himself, devoid of viewer guidance or critique. The lines of the Pierrot silhouette have commenced their fin-­de-­siècle smearing. Playing Pierrot in France diversified further and went on the road with international tours to Cairo, London and Rio de Janeiro by Paul Legrand. Marseilles developed as a second centre of Pierrot performance activities, established by Jean-­Charles Deburau’s student Louis Rouffe. Subsequently, Rouffe’s student, Corsican Séverin Caffera, known simply as Séverin, further decentralised Pierrot and mime performance in France. Soon actors began to adopt the Pierrot persona without any attempt to respect tradition; the mask gradually separates from its past fixity, transitioning to a dramatic role more than a masquerade. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, the male gender assignment of the earlier Pierrot was tossed aside. Women began to play Pierrot with distinct and innovative manifestations of the mask or role. The most noted French female Pierrots were Sarah Bernhardt and Félicia Mallet; their interpretations stretched the boundaries of the masquerade to classical form on one hand and London-­inspired rough-­and-­tumble clowning on the other. Individual personalities dominate the personae and popularise its use as familiar masquerade for celebrity professional performers. In some portraiture, Les Nadar labelled individuals as presented ‘in the costume of Pierrot’ (en costume de Pierrot). This distinction is more important than initially supposed. It suggests that the clothing, or costume, does not necessary intend to serve as a disguise. Apparel alone does not make a masquerade. This practice of the photographers implies that Les Nadar understood that transformation requires skilled, human participation. An established popular performance character such as Pierrot, with a flexible set of limitations, allows evolution and flux; it cannot become static and unchanging without risking 26

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its own survival. With a known mask like the Pierrot, individual choices of variation are quickly noted; seemingly insignificant adjustments to gestural coding, skin dissimulation or means of displacement register to the viewer. Personalising the Pierrot is a relatively simple process of making distinguishing choices. The slight alterations serve as a declaration of individuality and independence; the changes signal the will to remain unique. In the late nineteenth century, amateur actors adopted the Pierrot persona with more regularity. As the mask-­definition broadens its boundaries, its formtext now embodies almost any action or gesture. Likewise, the sentiments and passions in the Pierrot repertoire bypass a humour-­based melancholy, arriving at seriously troubled states of mind. As noted, at the fin de siècle violence with intent is within range. Pierrot’s pictorial associations with the moon increase; literary cues mark Pierrot as both the sad and the mad one. Two Paul Verlaine poems support Pierrot’s symbolist leanings: Claire de lune (1869) and Pierrot (1881). In the earlier Claire de lune, Pierrot is not named among the dancing ‘masks and bergomasks’, but he surely could be among the sad ones in fantastic disguises who sing of love in a minor key, under the calm light of the sad and beautiful moon. (Pierrot is more a French mask than an Italian one.) A dozen years later, Verlaine self-­identifies with Pierrot with direct reference to the Pierrot of the past as a lunar dreamer. The description proposes a Baptiste-­like Pierrot who was formerly joyful, but whose mien has profoundly changed. Verlaine portrays Pierrot’s blouse as a shroud covering a haunting, ghost-­like, traumatised figure with mouth wide open, empty, deep-­set eyes, blown past loud birds in flight and illuminated by lightning. Verlaine evokes a grotesque black and white figure en tempête and near death; Pierrot’s white head advances towards its new mask as bleached skull. Skulls and Draped Bodies Alas, the flowing-­fabric Pierrot of yore has passed and all that remains is a discarded shroud (le linceul). The scenario proposed by Verlaine’s poem reads like an image from an Odilon Redon lithograph. In Un masque sonne le glas funèbre (1882), the fusion of skull and mask also comes into play. The Redon drawing features a wide-­eyed, white mask, or cut-­out section of a face, attached above the ‘atlas’ and ‘axis’ vertebrae at the top end of a cervical spine; a hand of bones pulls the rope that tolls the death knell. A mourning veil is the disguise of choice. The morose tone of fin-­de-­siècle imagery (from Edvard Munch’s Melancholy (1893) to later years when Henrik Ibsen’s When We Dead Awaken was written) favours moonlight over sunshine. Elsewhere in Europe, weighty group images of seated, disillusioned men and blue-­dressed swaying, dancing women people the paintings of Switzerland’s Ferdinand Hodler. All those present in Hodler’s world appear nostalgic for a less mournful past. The gravity of the situation begins with the image of five 27

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seated, motionless men draped in white (Tired of Life, 1892) and it culminates with five twisting, hunched forms shrouded in black (The Disappointed Souls, 1892) who sit like exhausted Pierrots, benched and forgotten. Hodler’s mastery of the head-­and-­hands ballet in these two paintings is fine gestural theatre. The hands of some of the disillusioned come to the head to block out the light or shield the eyes from the sight of others. This gesture of concealment aligns with Édouard Papet’s assertion about nineteenth-­century masking: ‘The hand is without doubt the oldest mask in the world.’23 Despite the grimness of the circumstance, Pierrots in Bordeaux, Brussels, Marseilles and Paris remained resourceful and proactive at the century’s end. Paul Legrand, still miming, was instrumental in stimulating the formation of the Cercle Funambulesque, a circle of ‘friends’ of pantomime. The group was dedicated to invigorating ageing Pierrots by reviving interest in the commedia dell’arte. Brothers Paul and Victor Margueritte were inspired to push this agenda by a performance of Legrand in Paris, which they read as representative of a long-­lost Parisian Pierrot tradition. Indeed, many successful mimes had already headed south where contemporary audiences for silent acting were more receptive, even enthusiastic. Jean-­Charles Deburau established a Bordeaux school of mime which produced Louis Rouffe; Rouffe subsequently established a permanent school of mime in Marseilles. The Corsican Pierrot Séverin emerged from Marseilles and, following disguise work in camouflage creation during the First World War, completed his performance career in Avignon. The Marguerittes identified a need to bring unemployed Pierrots back to Paris and fully champion the Cercle Funambulesque as an organisation with a cause. The group was successful in its endeavour through initiating a wide range of projects from 1888 to 1898. The Boulevard du Crime was long gone, however, demolished during the reconstruction of Paris by Georges-­ Eugène Haussmann in 1862. In its place stands the Place de Château d’Eau, the present-­day Place de la République. Founders of the Cercle Funambulesque included writer Jean Richepin, writer-­ Pierrots Paul Margueritte and Raoul de Najac, and Paul Legrand himself. Félicia Mallet played Pierrot in a pantomime written by Najac and, perhaps most notably, Sarah Bernhardt played Pierrot in Richepin’s Pierrot assassin (1883). There was, then, a delay of over fifty years after the Deburau Pierrot to the moment when French Pierrots were played by women. Richepin connects the introduction of women playing Pierrot with what he calls the new Pierrot and the psychological Pierrot. No longer the Pierrot who creates laughter. Now the Pierrot who makes you shudder and think.24 Not to be bettered by Richepin’s Pierrot (a Pierrot who kills a woman, poisons another, feigns insanity and subsequently goes insane before recovering completely), Paul Margueritte followed with Pierrot assassin de sa femme, originally scripted in 1882 but premiered at the Théâtre Libre in 1887, with 28

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Margueritte himself in the role of Pierrot. Destined to reinforce the image of Pierrot as melancholic and somewhat evil, Margueritte’s alcoholic Pierrot attacks his wife’s feet and tickles her to death. Both Margueritte and Richepin had origins in French Algeria, so they participated in the internationalisation of the French Pierrot. And from an interdisciplinary perspective, the Cercle Funambulesque itself was supported by a wide spectrum of professional artists in acting, drama, illustration, literature, music and theatre history, including Jules Chéret, Coquelin cadet, Jules Lemaître and Jules Massanet. From the point of view of photography, the performing Pierrots of this late period present themselves as actors playing a role. The image of Raoul de Najac by an unidentified photographer reads like a promotional photo. It accurately states that the image is Najac ‘dressed as white-­faced Pierrot’. Smiling to the extent that his upper teeth are exposed, the friendly man in white with wide-­brimmed hat over a skullcap displays thick, white make-­up, dark lip paint, dark brows and eye shadow. No mystery here, save the stretch of the imagination necessary to see this personage as a murderer. Sarah Bernhardt as homicidal Pierrot contains and hides more mystery. Paul Nadar, son of Félix, photographed Bernhardt posing in the role from Richepin’s Pierrot assassin in 1883, costumed in a multi-­fold jacket and blouse and belted white pantaloons.25 The masquerade elegantly covers the body in fancy-­dress style with gender-­neutralising functionality; it maintains significant reference to Pierrot images from the early part of the century. With her face in a much lighter and thinner inference of whiteness than that of her contemporaries, Pierrot à la Bernhardt proposes enigmatic intrigue. Nadar’s portrait, reminiscent of his uncle Tournachon’s Jean-­Charles Deburau images, frames Bernhardt’s body from head to below the knee, approaching but not completing a full-­body presentation. The head, framed below by a classy, ruffled collar and above by an undulating felt hat, sits suspended in tension. The face recedes back slightly towards anonymity as if resisting a forward impulse to confess to the murders and to Pierrot’s mental instability. Bernhardt-­Pierrot hides her hands in her pockets; she obscures any uncamouflaged skin. Her inward-­focused anxiety is expressed primarily in her eyebrows rather than the eyes themselves and also in her dark-­painted lips that contemplate speech. Bernhardt is enclosed; she withholds. Her gaze of confession is intimately shared with Nadar the photographer; the viewer peeks with complicity into their thoughtful exchange. While Bernhardt’s celebrity effectively impeded gloominess at her role’s sublime act of madness, the grim reaper kept swinging in Italy. Composer Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci opera of 1892 shifts the Pierrot role in the direction of a more realist presentation: verismo. As a resident of Paris during a large part of the 1880s, Leoncavallo was certainly familiar with the French Pierrot revival. While Enrico Caruso did not originate the masquerading 29

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combination role of Canio/Pagliacci (the role of actor and the role of the actor in disguise), the white-­ costumed clown character became one of Caruso’s primary theatrical vehicles. Photo-­documented by Bert Source on a postcard from approximately 1904, Caruso stands dark-­eyed in flowing white chemise, hands hidden within its ample sleeves, mouth taut, eyes deep, head blunted, hatless and unmade-­up. This gruff, rustic, rugby-­lad portrayal of the itinerant performer Canio as Pagliacci drops any illusion of a Pierrot with restraint. Canio’s up-­front suspicions drive him to lose control and kill. Caruso’s Pierrot-­ variant Canio stabs his wife while playing the jealousy of his character; his role intertwines playing with being. The fluidity of the masquerade and the layering of identities triggers Canio-­Pagliacci’s confusion and overlapping illusion and delusion. The air-­focused Pierrot (as Gaston Bachelard might term it), who lightly displaces and who can be tossed about by the wind, drifts away as High Modernism approaches. Already in Leoncavallo’s northern Italian embodiment of Pagliacci, a peasant earthiness, reminiscent of rural commedia dell’arte roots in Bergamo, inhabits modern Pierrots. When the Neapolitan actor-­singer Enrico Caruso performs the Pierrot-­like role, southern Italy influences from Pulcinella may surface. The Pulcinella mask is Naples-­based and, particularly in the nineteenth century, represented robust, urban-­based popular theatre. The Pulcinella physique and tone directly counterpointed the once-­ refined French Pierrot; Pulcinella is compact, hunched and quick-­tempered. His bold and aggressive mien has been seasoned by battles for survival in rough city quarters, where an understanding of the grotesque is commonplace. In this aspect, Pulcinella influences align more neatly with the flabbergasting novelties of High Modernism or, for instance, experimental work in the historical avant-­garde. Despite Pierrot’s Parisian debauchery, the mask continues to flourish in Vienna, St Petersburg and Brussels. The list of artists and free-­thinkers choosing to project their fin-­de-­siècle anxieties on to this receptive persona gets longer. Belgian symbolist poet Albert Giraud, not to be outdone by Verlaine’s brevity, published Pierrot lunaire: Rondels bergamasques in 1884. This major cycle of poems fixes Pierrot’s loss of equilibrium, and his fall from graceful gesture, and prepares the moonlit alley for Bertolt Brecht’s Baal. Giraud’s Pierrot, however, already rings the death knell as modern outsider and artist-­ poet. He repeats or invents the Pierrot death-­by-­hanging trope with the image of Pierrot swinging under the soft light of the moon. Pre-­modern scenarios probably already included bungled rope suicides as pratfall comedy scenes. Staging death and Pierrot in Belgium moved from the city to the Ostend coast, where James Ensor provided numerous mises en scène. During the 1890s, photographer Maurice Guibert documented the playful disguising of artist Henri de Toulouse-­Lautrec at the turn of the century, 30

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including the making of a portrait of Lautrec in white with a ruffled collar. This clown-­like masquerade exhibits characteristics of Pierrot as well as those of circus entertainers such as the British comedian Footit. Guibert anchors some of his Toulouse-­Lautrec images with the phrase ‘costumed in front of the camera’. In one shot, Guibert declares that the artist Lautrec is ‘disguised as a muezzin’, as Toulouse-­Lautrec poses while sitting cross-­legged, cross-­eyed and dressed in a kimono. A cross-­gender portrait of the same year (1892) shows Toulouse-­Lautrec costumed in friend/partner Jane Avril’s hat and clothing: Portrait au boa. The man-­in-­white portrait is certainly the most thought-­provoking (and least potentially offensive) as it willingly reveals aspects of a noted living artist. Toulouse-­Lautrec is presented as one fully engaged in normal daily activities, while actually enduring significant adult-­life physical deterioration, facial distortion and major challenges with abnormal body structure. He comfortably masquerades as a Pierrot, however, improvising, buffooning and hiding nothing. Henri de Toulouse-­Lautrec, a man of very small stature, never concealed his ‘differences’; his straightforward honesty in this regard is commendable and was certainly unprecedented at the time. His gaze is frank and his actions overt; he looks shrewdly out and addresses the camera, completely committed to what image scholar Maggie Finch has termed ‘a visual discourse’.26 Despite his celebrity, he was always an outsider, and he lived outside of all bourgeois expectations. This was not always a matter of choice, however. Toulouse-­Lautrec’s photo as clown Pierrot (1894) is complex in this regard. If the viewer goes behind and beyond the studio façade, the subject, the figure of Toulouse-­Lautrec, is a modern, bohemian Pulcinella. Lautrec, near death, embodied many elements of the mask’s inherent typology: alchoholic, melancholic, syphilitic, crook-­backed, dwarfish and self-­assuredly urbane. Finally, another perspective on masquerade and disguise at the end of the nineteenth century is provided by looking at two of the century’s most famous Parisian women: the French communard, anarchist and feminist Louise Michel and the Italian, aristocratic, most-­ photographed poseur the Comtesse de Castiglione. Michel, who dressed in male uniform during one militant phase, represents ‘dressing down’; as the twentieth century approaches, photographs feature more and more the carved character of her facial features. By the fin de siècle she has attained the face-­as-­mask status of a Käthe Kollwitz etching. Artist Félix Vallaton had already completed a lithograph portrait of Michel, heroine of the Paris Commune, in 1894. In contrast, abundant source material on La Castiglione or La Divine Comtesse is available. The evidence of her theatrical ‘dressing up’ is overwhelming.27 Michel lived a life with purpose: educator, street activist, pen friend of Victor Hugo, prison inmate, deportee to New Caledonia and writer. La Castiglione, the subject of turn-­of-­the-­millennium retrospective exhibitions 31

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in New York and Paris, lived for the purpose of presenting herself before the camera; she disguised and masqueraded, as her own metteur en scène, in hundreds of photos taken by Pierre-­Louise Pierson, particularly in the years preceding the 1871 Commune. Prior to the arrival of the new century, and not long before her own death, Virginia Oldoini, the Countess of Castiglione, posed while draped in mourning dress (1893). She wore a black cape, shawl and veiled headdress in what may have been a rehearsal for her own obsequies (1899), which she was destined not to see. These contrasting photo-­portrait subjects highlight the past quite differently. They reveal aspects of a cultural transition when the costume-­inhabited body was juxtaposed by the raw, uncovered mask of personality. La Divine Comtesse spent her fortune on her lifelong solo performance as featured masquerader. Louise Michel, clearly ahead of her time, performed a series of political and philosophical transformations which materially accumulated and layered themselves as a crust-­form upon her face. Michel’s functional dressing was un-­affect-­ed; La Comtesse embodied affectation itself. Exemplary models, they represent popular theatricality and realist dramatic action. At the fin de siècle, new ways of looking created an aesthetic crisis for the French Pierrot tradition. Interest turned to the face and what it revealed and concealed. The era of the ‘unsaid’ (le non-­dit) was firmly established in European drama with Ibsen and Chekhov, and portrait photography increased interest in reading the eyes and surface of the face as illuminating manuscript. Claude Debussy’s Suite bergamasque, composed in 1890, was first performed in 1905; his lyrical Clair du lune, the second movement, voiced the interior monologue of the lost Pierrot. The public was fascinated by potentially spiritual objects and all things numinous, including the facial skin. Attention, for many, had shifted away from reading the full-­body, physical attitude as a gestural text. The mask of the face, then, became the site of disclosure and exposure; this shift proposed something modern: a new grammaire visuelle.28 Notes  1. Cadava, Words of Light, p. 89.  2. Chantal Cazaux, ‘La force de la creation, entretien avec Chantal Cazaux’, in Foccroulle, Faire vivre l’opéra, p. 64.   3. Geffroy, ‘Le masque et la liberation des pulsions’, in Boiteux and D’Ayala (eds), Carnavals et mascarades, p. 181.   4. See John Bell, ‘Puppet and Object Performance’, in Cheng and Cody (eds), Reading Contemporary Performance, pp. 252–4.   5. Gilles, ‘Des acteur et des ‘Manipulacteurs”’, p. 19.  6. Popenhagen, Masquerade as Visual Culture, exhibition poster.   7. See Falgayrettes-­Leveau (ed.), Mascarades et carnavals, and Berns et al., Central Nigeria Unmasked.   8. See Tseëlon (ed.), Masquerade and Identities, and Tseëlon et al. (eds), Fashion as Maquerade.

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  9. See Falgayrettes-­Leveau (ed.), Mascarades et carnavals, pp. 11–40. 10. Michel Agier, ‘Les dédoublements de soi’, in Falgayrettes-­Leveau (ed.), Mascarades et carnavals, p. 42. 11. Efrat Tseëlon, ‘Introduction: Masquerade and Identities’, in Tseëlon (ed.), Masquerade and Identities, p. 3. 12. Amar, La photographie: histoire d’un art, p. 19. 13. Conrad, Modern Times, Modern Places, p. 315. 14. Édouard Papet, ‘Un regard sur le masque’, in Cogeval et al. (eds), Masques de Carpeaux à Picasso, p. 10, Papet’s emphasis. 15. The Deburau disguise-­ personage counters the assertion of a psychopathology specialist that ‘Le visage n’est pas une partie du corps, il est le représentant du tout.’ Jacques André, ‘Les Yeux’, in André et al. (eds), Psyché: visages et masques, p. 130. 16. Peggy Phelan has noted that in performance circumstances, ‘insufficient attention has been paid to the desire for a reciprocal gaze’, referring to the interplay of ‘both the object of the gaze and the gaze of the object’. Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, pp. 18, 21. 17. See Les Nadar: une légende photographique. 18. See Anne Biroleau, ‘La veritable image’ and ‘Catalogue’, in Aubenas and Biroleau (eds), Portraits/Visages 1853–2003, p. 57. 19. See Storey, Pierrot: A Critical History of a Mask. 20. Sartre quoted in Amar, La photographie: histoire d’un art, p. 52. 21. The Art Story, available at (last accessed 12 June 2020). 22. See Rémy, Jean-­Gaspard Deburau. 23. Édouard Papet, ‘Pour une histoire du masque au XIXième siècle’, in Cogeval et al. (eds), Masques de Carpeaux à Picasso, p. 18. 24. ‘Le Pierrot neuf, Pierrot psychologique­. . . Plus le Pierrot qui fait rire. Le Pierrot qui fait frissoner, et penser.’ Jean Richepin quoted in Sutton, The Life and Work of Jean Richepin, Vol. 2, p. 163. 25. See Les Nadar: une légende photographique, cover image. 26. Finch, Looking at Looking, p. 21. 27. See La Comtesse de Castiglione par elle-­même. 28. Guy Cogeval, ‘Préface’, in Cogeval et al. (eds), Masques de Carpeaux à Picasso, p. 9.

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2

FACING CHANGE AND CHANGING MASKS

Death Masks Re-­membered Fin-­de-­siècle theatre artists and innovative twentieth-­century theatre directors such as Alfred Jarry, Edward Gordon Craig and William Butler Yeats broadcast their attraction to masks and masking. It is evident in Konstantin Stanislavsky’s work as a character actor that he intuitively understood and respected aspects of transformation, while Max Reinhardt overtly shared his appreciation for the theatricalisation of the actor body. In early modernist theatre practice, Vsevolod Meyerhold and Jacques Copeau displayed in practice an interest in the mise en scène of stage figures within their greater mises en scène of the stage space. Since disguise and masquerade foreground change and exhibit alternative and mobile identities, the transformed body unsettles many. Modernist writer Elias Canetti once admitted, ‘I would like to remain simple so as not to perturb the many figures [characters] of which I am made.’1 While not a coach of actors, Canetti acknowledges that unpredictable and unorthodox behaviour can alarm when identity appears to fluctuate. Since disguising often incorporates multiple, complex layers of self-­presentation, simplicity is challenged (vigorously, in some instances). In contrast to disguises, death masks are steadying; they preserve and sustain. Death masks, a nineteenth-­century obsession, share aesthetic qualities with phrenology, another sculpture-­based system of representation. Phrenology is an odd, racially biased pseudoscience meant to preserve the heads of famous 34

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men. Through cranium analysis, ‘bumps on the skull’, as noted by numerous dictionaries, are measured to demonstrate the exceptional quality of bumps on certain heads. A mark of early psychology­– ­pre-­Freud­– ­phrenology makes it possible to observe genius in glass-­fronted cupboards in galleries in the Musée de l’Homme in Paris or the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. As with artefacts of decapitation, the ‘spectator’ receives the gaze of dozens of eyes simultaneously, but the forms are not masks. The figures are lifeless and far more so than figures in photographs. Lacking any sort of interior, the heads are unable even to present the emptiness of an unworn mask; phrenological heads have no space for thought and no optical perspective. Still, they prompt one to contemplate masks that get trapped in museum glass cases. Confronting, or bumping heads with, the wise is a learning experience. Were these men ‘vital heads’, as recounted and theorised by Joseph Falaky Nagy,2 then words would be in order. ‘Vital heads’ are talking heads that take action and get things done. The silence in these halls, however, is melancholic. As the Mount Rushmore of famous mime faces, the phrenological display does not capture any trace of performance. There is no movement here; there is no trace of gesture. The death mask is cast differently; it is empty and has nothing behind its eyes. It is linked more closely to a photograph, and phenomenally implies movement which it cannot execute. The death mask, with its visceral absence, contains a slight trace of ephemeral presence. Still, in European culture, death masks are not components of masquerade. They are a counterpoint to masks created for performance. As facsimiles rather than original inventions, they reverse the concept of disguising; there is no intent to deceive or conceal here. Death masks introduce a new point of view, but not a new form. While they may appear (and perhaps actually are) charged with emotion, death masks have no more to offer, artistically or aesthetically, than a suggestion of the fixed facial form which they preserve­– ­‘un visage figé’.3 Death masks, while synecdochically representing the whole body, sit apart from it. They induce one’s memory to visualise the departed. And even in the absence of the material body-­object, death masks possess an ability to rivet attention. Masks on their own, as objects, are not masquerades either. Masks, like costumes, fabric, body paint, architectural forms and other physical substances, are tools to employ in the building of a masquerade, constructed in rapport with a human activator. The masquerade is an event-­object. All of the building implements utilised in a masquerade enlarge or enhance the presence of the vital human body communicator. Soon after the turn of the century, public awareness of death masks intensified in France and, subsequently, in Germany with the widespread publication of the Inconnue de la Seine photographic images. The public was captivated by images of an unknown young woman found drowned in the Seine in Paris, a fascination that reached all levels of Parisian society. The bohemian and 35

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artistic communities were particularly intrigued. The death mask of the smiling woman found in the late 1880s (created by an enthralled morgue pathologist) became the mask of the generation. It was suggested that the adolescent ‘unknown woman of the Seine’ committed suicide by drowning, as there were no signs of a violent death. The beauty of the face and its perceived smiling expression prompted comparisons with the Mona Lisa (La Joconde); multiple copies of the mask cast were created. The cast was photographed, and new casts were constructed based upon photographic negatives of the original. After 1900 it was not uncommon to find the death mask of L’inconnue hanging on apartment walls, even in the United States, where she was named La belle italienne. Historians of photography must have found this occurrence most interesting, as one of the earliest printed photographic images from 1840, predating L’inconnue de la Seine by forty years, features a man ‘masquerading’ as a drowning victim. The ‘self-­portrait as drowned’ (Autoportrait en noyé) photographic print created by Hippolyte Bayard was designed as a representation of his own suicide in protest at what Bayard considered insufficient recognition of the originality of his own image inventions. In an act of unlayering rather than layering costume-­objects upon the body, Bayard removed most of his clothing in order to disguise himself as a nude corpse.4 His masquerade may have had the reverse effect, however. Aoife Monks notes that clothing is ‘crucial for masculinity’s status, a status that is undermined by the loss of those clothes when men undress on stage’.5 L’inconnue and death masks in general are often perceived as objects with power or with a message to convey. The cast of the face records its structural form; this imprint becomes the most material residue of the face of the deceased. Disembodied, it takes on a life of its own, albeit a still life. The mask of L’inconnue encases only a trace of a lifeless human body and its settled, non-­fluctuating presence; the death mask is a face at rest. In this particular manifestation, it is the representation of young girl who, many believe, is not wholly absent; it is often seen to express (or to speak of) an inner state of contentment. The face displayed, however, is a veiled presence and its waning energy fades and fades without end. The death mask, one could argue, communicates liveness through its sustained act of disappearing. Does the L’inconnue mask masquerade as an effigy of a living woman? Or is the death mask, as Jean-­Luc Nancy proposes, a display of ‘death at work?’6 Death masks, like photographs in Cadava’s thought, share a space in ‘the uncanny tomb of memory’.7 Some masquerades, temporarily vibrant but disquieting, could take refuge in the same corner of the remembrance. In the nineteenth century, the photographic image adopted (or stole from portrait painters) the role of preserving a presence. In the case of the presence of L’inconnue, photographs of the admired death mask extended the prolif36

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eration and wide distribution of images of the drowned one. Twice removed and two-­dimensional, as photo of a mask of a face, this memory-­activator effectively evoked a presence to viewers near and far. Today, Édouard Papet sees L’inconnue as an example of a nineteenth-­century mask ‘fetish’ (fétiche).8 For others in the early modernist era the mask representation is an example of what Guillaume Apollinaire called the surreal; it evokes the uncanny (l’inquiétante étrangeté)9 or das Unheimliche as Sigmund Freud named it in Vienna. This ‘disquieting strangeness’ or ‘convulsive beauty’,10 in André Breton’s words, permeates many masquerading events and object-­architectures in the modernist era and beyond. Today, a giant sculpture of L’inconnue welcomes visa-­and residency-­seekers to the Service Étrangers at the Sous-­ Préfecture d’Aix-­en-­Provence (Ministry of the Interior). The mask of L’inconnue is sight-­withholding, silent and without breath. Only someone who actually knew the eyes and the gaze of the young girl could reknow it by seeing this representation. Her eyelids are neutral screens receptive to anyone’s reverie, however. Photographers are continually drawn to the mask and to the photographs of it.11 The actual physical act of peering at such a death mask is often a breathless experience. The death mask is without respiration; the viewer, in an act of mimesis, mirrors this state of being by withholding the breath. The face behind L’inconnue has long ago completed her last intake of air. Still, she holds the viewer’s attention with her deferred intake. L’inconnue exists toujours (always and forever) in a state of high apnoea, a suspended asphyxia. This mask’s state of being is indeed unusual in its ability to project contentment in its circumstance of unfinishedness. Almost everything about the mask of L’inconnue is atypical. In contrast, the death mask of the forceful, exuberant, Romantic actor Edmund Kean, true to form, is utterly nonconformist in its presentation of death, as the man himself was in life. His eyelids are not properly closed; in fact, they are not even partially closed in a symmetrical manner. His expression is not calm, as he seems to have forced an exhalation on his last breath, and then, in a state of low apnoea, sceptically peeked out to see who was looking in at him after he gasped his last. Nothing is peaceful or hidden here; Kean taunts viewers with the very suggestion that death could overpower his riveting presence.12 His death is only a craftily conceived disguise. Even so, death masks lack two vital requirements for vivacious masking or masquerade; they have no aptitude for breathing and they have no capacity to gaze back at the viewer. Living, moving masks, even when effaced objects, appear to have sight. Death masks do not see; they receive the gaze but do not return it. Their gaze is hidden behind the façade of the eyelid membrane; lacking substance, the death mask gaze is phantom. The non-­looking turns inward and dissipates. Death masks are finished statements­– ­published; they 37

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have no energised latency. Nonetheless, many death masks exhibit confidence, as if untouchable; they appear to command the space around their framed, hung or suspended circumstances. While they were paraded or animated in some ancient cultures, modern death masks are stationary objects; they rarely improve with movement. They are not unmoving, but they are static. A performance mask’s ability to create the illusion of liveness (and looking) is dependent upon the outward expression of an internal presence. Jean-­Luc Nancy speaks of the ‘unfathomable presence’ evident at the entrance of some head-­masked bodies.13 The disguised figure carves its own space as an appearance with distinction and attitude, displaying an active physicality and an assertive statement of being there. Nancy terms this posture and bearing ‘masquitude’ (mask-­attitude).14 Such carriage is beyond the gestural vocabulary of a death mask and its dearth of attitude and outlook. Perhaps the death mask has simply seen enough; it contemplates privately but does not change or adjust its thought. Of all denizens of the face-­displaying and face-­covering domain, death masks have the stillest eyes. In modernist masquerade, theatrical presentation of death masks has no substantial purpose. This does not prohibit a display of the theatricality of death masks, however. Dramatic lighting and calculated design at the Stalin Museum in Gori, Georgia, does not empower Joseph Stalin’s death mask with a special aura, but it does help it to stand up and be noticed. Centre stage in his oversized museum/mausoleum, Stalin’s face, nonetheless, lingers as an object and presence that is smaller than life. (A gigantic photograph might have made a bigger impression in this vast tomb.) Death masks perform more effectively and reliably in intimate settings than in pompous ones. The 2013 exhibition Masks Shock at Gorki Leninskiye State Historical Museum-­Estate, including Lenin’s death mask and casts of his hands, displayed the ‘after-­death essential for Russian royals and cultural luminaries’, a tradition established by the first example, Peter the Great (1725).15 Skulls, having lived very close to faces, do, on occasion, have a presence, however. They can even appear to display a reciprocal gaze, albeit one that is relatively unvaried in timbre. Skulls possess latent maskness in greater proportion than death masks; skulls stare back. (Hamlet had a good think about this.) In his Pierrot poem, Verlaine’s Pierrot-­as-­skull has eyeholes that express terror in the darkness above his wind-­blown, pale costume (1868). In the Baltic Sea painter Lovis Corinth’s Self-­Portrait with Skeleton (1896), Corinth shares his Munich studio space, shoulder to shoulder, with a suspended, anatomical skull and bones. The skull expresses more sadness than horror in this particular example (going south did not suit him, perhaps). Nonetheless, the skull speaks and provides the painter with a second gaze; it is a gaze that is directed to the viewer. The spectator must choose which of the figures is the more captivating, assuming that the Bavarian cityscape in the background does not steal all 38

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focus. The two images-­of-­myself dynamic of this painting reads commendably as a wry commentary on interiority. Disguising, or foreshadowing, as skull or skeleton anticipates the paintings of James Ensor and his Atlantic coast carnivalesque skulls and Pierrots. August Sander, the celebrated German photographer of the Weimar era, was photographed in the intimate surroundings of his study, seated at his desk (1946). In this image, Sander is photographed with the framed photo-­portrait of a death mask, which is attached to the wall beside his seated figure. The photo, featured at a 2018 Sander exhibition in Paris (Persécutés/Persécuteurs, des Hommes du XXième siècle), is layered with contemplative gestures. The photo description states: ‘Erich Sander assassinated by the henchmen of Adolf Hitler in March 1944 after almost 10 years in captivity.’ In the photo August Sander sits writing, in profile, with his son’s image above, a photo of his son’s death mask. The image, produced by an unknown photographer, is beautifully lit and rife with real and imagined gazes, but with no one looking at anyone. There appears only insightfulness and implied seeing. Here the numinous force of the death mask can be visualised as a presence twice or thrice removed. Image context creates meaning. For Sander in his study, the past evoked includes the living Erich, his incarceration, his death, his death-­mask making, the mask as subject of a photograph, the photograph’s appearance in the dark room, its subsequent framing and ultimately its display on the wall of the study. At the end of this journey, some auratic power, an exposure, remains. In a parallel occurrence, German photographer Gisèle Freund photographed André Gide deep in thought in his private Paris study. Freund was in Paris while fleeing the Nazis. Gide leans on his desk, head in hand, with eyes closed. Hanging above is the death mask of the early nineteenth-­century literary figure Giacomo Leopardi, tilted downward at an angle complementary to the angle of Gide’s head.16 In the print of this Kodachrome colour portrait (1939), Freund vertically frames two writer-­philosopher faces, of similar sombre hue, in a setting rich in brown wood and ageing books. The two sets of eyelids veil, it seems, four eyes that envision the same unknown fate. The right ear of each head listens and waits for someone or something to break the silence. The focused viewer senses the pitch of the listening intensely and almost loudly. Freund’s mise en scène of frames within frames illustrates the faint current in the gap between breathing and not breathing, between life and death. Mask Objects Refocused Masks, then, are one of the points of entry to the total mise en scène of the body: the masquerade. Photography, in a parallel line of development, documents and propels twentieth-­century masquerade invention. In the way that the commedia dell’arte roles signal theatricality among early modernist theatre artists, masks objects are similar indicators for many modernist visual artists. 39

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Previous associations suggested between masks and skulls, as well as masks and death imagery, are part of the modernist impulse to associate masking with renewal and innovation in twentieth-­century theatre. The masks displayed in the glass cases of the Musée d’Ethnologie in the Palais Trocadéro in Paris around 1900 were assumed to possess ‘magical powers and thaumaturgical, miracle-­working capabilities’.17 André Dérain’s interest in masks was prompted by a tour of the British Museum collections in London in 1906. Pablo Picasso’s subsequent visit to the Trocadéro collection in 1907, housed today in the Musée de l’Homme, followed an interest sparked by the study of Catalan art in the Louvre in 1906.18 These experiences set enthusiastic research in motion, an excitement soon shared by Georges Braque. Brigitte Léal refers to this new Dérain-­and Picasso-­inspired passion among painters and sculptors as the ‘passage from face to mask in western art’.19 The Musée du Quai Branly’s 2017 exhibition Picasso primitif, which subsequently toured to Kansas City’s Nelson-­Atkins Museum, fully documented the history of mask discoveries in Paris museums in excellent detail. A Paris–New York collaboration on art/performance/literature critic Félix Fénéon unfolded at the Branly and Orangerie in Paris and at MOMA in New York in 2019–20, further documenting fin-­de-­siècle interests in African art. Painterly representations of masks in ‘display’ abound in early Modernism. Émil Nolde’s series of four paintings of other-­culture masks startle on first encounter. Mask Still Life III (1911) at the Nelson-­Atkins Museum of Art, for instance, creates such an impact. The viewer is thrown back by the directness of expression; the viewer sees what appears to represent a moment following an act of violence. Faces have been left dangling from ropes in an unspecified locale. These bold-­coloured skull façades hang as if torn from their guardian bodies and left to air in isolation as one abandoned family. As with the other paintings in this series, the residual sensation of the colour-­aggression is pain. Nolde captures the masks’ capacity to manifest grotesqueness while he strips their aptitude for subtle emotional expression. As Mask Still Life II shows, the pain of the smiling mask objects is the most intense. As representations, the potential of these mask forms is spent; their mystery stolen and expired. Nolde offers a stunning abattoir of appropriated objects in this collection of the decapitated: natures mortes, for certain. Parisian artists encountered masks and other material culture from both Africa and a range of Pacific Islands. Soon after, interest spread to the cultures of the Americas as well. It is curious that in a brief period of the twentieth century (1906–07), a series of events occurred which have taken on enormous historical importance for modern art. Given the considerable exposure to global peoples provided by the Paris Expositions of the nineteenth century and major exhibitions mounted in other European cities, beginning with the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, it is odd that this short period of revela40

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tory discoveries of a few continues to receive such thorough coverage. The controversial exhibitions, on the other hand, have largely been forgotten in twentieth-­century studies. According to Catherine Servan-­ Schreiber, the massive London display housed in the astounding, early modern temple of glass, Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace, included real-­life people from India. The trend of offering urbanites the opportunity to peruse the ‘other’ framed in fabricated, ‘native’ environments spread quickly to North America in the years to come.20 Marseilles produced its own contribution to the enthusiasm for public expositions in which indigènes (indigenous peoples) from across the globe were featured: the Exposition coloniale in 1906.21 Essentially, the parade of ‘human zoos’ extended from 1851 to 1937, as detailed by Volker Barth.22 While billed as science and technology exhibits, new directions in social science research also had a significant presence; phrenological studies of the human head are examples of the preoccupations stimulated by performative, anthropological displays. The photographs featured in the catalogue of the seven-­ month run of Exhibitions: l’invention du sauvage (Musée Quai Branly, 2011–12) include on-­site images of indigenous masquerade and studio shots. Little subject–­ photographer complicity is apparent in the documentation; one senses that the eyes-­to-­camera and the camera-­to-­eyes exchanges are forced and awkward. The overwhelming atmosphere is the discomfort of inappropriate context. This ‘making strange’ of colonial subjects is preserved in the photographs’ hegemonic perspective. A Nicolaas Henneman image of a Zulu dancer from 1853 reveals only confusion on the dancer’s face, as the performer stands, spear in hand as if holding a cane, in elaborate feather and raffia dress; no will to dance is exhibited.23 In a similar photograph from a 1904 postcard featuring a Völkerschau (folk display) in Marquardt near Potsdam, Germany, two Tunisians stand, spears in one hand and swords in the other, on a similar carpet before a painted background.24 One stares in disbelief at the photographer; the second, masked with a large animal-­skin cagoule (balaclava) and long rabbit-­ like ears, peeps with eyes semi-­concealed. Their leopard-­skin costumes hang lifeless. The disguises hide nothing. The objectification and focused emphasis upon ‘difference’ is fully apparent to the ‘subjects’. Also in postcard format, a Carl Günther photograph from Berlin (1885–86) displays five blanket-­clad ‘Indiens bella coolas’ posed with supposedly authentic wooden masks from the American North-­west.25 Clearly not taking the photo sessions seriously, the atypical masks (of questionable origin) are poorly worn and played. The effect has no connection to the realities of any performance; only the patterned blankets have character. Still, such photographs and life exhibitions defined, and cemented, concepts of the sauvage, the indigène and the primitif.26 Living anthropological displays developed into a new genre of outdoor 41

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theatre: masquerade performance. In some instances, ‘specimens’ from selected cultures were given the opportunity to present enactments­– ­to show how they acted in everyday life­– o ­ n platform stages, as if itinerant actors. Promotional materials for such happenings suggested or even encouraged the attitude that these human beings were animal-­like savages masquerading as native peoples. Human zoos, as they came to be pejoratively labelled much later, were living history museums with a difference. As visual culture objects, the people themselves were more fascinating than their props; material culture­– f­abric art, masks, paintings and sculptures­– ­were no match for ‘semi-­human’ moving bodies, ‘atypical’ hair and expressive faces. Such exhibitions were primarily wordless, visual events; the body was the text. The exhibition reformed and refocused white pantomime and masquerade ball dancing for the modernist-­ era spectator. When contemplating Berliner, Dresdener, Londoner and Parisian visual artists’ chance meetings with African masks in museums, it is difficult to imagine that they had not encountered other-­culture images in such colonial exhibitions or in daily culture urban displays. The interests of the artists, whose mask-­epiphanies are celebrated, is patently in the mask object rather than its player. There may be, also, marginal interest in the object-­builder in a faraway locale. A century ago it was the mask and not the masquerade that had meaning. The poster for Picasso primitif, reproduced for the cover of the Beaux Arts catalogue of the exhibition, places Picasso’s head side-­by-­side with the ‘masque gunye ge’ from the Dan Province in Côte-­ d’Ivoire.27 The biography of Pablo Picasso, one of the most important artists of historical modernism, is exceptionally well documented. The excellent mask itself remains permanently displayed in the collection of the Musée du Quai Branly-­Jacques Chirac. The mask’s performance profile and design-­creation history is not noted. Still, it is quite certain that the mask had a previous life prior to its landing in the hands of modernist visual artists. Equally significant is the ‘masque grebo’, also from the Côte-­d’Ivoire (Province Krou), which is in the possession of the Musée Picasso in Paris. Picasso primitif was an event of great consequence in support of the Musée du Quai Branly’s mission to become the site where dialogues between cultures begin (là où dialoguent les cultures). The most recent life-­years of these two masks, as well as of countless others, have some biographical record. Maurice de Vlaminck was one of the first collectors of masks; Henri Matisse was also on the scene very early, exhibiting mask objects to the American writer and collector Gertrude Stein, with Picasso in attendance. André Derain was a major force in all discussions, along with gallery owner Paul Guillaume. And Guillaume Apollinaire was never far away, formulating his thoughts on Cubism and, soon after, Surrealism. Many individuals surveyed and handled these performance objects in the first decade of the twentieth century.28 The mask object at rest has a past; it also has a potential future as an object 42

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when given life. The mask’s state of latency, the life stage that fascinated the modernist artists, intrigues; it can charm and enthral the imaginative viewer. However, there is more history here to discover. Masks previously performed or utilised in ritual or ceremony can be understood to contain a memory of activation and play. In their present state of object-­in-­suspension, they attentively wait. They are, quite literally, en attente; masks await their moment to demonstrate maskness. In their state of pause, they are incomplete. Performance masks can only fully realise their potential when conjoined with the body-­alive. While in what Korean mask culture terms a ‘comatose state’, as noted by Odette Aslan, masks embody latency.29 Without the breath provided by an actor, a performance mask remains only the residue of its past lived moments, sustaining an out-­of-­work and on-­display existence of post-­playing: a prolonged state of ‘after-­mask-­ness’.30 Full-­ face masks are particularly intriguing while inhabiting this waiting state; a mask such as the Dan gunye ge of Picasso’s interest lingers respiratorily in extended apnoea, the high apnoea moment after an inhalation. Such suspended animation holds attention; it does not signal calm. In fact, a displayed mask without a pulse can create anxiety; in some instances the mask at rest displays its asphyxiation. This state of unrest can be interpreted as a creative state of being; however, the condition’s lack of emotional equilibrium may also project discontent. The poster-­image mask beside Picasso’s head, open-­ mouthed below wide-­open circular eyes, projects an agitated state. Picasso, in thought, mirrors the ambience of openness proposed by the mask. However, the mask awaits and hopes for a future, while Picasso’s gaze sinks backward into his memory-­skull. The resulting doubleness intrigues, as the would-­be twins conflict. Picasso does not intend to give life to the form; he takes but does not give. The Dan figure floats in the photo as if destined to display only as a passing image, or rather an image that has passed. For some visual artists looking at the vast array of striking African sculpted forms, the beauty of a mask object, with its expressive simplicity, is complete and already awe-­inspiring. There is no lack; there exists no deficiency. Why animate or enliven an object of such already-­apparent presence? Why suggest that something so whole could be unfinished? Many modernists, absorbed and awestruck, found the new inspiration provided by masks all-­embracing. The profundity of the mask object, a fine one, is the result of layering. Masks with a past of ritual performance or theatrical presentation accumulate matter and memory through usage. The mask collects and absorbs human detritus: sweat, mucus, saliva, skin fragments and moisture. The hard and dry wood of a mask soaks up the fluid and the amorphous. The form is forever transforming when employed and activated; it is not unreservedly fixed. The deepness, then, can be real, rather than illusory. There are layers of the past that can be tacitly and tactilely experienced. 43

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The perception of deepness that a poet, an artist or scholar might identify in a mask object may be related to the gaze of the mask. Hollow-­void eyeholes, in contrast to the eyelids of a death mask, lead to an empty space. A collected and displayed mask object can mimic seeing and appear to actually see. It has no gaze, however; it can only truly look back when worn by an adept masquerader. Given sight and breath, it sees. Still, mask objects move viewers through their potential to displace when in a performance context. They may seem to possess what Nicholas Mirzoeff, in his writing on visual culture, has termed ‘sensory immediacy’, a sensation of liveness in the here and now. Mask latency can be experienced as immediate presence, but it is more desire than sensation. The mask awaits the masquerade. Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) transfixes with its masked gathering of female nudes in semi-­classical poses, an icon of early Cubism and representative of the modernist Parisian’s unearthing of mask objects from other cultures.31 Gripping in its composition and originality, perhaps the celebration of Picasso’s chorus of masks-­on-­the-­body here is somewhat misplaced, even unwarranted. The image enthrals and holds attention, but it does not convincingly deliver a case in point of maskness and masquerade. This assertion does not take away from either its dynamic, captivating qualities as an image or its fascinating theatricality as a peculiar family portrait or social congregation. In curious contrast to Les Demoiselles, an earlier painting, Portrait of Gertrude Stein (1905–06), achieves a degree of maskness in its rendering of the head of Stein.32 Perhaps unintentionally on the part of Picasso, this image disguises while Les Demoiselles simply displays, even though Stein wears no face covering. The later painting’s depiction of africain, égyptien and ibérique masking hides little, as the viewer’s concern is not directed to what is behind the mask but to the masks themselves. It is not certain that the masqueraders on the canvas were intended to have substantial importance as subjects. While an unpleasant supposition, the female bodies serve here as living pedestals for the gathering of masks. The five heads do not fully integrate with the nude bodies. The five visible mask eyes or eyeholes combine with the four eyes of the stylised (morphing, semi-­masked) female heads to total nine independent points of looking outward in the painting. It is unclear if the living porteuses (holders/bearers) are looking in unison with their façades; they could actually be rolling their eyes and not focused on the painter at all. If we suddenly imagine ten independent figures (the masks plus the mask models) rather than five, this cubist kaleidoscope gets more complex and deeper. Already, the play of gazes is multifarious, as Picasso, the first and ideal viewer, is interrogated by at least three of the nude figures. The Gertrude Stein image, while stylistically more realist, gathers years of deepening façade into one impression. It pulls the viewer in, while Les Demoiselles keeps one at bay as the viewer receives and 44

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processes the gazes of several. Perhaps this interpretation is too heavily affected by Stein’s account of the preparatory sittings with Picasso, which she detailed in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, but the Stein presence definitively withholds. In 1909–10 Stein initiated her literary portraits of celebrity figures (published in 1912), beginning with her prose poems on Matisse and Picasso. Ulla Haselstein unmasks the multilayered theatricality of Stein’s short word-­ portraits of the two artists, explaining Stein’s adaptation of the ‘autoreferential gesture of modernist portrait painting’.33 The reverence shown to Picasso by Stein is constructed in a language of everyday words and non-­representational images. She abstractly acknowledges his prodigy without naming it or attempting to describe it; the writer-­Gertrude sees her genius in his (the painter-­Pablo’s) genius, and vice versa, it would seem. Stein’s delayed 200-­word response to her painted portrait, around five years later, fully displays the intimacy of their friendship and mutual respect. Haselstein suggests that the repetition in Stein’s sentences, which are voiced in ‘singsong fashion’, produce a rhythmic effect which builds until the phrases ‘are wound into a laurel wreath’ to honour ‘Picasso’s self-­centeredness’ and his charisma.34 Stein, masked by her own words, projects almost material sentences upon the invisible body of Picasso to honour and costume him as a masquerading genius: ‘Some were certainly following and were certain that the one they were then following was one bringing out of himself then something that was coming to be a heavy thing, a solid thing and a complete thing.’35 In a recent discussion of the portrait painting work of Alberto Giacometti, Valérie Lejart analyses the dynamic discourse between painter and model; she expresses particular concern for the nature of the looking, which she describes as a play of mirrors. The model (the subject) looks at the painter at work, who is looking at the subject; the painter also looks at the canvas. For both the model and the artist, the portrait making involves seeing oneself seen by another. While feeling seen and observed, one continues to actively look. Lejart states that this mise en abyme opens an infinite interior space, particularly when it involves multiple sittings of the model with the artist. Giacometti, Lejart explains, experienced repeated sessions while painting his brother-­model over a long period of time. Giacometti stated that this repetition provided him with an ability to see something unknown every day in the same face.36 A resulting image, for example, is Giacometti’s painting Tête noire (1957–62). Giacometti’s experience and recollection sheds light on Picasso’s painting of Gertrude Stein, and perhaps upon Stein’s use of repetition in word placement.37 The confluence of mask and body, an emphasis absent in most cubist mask-­subject paintings, materialised in the following years when modernist performativity became more fully embodied. (Picasso himself actively and 45

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effectively participated in masquerading.) Masks in early Modernism are subjects in themselves. Attention given to the actual playing of masks arrived, perhaps, during a second phase of discovery. In Paris, an authentic, displayed ritual mask on the studio wall of Constanin Brancuşi, for instance, already invites attention; it sustains an element of the unexpected and the out-­of-­the-­ ordinary. As an open but non-­living subject, it is more than just a sculptured façade. If an actual mask is designed and meant to be played, it may contain a latent liveness. As noted above, masks can beguile because they are suspended in a state (and studio) that is incomplete and waiting. It is possible to interpret this semi-­presence as a calling out to the person who is looking. This ‘hailing’ action aligns with Louis Althusser’s concept of ‘interpellation’, where products call out to consumers.38 In this Brancuşi studio context, the mask may appear to hail the viewer as prospective liberator of one nailed-­in-­inaction to an otherwise blank wall. Ritual (‘tribal’) masks, for instance, are most always seen out of context, as in the extreme case of the figures wearing masks in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. With actual ritual mask objects, there are only two spaces of appropriate context for viewing a mask: its performance site and its site of storage. Most viewers never see ritual masks in either of these environments. This is one of the advantages that photography offers: the potential for a degree of contextual authenticity. Only in such a circumstance can one attempt to decode and process a mask object or a masquerade’s fulfilled meaning. While many ritual masks are burned or destroyed after use, those that are preserved have specific locations and containers for their safekeeping; it is not typical in mask-­rich cultures to publicly display the once-­played mask that is waiting to be played again. Masks, even similarly constructed masks (similarly carved wooden masks, for example) are seldom identical or alike in function. Masks with common cultural roots can differ greatly in form, size, head-­ to-­ mask relationship, dissimulation capacity, potential liveness and performance effectiveness. In a first-­level analysis perspective alone, without morphological comparisons, there are masks ‘with a past’ and masks still ‘unused’. The unused may still be waiting for use; they may still be fully functional and structurally sound as scenographic material. The unused may be ‘useable’, but have no history of having been embodied. The unused, in other instances, can be ‘useless’, structurally incapable of activation, due to their total lack of playing capacity (poor design). Some of the unused and the unusable will satisfy the unknowing who then place them upon a wall somewhere (death by hanging for the usable). Mask utility, while semi-­subjective, is determined by a combination of aesthetic and functional issues. It is simply a fact, however, that not all forms have life-­in-­waiting. Some mask ‘things’ are mostly just things, and will probably never become ‘other’ things. There are masks that will not move in rapport with the human body; they remain the same as when left in waiting 46

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on their own. Not all masks transform or assist the creation of a masquerade. Masking devices lacking imaginative mobility and transformational capacity sit upon the head like empty vessels. Photo-­masquerades Masks and other elements of disguise establish the bodily mise en scène and its scenographic, performative circumstance. Exploration photographers, travellers seeking images, reversed the idea of bringing the bodies, as if material culture artefacts, back to the local outdoor museum or human zoo. (Early photographers fuelled the interest in human exoticism, however.) Félix Nadar, Adrien Tournachon and Paul Nadar demonstrated complicity with adventurous explorers who forged and investigated unknown geographies. Tournachon displayed his interest in other cultures with portraits of working individuals in ‘native’ costume, like his 1853 photo of a Cavalier arabe. As noted above, Félix Nadar (awkwardly) posed for a self-­portrait photograph in Inuit costume in 1863. Paul Nadar went further, creating an image of himself as explorer, Autoportrait en explorateur, circa 1892. Paul was indeed the most adventurous of the trio; he travelled to the Middle East and Central Asia and documented other people in other places in the 1890s.39 A friend of Félix Nadar, however, was far more adventurous and noteworthy. Antoine Fauchery left his bohemian life in Paris for the 1852 gold rush in Victoria, Australia. His Homme de la tribu Wurundjéri is a portrait of an Aboriginal young man standing face-­front in a wide stance, arms in tension and angled downwards. The dancer is suspended in an abstract, geometric position from a ritual dance.40 He has white swaths of body paint on his chest and brow, as well as large white spots on his thighs. A thick white line of paint extends horizontally across his face, passing from cheek to cheek and over the nose. This full-­body photographic portrait successfully implies that the dancer is in motion; it is an action shot ahead of its time (circa 1859). Such a respectful photograph of indigenous performance presents a slice-­of-­life from a festival context; it suggests that expressive, professional events of significance and worth also occur in far-­removed territories. The dancer remains dutifully present in his ritual space as an integrated, defined figure, foregrounded before an outback, bush background. The formality suggested intimates the picturing of a non-­quotidian event; the dancer is deeply focused and the body dynamised, rather than unengaged. The actor implies that a transformative experience might be within his grasp; he grips special, unidentified materials in his fists, and communicates agreement as he invites the gaze of the photographer. Viewers of the image receive and accept the gaze of the dancer as he looks back in complicity. The instant seized and frozen over one hundred and fifty years ago renews its vivacity with each fresh, contemporary regard. This embodied masquerade is not a snapshot; it is a text to be read and perused over time. 47

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In a photo exhibited in Vienna in 1873, the French photographer Émile Gsell photographed a theatre troupe in Indochina (approximately 1866). Four classical performers of Hat Tuong theatre are about to perform in an outdoor setting in Saigon. Elaborately costumed with ascending headdresses, the quartet addresses the photographer with animated eyes. The physical engagement of each performer varies according to the extent of the disguise and concealment of the actor. Some actor faces are masked; others are painted. Two stand visage nu, without disguise. The moment-­in-­suspension effect is gripping. As in the image of the Australian dancer, the eyes of the Western ‘others’ are welcomed by the performers; the invited spectators enable the performance.41 In Mexico in the late 1890s, the French explorer-­photographer Léon Diguet documented a Huichol Indian Chief of Dance standing, masked, with cane and ritual feathers in hand. The shaman figure directs ceremonies with his cane, employing the movement of the feathers to communicate with the gods. His wooden face-­mask is an elongated oval which hides his entire face. The mask mouth is agape, the nose long and narrow; the eyes are deeply set with thin slit openings. The mask of uniform dark colour has no decoration; it is topped with a long narrow headdress of natural fibres and feathers, which accentuates the masquerade’s vertical orientation. The total mise en scène of mask, costume, ritual objects and masker combine to constitute a full-­body portrait; the indigenous American shaman is positioned in front of a stone wall, located in a central coastal region of western Mexico (1896–98).42 Fundamentally, archaeologists and anthropologists-­ turned-­ photographers provided visual records of aboriginal performance and ritual ceremony in far-­ flung locations, from Madagascar to Cambodia and the Amazon. As illustrated, the photo documentation often included images of special-­occasion disguising. It is typical that masquerades play a part in festival contexts; their appearances are not everyday occurrences. The urban communities in Europe were given access to such information about non-­ Western performances. Human exhibitions were designed for the curious but the unadventurous, as global mega-­events. The deference and admiration shown to Native Americans by photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis in his early twentieth-­century work is noteworthy in the history of the photographic documentation of First Peoples.43 Concurrent with (or slightly preceding) Parisian visual artists’ unanticipated discovery of masks from other cultures, the portraits, of both masked and unmasked subjects, made by Curtis in America’s West often illustrate ritual objects in moments of animation. These representations do not simply imagine what authentic in-­play presence would be like, they display it. They are transformational in their intimacy and intensity. The mask objects in such images are enhancements of the individual’s presence; the objects themselves are not the magic 48

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makers. Rather it is the players, the instigators of the arriving presence, who bring vivacity to the event. Curtis’s 1904 series of masked portraits of Navaho gods and goddesses provokes and encourages consideration of the interplay between the indigenous individual and the masking devices utilised. The Navaho Born from Water (Tobadzischini) and the God of Fire (Haschezhini), for instance, exhibit head and torso shots with faces fully concealed and upper body partially revealed. Born from Water’s skin is decorated with a white geometric design that spills on to the curved plane of the face.44 The God of Fire image also has white-­painted accents of the nose and eyes of the mask form. Both figures have extravagant hair surrounding the face, and animal furs encasing the neck and shoulders as well as parts of the upper torso.45 A third example, a Goddess (Haschebaad), is a helmet mask which converts the head shape to a large cylinder with cut-­out, horizontal, triangular eyes and a small round opening for the mouth. The head cover-­up is total; long dark hair drapes to the waist and frames the torso on each side.46 These photographs present complete masquerades with physical presence and depth of character. The direct eye-­ focus of the frontal presentation exhibits player–photographer dialogue and mutual consent. The power of the images is directly linked to the anonymous mask activators who engage and intrigue. In these examples of indigenous performance in disguise, the actor-­ masker has chosen to shift or ascend to composed, constructed image-­subject in three dimensions. One interacts with a human body resculptured with fabric, fur and plant fibre components. There is a vast difference between the voluntary masquerader with partial objectness and the enactor-­intermediary who is framed by others who choose to objectify the ‘other’ as subject. Being objectified (as in the human zoos) and self-­ presenting with objectness are separate, dissimilar notions. Choosing to present oneself with a new daily-­life look, a subtle disguise, is an assertion of identity. However, being unexpectedly perceived as costumed or disguised subject and subsequently reframed as performative ‘specimen’ or cultural artefact is a very different daily-­life circumstance. One is an imaginative leap of faith to an alternate identity; the other is an unauthorised seizure of self-­image and an unwarranted identity reassignment. Perhaps the most intriguing and evocative instant that Edward Sheriff Curtis captured is the Cheyenne figure in a landscape anchored by the caption Waiting in the Forest. In the evening or early morning a figure stands completely wrapped and concealed in a lightly coloured blanket under a tree, along a wooded path.47 The woman, in a moment of total concealment and containment, appears to hover over the ground while gazing back at Curtis from hidden eyes. The functional apparel transitions to an amorphous body mask. The photo shares a sense of mystery surrounding fabric masking which Orientalist photographers also recorded in North Africa and eastern Nigeria.48 49

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Some fabric ‘masquerades’, as they are termed in West Africa, are stored in baskets for the majority of the time; these formless masks, in some instances, are attached to frames for use, when they acquire formal shape in short-­lived passages. As animated abstractions, these masquerades are eyeless, but not sightless. They move (manipulated from within) with visual awareness of location and implied facial features on their flat surfaces. They become living objects with physiognomic properties. Viewer-­participants interact with the masquerade as if it contains all the sensory capacities of the human body. Improper storage of ritual objects and masks is a matter of considerable distress for present-­day indigenous communities. (The tortoiseshell mask from the Torres Strait trapped in Switzerland has frustrated Islanders for years.) Masks selectively displayed in museums share a different fate. Many museums encase masking devices in glass; others simulate activation in static mises en scène which serve as virtual ‘informances’. The Musée International du Carnaval et du Masque in Binche, Belgium, where simulated cliques (groups of maskers) revel in stillness, displays statues of full-­body masquerade. This noble endeavour, while an impressive introduction to masquerade, cannot spark life into its authentic figures. Without the confluence of mask and body, the carnival maskers and mummers impress, but remain pulse-­and breath-­deficient. Some displays at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris now incorporate video recordings alongside costumed mannequin mask forms; this is a fine improvement. Often providing full-­circle viewing, the Musée du Quai Branly releases an aura of mystery and spirituality while supplying an abundance of masquerade information. Mask secrecy, an element of masking’s powerful, controlling potential, stimulates reverie and liveness in this context. Anthropological pragmatism and the authentic ‘real’ cannot always evoke the truthful or the magical, just as realism in acting does not guarantee the arrival of the ‘real’ on the stage. Perhaps this is the case with the energy of Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh’s The Mysterious Garden.49 Glasgow-­based Mackintosh painted this fantasy-­in-­ blue watercolour in 1911, possibly inspired by a performance of Maeterlinck’s symbolist play The Blue Bird in Scotland. A dancing or reeling woman is sheathed in a sheer globe of blue veils that magnifies her frail presence into a fantastic bloom in an indigo garden. The soft figure is watched from above by a row of eight, subtle but distinct, male and female white masks spread across the upper edge of the painting. The subdued gazes of the flat faces unite to create a silent choral audience for the wayward drift of the dancing figure. The melancholy ingénue in flower-­bud attire is like a vision before a wall of masks; the boundary appears like a series of pillars in the night garden. She, like an illusion of Loïe Fuller playing Ophelia, tilts before the obstruction of the stoic columns where the mask figures squint and conceal their thoughts. These masks form a row of ashen Pierrots who observe the dance of the veiled 50

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somnambulist. The mystery woman’s masquerade takes form, materialised in a moving vapour. Skulls and Modernist Pierrots Changes in the figure of Pierrot during the nineteenth century, particularly in the Parisian context, provide insight into actors’ impact upon a so-­called ‘fixed role’. The dynamism of the modern, cosmopolitan milieu tested even the most enduring traditional figure. Outside Paris, however, the contrast in fin-­de-­siècle Pierrot typologies is noteworthy in its more limited fluctuations. Even in the South of France a far less morbid and violent representation of Pierrot survived the early modernist era. Paul Cézanne painted a large, in-­action portrait of a rather reserved Pierrot with Harlequin once he relocated from Paris to his home in Aix-­en-­Provence. In Cézanne’s Mardi Gras (Pushkin Museum of Fine Art Collection, Moscow), both Italian comedy figures are represented in a scene that is framed by a stage curtain; both mask-­roles are essentially expressionless. The figure heads are solid forms with no signs of theatrical make-­up or any masking device. The head-­ to-­ toe, full-­ body attitudes communicate the circumstance and its expressive potential. Well on his way to treating the natural world ‘in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone’ in this painting (1888), Cézanne presents the pair as muted, modern forms.50 The models for the portrait were family friend Louis Guillaume (Pierrot) and Cézanne’s son Paul (Harlequin). The impression of youthful innocence and playful trickery evoked in the gestural structure suggests nothing of the urban, homicidal Pierrot, referred to in Chapter 1. The two faces are wiped clean of exaggerated facial gesture; the eyes appear as dark hollows. Such face-­as-­mask carnival masquerading allows the viewer to contemplate a duality of presence: the individual and the disguised individual. ‘To understand Cézanne is to anticipate Cubism.’51 Cézanne’s reticent Pierrot is, finally, reminiscent of the taciturn masquerade of Jean-­Gaspard Deburau’s Baptiste. In 1903 this Cézanne painting was exhibited in Vienna, one of the most cosmopolitan and multicultural cities of early Modernism, and future home of modernist Pierrots. Years later, the painting’s final resting place became the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, a city that embraced Pierrots throughout the twentieth century. Cézanne’s Pyramid of Skulls (circa 1901), with three jolting pairs of eyeholes, exposes an entirely different preoccupation in the final years of his life. This work is more attuned to the carnival expressions of James Ensor in Ostend. There is, perhaps, no greater example of the crossover from skull to mask, and the companionship of Pierrot and skull, than the paintings of the Belgian Ensor: poète maudit. One image from a private collection, Squelette arrètant masques (Skeleton Arresting Masqueraders, 1891), recently revealed to the public for auction at Sotheby’s, features four characters: a large-­nose-­masked female masquerade, a military skeleton figure with shaggy black hat (busby), a second 51

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skeleton figure wearing a white half-­mask and a painted white-­faced Pierrot in black skullcap. The male skeleton figures stand with the woman oddly wedged between them. Ambiguity surrounds the entire scene; it is possible that the female figure is a cross-­dressing male masquerader. Pierrot, the most neutral figure present, casually observes the aggressive comportment of the others. He appears static, silent and uncommitted. This painting is more explicit in its detail than Ensor’s Masquerade (1889), where Italian comedy figures surface and drift as if emerging from the coastal fog of a Belgian carnival. A second image of quarrelling skeletons repeats the pugnacious tone described above: Ensor’s Skeletons Fighting Over a Pickled Herring, also of 1891.52 In Ensor’s mask-­rich universe, skeletal figures are comic actors, masquerading as the living in domestic scenarios. For viewers from mask-­shy cultures, this world of bony-­faced, distorted body-­silhouettes is utterly and completely grotesque. Presumably, for experienced carnival or Purim masqueraders, this is all rather pedestrian, not unordinary. Pierrot aux masques (1899) illustrates that Ensor made little distinction between the Pierrot painted face, the fixed-­form masks of Belgian carnival or the Gilles of Binche.53 In this image Pierrot is foregrounded to the centre of a mass of masked and unmasked faces whose gazes are directed towards Pierrot. Eyes of carnival clowns, awestruck masks and would-­ be Pierrots react to the baby in the hands of Pierrot. In the distance, directly behind the quirky Madonna and Child, hovers a skeleton figure with wide-­ open eyes and high-­flying arms. All present are either moved or bewildered by the farcical, Christian iconicity of the moment. This masquerade image cannot be universally or unanimously read or processed. Thomas Kellein speculates that Ensor could be satirically presenting a critique of marriage, parentage and the bourgeois lifestyle. On the other hand, Kellein suggests that this grotesque icon could represent the outsider artist in a mass of ordinary ‘others’, yearning for acceptance as death looms. Certainly a statement of defiance, this gallery of disguises challenges the notion of stability and fixed identity. For Ensor, having lived in a mask-­cluttered environment, masking was commonplace. For Ensor, maskaphobia was certainly a strange concept, although he likely sensed that the less acclimatised sometimes suffered. In Ensor’s work, Pierrot’s presence equates with that of the death figure; it sometimes resides as skull and bones draped in carnival costume remnants, as a fragmented Binche Gille. The painted face, as amorphous and ephemeral mask, maintains sufficient visual strength to self-­present adjacent to fixed-­form maskers. Its impermanence does not reduce its status or effectiveness during brief encounters. Essentially, the nineteenth-­ century Pierrot mask-­ in-­ paint is always in the process of fading away; it is always phantom. Perhaps this fugitiveness, like carnival itself, is at the centre of Pierrot’s restless discontent. In a twentieth-­century Ensor painting, Le désespoir de Pierrot (The Despair of 52

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Pierrot, circa 1910), the masquerader stands, bare-­headed and white-­visaged, vanishing while surrounded by masked revellers contemplating his sullenness. In early morning light, conceivably, the player tilts tenuously and drifts, totally effaced, as the moon, too, passes away. Ensor’s Pierrot inhabits a fleeting, transitory space between life and death, where the bones of the skull wait to push the pale of the face away. In many such death-­obsessed paintings by Ensor (La Mort et les masques, 1897, for instance), an introspective Pierrot lurks nearby in fatigued, festive attire.54 James Ensor had a specialist’s understanding of masks and masquerade; he was also a collector of carnival masks and classical theatre masks from Japan. Ensor’s amassing of theatrical objects, more eccentric but no less international than that of Edward Gordon Craig, reads visually like the artist as curator or perhaps the artist as custodian of a diverse, dependent-­object, extended family. Ensor’s expert knowledge of masks and masquerade, plus his scholarly acumen on Japonisme, surpass the domain of avocation. The performance objects congregated in his studio populate his visual imagination. The 1899 painting, Ensor aux masques, compresses his catalogue of faces into a fin-­de-­ siècle statement on obsession; hemmed in by masks of a hundred hues, his slightly angled, unmasked gaze­– ­focused upon the viewer­– ­invites discourse with the incredulous spectator.55 Still further afield from Paris, a Scandinavian Pierrot emerged in nineteenth-­ century Copenhagen. This stage figure developed as a remarkable and appreciated representation of exoticism from the south of Europe. The Danish Pierrot emerged directly from its north Italian sources; it had no direct influence from the French Deburau tradition. Niels Hendrik Volkersen was the first celebrity Pierrot of the north, trained by Italian immigrant Pierrot Philippo Pettolletti in the first half of the nineteenth century. Performing Pierrots in Copenhagen can be traced back to the late eighteenth century with the arrival of migrant Giuseppe Casorti and his family from Italy. The Pantomimeteatret in the pagoda-­style Chinese theatre of the city’s Tivoli Gardens was built in 1874, designed by local architect Vilhelm Dahlerup. Pantomime performances have played continually, in warm weather, since the construction of this outdoor theatre. The Danish mask of Pierrot is an Italian-­Danish hybrid, with some possible early-­century influence from the English clown-­Pierrot James Price, who also migrated to Copenhagen. There are no signs of malicious violence in the Volkersen tradition; Pierrot in this instance is an appealing, clownish, unsuccessful lover competing with Harlequin for the love of Columbine. It is the Pierrot of operetta and masked ball intrigues whose anxieties are not life-­threatening. Untouched by modernity, the masquerade is another example of a preserved, rural convention that survives in an urban context, essentially in opposition to urbanity. The figure’s constancy is assured and preserved by a prominent bust of a white-­faced, red-­lipped, smiling Pierrot atop a pedestal 53

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in Tivoli Gardens; Volkersen’s Pierrot in Copenhagen attained the celebrity status of Baptiste in nineteenth-­century Paris. The elevated status of sophistication which Ariane Mnouchkine once termed ‘chocolate-­box Pierrot’56 oversees the snow of the Danish midwinter. Surely the landscape would have satisfied the white-­colour obsession of the symbolist poets. In Paris, the emerging interest in looking outward to distant continents was partially satisfied by the growing expatriate artist community. Chicago native Loïe Fuller arrived in Paris in 1892 and was very quickly the centre of a whirlwind of activity. Fuller’s Serpentine Dance was a sensation; the dancer-­ scenographer choreographed and manipulated flowing fabric of great length, constructing sequences of moving shapes and transitional images that were unprecedented. Fuller’s use of coloured light from many directions­– ­including from below the floor­– a­ stounded spectators with its rapid succession of condensed mutations. The solo dancer appeared to transform into a sequence of flying insects and undulating landscapes through the manoeuvring of silk skirts and silk extended from short batons. The performances were inventive and visionary in a manner well beyond the scenic wonders previously paraded at the Folies Bergère and other theatres. Loïe Fuller was more than a marionette or machine; she was a biomorphic light show. Henri de Toulouse-­ Lautrec painted Loïe Fuller in motion in 1892 and followed this with an abstracted vision of her turning and swirling in 1893 prints. Fuller was probably the first woman performer to attain rapid celebrity status in Paris in the modernist period. Her presence in France was a sweeping gesture which became the starting point for European modern dance. Fuller soon welcomed Isadora Duncan to Paris and assisted her career by arranging for performances in Budapest and Vienna. The influence of American women on European dance secured a foundation that persisted throughout the century. Fuller’s energy and invention assured arts and spectators that breaking with the past opened doors to innovation. The fast and futuristic Fuller, a spinning, polychrome sculpture, altered the fabric of the choreographic silhouette. Photographs by Samuel Joshua Beckett (circa 1900) and Frederick Glasier (1902) impressively catch the élan of the moving fabric and the human-­ body stabiliser within the twister. These images fortify the suggestion that this metamorphosis-­like performance was a masquerade. Fuller directed her own performance with her draped and super-­extended arms; she monitored the swells and dénouements as a partially hidden, centre-­stage conductor, whose costume was the orchestra. A masquerade’s centre, its perceived solar plexus or source zone of gesture, often displaces from the perceived centre of the player’s body. It can be raised, lowered, pushed forward or back from the costume, mask, materials or other camouflaging objects. In Nigerian vaa-­bong helmet masks, the body is pushed upwards and outwards, for instance. In this funeral rite masquerade of the 54

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mumuye peoples of the Upper Benue river valley (in eastern Nigeria near Cameroon), the masquerader’s body is completely draped from above the crown of the head to the ground below. Covered with long strips of hibiscus fibre, rope-­like, raffia-­like fibres, the player wears a thick cape. The human form is converted into an elongated cone-­ topiary of dried plant material. Sitting horizontally above is the wooden mask with white-­painted eyes and wide, pipe-­shaped open mouth. The mascarade mumuye vaa-­bong stands and moves like a tall, narrow hut-­home on wheels.57 No human body parts are visible unless an arm or hand emerges. The masquerade’s face is the face of the mask; the player has no face of significance. The masquerade’s interior point of view is a private matter; the player is sheltered and curtained-­off. Even the placement of the masquerader’s head is not apparent. Therefore, the hidden, secluded gaze is ambiguous and privileged. As Fuller demonstrates, in masquerade performance the mask object or masking devices integrate with the human form; the body spreads out and seeps into the object. The masquerade object embodies and incorporates the human body into its form; the body conjoins with and supports the object’s architectural dynamic. An inhabited masquerade displays the capacity to gesture and displace as if by its own internal impulse and decision. It can subsequently appear to instruct the body to respond and to follow its (the object’s) initiative, rather than the reverse. The object form asserts an ‘other’ rhythm and tempo upon the body, which cannot be denied or rejected by the masquerader, assuming that integration is the objective. Inanimate objects in performance events of other sorts also demonstrate the process of object activation, like magical puppetising. Jugglers focus totally upon animating objects; musicians, particularly instrumentalists, can appear on occasion to fuse with musical instrument-­objects, stealing focus from the human activator and instigating an evaporation of the player-­manipulator. This process parallels theatre performance moments when an actor, in complicity with a prop or scenographic element, ostensibly disappears from the stage while remaining physically present. To illustrate this concept in a specific circumstance, consideration of an instrumentalist–musical instrument rapport can detail the sudden appearance of uncanny liveness. In Autour du tango, a recent jazz music recital which included an Argentinian bandoneon played by Argentinian musician Victor Vellena, the temporary fusion between inanimate object and human body was brilliantly demonstrated.58 In a programme featuring accordions, strings and piano, Villena’s bandoneon proved itself a music maker of an entirely other dimension. At rest the instrument is a polished cube assembled from glass-­like reflective materials; the box could pass as a container for jewellery. This cube is constructed in two halves which extend to become a long rectangular box connected by fragile-­appearing bellows. The bellows can fold into themselves 55

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and collapse into nothing when pushed together. This South American style of bandoneon lacks the festive, decorative appearance of a concertina; it is discreet and serious as it is posed next to its player, as classic, staid squeezebox. Like other fine performance objects, the bandoneon demands attention when in motion. In the Auditorium Campra at the Conservatoire Darius Milhaud, Villena lifted, opened and unleashed this Pandora’s box. As soon as his fingers pushed the buttons under the side grips, his hands vanished. The bandoneon immediately widened and joined with Villena’s wrists and forearms, which appeared to become part of the instrument, like flexible extensions of the box. The elongated instrument seemed to extend to the player’s shoulders; the bandoneon completed a full circle below Villena’s head where the closed-­eyed instrumentalist’s breathing united with the breathing bellows. The instrument now moved as if independent from its player, stretching from an initial 30 centimetres to its maximum width of nearly two metres. From the wooden floor of the downstage space to the upstage overhanging organ pipes, all vibrated as the bandoneon leaked its compressed, melancholy air. Seated on a low bench, the player recoiled and closed the bandoneon, paused and inhaled deeply. When the music resumed, the musician-­animator responded to the object’s initiatives by making counter movements in opposing oblique directions; his equilibrium tended forward then back, then left, then right. His feet traced a pattern on the floor as he resisted the pulls and pushes of the reedy-­voiced box. As the cube undulated, it transformed into a corrugated arch, then a pillar, pedestal and escalator. Villena, the musician, appeared to disappear, effaced and converted to a resonating chamber. The music produced seemed completely detached from his body. Like a puppeteer who emerges from behind a stage, Villena appeared dazed after his tango with the box. The concert stage, unexpectedly occupied by a marionettist-­accordionist or musicien marionnettisé, was suddenly disguised as a Puppentheater with a performance of Objekttheater or Figurentheater in the German context. In central and eastern Europe theatre figures impersonated Pierrots with surprising regularity. Actors Martin Zickel, Friedlich Kayssler and Max Reinhardt were photographed in Pierrot attire at the Berlin cabaret Schall and Rauch in 1901. Representations of Pierrot in café-­théâtre settings were word-­based, comic and parodic scenes that featured writers such as Christian Morgenstern; Austrian theatre director Max Reinhardt produced such a programme for this literary cabaret. Pierrots in Berlin were not silent in the new century. Already in London (1899), Edward Gordon Craig had played Pierrot in an equally lighthearted tone when he assisted composer Martin Shaw with his development of the Purcell Operatic Society; the figure was reserved, dignified and pleasantly contemplative. Vsevolod Meyerhold acted Pierrot in Alexander Blok’s The Fairground Booth in Moscow (1906) and later danced the role of Pierrot in Michael Fokine’s choreography for Robert Schumann’s Le Carnival 56

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with the Imperial Ballet in St Petersburg and Berlin (1910). Blok’s Pierrot, as the third element of a trio with Harlequin and Columbine, intersects with the Russian popular theatre and puppetry character of Petrushka. In the Russian context at this time, the deployment of roles from the Italian comedy tradition signalled an interest in theatricality. Meyerhold in Russia and Craig in Italy both challenged aspects of late nineteenth-­century naturalism and realism by looking back to the Italian theatre of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Pierrot, then, becomes decidedly modern and not at all a throwback to its romantic and sentimental past. The utilisation of the platform stage in The Fairground Booth further connects the play to itinerant performance and the puppet stage. The roles or masquerades connect to a theatre of objects, which for Meyerhold was linked also to the actor techniques from the Japanese Kabuki theatre. A complicating influence of the Slavic Petrushka upon the Latinate Pierrot forced adjustments to the somewhat fixed role, marginally allying it with the Neapolitan Pulcinella mask, providing it with a bit more Punch. Meyerhold’s Pierrot in the Fokine ballet (with costumes by Léon Bakst) is a representation of the Pierrot mask who dances at a masked ball. The Schumann piano suite musically characterises carnival revellers in a sequence of twenty-­three portraits. The Pierrot is presented as a melancholy, unsuccessful admirer of Columbine, more awkward than elegant; in the staging, his sadness restricts his enthusiasm or will to dance. These early twentieth-­century examples affirm Édouard Papet and Paul Gsell’s conclusion that masks, masquerade performances and travesties soon became an integral part of the modern mentality.59 The object began to exhibit a life of its own as masks and geometric forms asserted their importance. The lyrical and often-­shrouded human figure of the nineteenth century soon retreated as Loïe Fuller moved centre stage. Fuller shaped and animated a lengthy fabric piece from a ‘small casket’ which mysteriously arrived for her in a package from India.60 As if enchanted, Fuller released an extravagant skirt from its container and began to manipulate it as a costume prop. She transformed the fabric piece into the Serpentine Dance, an object choreography and scenographic theatre of images: Figurentheater built from silk. Notes   1. Canetti quoted in Kozloff, Le Jeu du visage, p. 75.   2. See Nagy, ‘Hierarchy, Heroes, and Heads’, pp. 220–3.   3. Papet, ‘Un regard sur le masque’, in Cogeval et al. (eds), Masques de Carpeaux à Picasso, p. 10.   4. See Amar, La photographie: histoire d’un art, p. 23.  5. Monks, The Actor in Costume, p. 109.  6. Jean-­ Luc Nancy, ‘Masqué, démasqués’, in Cogeval et al. (eds), Masques de Carpeaux à Picasso, p. 14.

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 7. Cadava, Words of Light, p. 89.   8. Papet, ‘Pour une histoire du masque’, in Cogeval et al. (eds), Masques de Carpeaux à Picasso, p. 18.   9. Geffroy, ‘Le masque et la liberation des pulsions’, in Boiteux and D’Ayala (eds), Carnavals et mascarades, p. 181. 10. See Hal Foster’s commentary on Breton, Compulsive Beauty, pp. 20–3. 11. Modernist photographer Albert Rudomine photographed the sculpted form of the L’inconnue mask years later in 1927; in his black-­and-­white portrait, Rudomine labels the image as La Vierge inconnue du canal d’Ourcq. Aubenas and Biroleau (eds), Portraits/Visages, p. 121. 12. Delaney, Laurence Hutton Collection of Life and Death Masks. 13. Nancy, ‘Masqué, démasqués’, in Cogeval et al. (eds), Masques de Carpeaux à Picasso, p. 14. 14. Ibid., p. 14. 15. Neumeyer, ‘Death Masks’. 16. Amar, La photographie: histoire d’un art, p. 136. 17. Brigitte Léal, ‘Du visage au masque’, in Cogeval et al. (eds), Masques de Carpeaux à Picasso, p. 206. 18. Le Fur (ed.), Picasso primitif, pp. 18–38. 19. Léal, ‘Du visage au masque’, in Cogeval et al. (eds), Masques de Carpeaux à Picasso, p. 206. 20. Catherine Servan-­Schreiber, ‘l’Exposition universelle de Londres’, in Blanchard et al. (eds), Exhibitions: l’invention du sauvage, p. 74. 21. Gilles Boëtsch, ‘Les expositions coloniales de Marseille’, in Blanchard et al. (eds), Exhibitions: l’invention du sauvage, pp. 232–5. 22. Volker Barth, ‘Des hommes exotiques dans les expositions universelles et internationales’, in Blanchard et al. (eds), Exhibitions: l’invention du sauvage, p. 180. 23. ‘Introduction’, in Blanchard et al. (eds), Exhibitions: l’invention du sauvage, p. 42. 24. Pascal Blanchard, ‘Photographie commerciale’, in Blanchard et al. (eds), Exhibitions: l’invention du sauvage, p. 161. 25. Sylvie Chalaye, ‘Cirques, scenes et café-­ théâtre ou le mélange des genres’, in Blanchard et al. (eds), Exhibitions: l’invention du sauvage, p. 240. 26. Pascal Blanchard, ‘Les expositions coloniales ou l’invention des “indigènes”’, in Blanchard et al. (eds), Exhibitions: l’invention du sauvage, pp. 206–35. 27. Jean-­Jacques Breton, ‘Picasso à la découverte d’un “art raisonnable”’, in Le Fur (ed.), Picasso primitif, pp. 1, 22–7. 28. Ibid., pp. 22–7. 29. Odette Aslan, ‘Du rite au jeu masqué’, in Aslan and Bablet (eds), Le Masque: du rite au théâtre, p. 285. 30. Popenhagen, ‘Embodiments of the Mask’, p. 143. 31. See Jean-­Pierre Saccani, ‘Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon, la “toile d’excorcisme”’, in Le Fur (ed.), Picasso primitif, pp. 20–1. 32. See Louise-­Marie Hessenbruch, ‘Comment le primitivisme a gagné Paris’, in Le Fur (ed.), Picasso primitif, pp. 16–19. 33. Haselstein, ‘Gertrude Stein’s Portraits of Matisse and Picasso’, p. 732. 34. Ibid. 35. Stein quoted in ibid., p. 734. 36. Valérie Lejart, ‘Voir surgit quelque chose d’inconnu chaque jour, dans le même visage’, pp. 16–17. 37. See also Picasso–Giacometti. 38. Althusser quoted in Sturken and Cartwright, Practices of Looking, pp. 52–3. 39. See Les Nadar: une légende photographique.

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40. Lefébure (ed.), Explorateurs photographes, p. 186. 41. Ibid., p. 33. 42. Ibid., p. 164. 43. See Farid Abdelouahab, ‘Edward Sheriff Curtis, l’autre regard sur les Indiens’, in Blanchard et al. (eds), Exhibitions: l’invention du sauvage, p. 159. 44. Curtis, Edward Sheriff Curtis et l’Indien d’Amérique du Nord, p. 63. 45. Ibid., p. 63. 46. Ibid., p. 63. 47. Ibid., p. 51. 48. See Berns et al., Central Nigeria Unmasked. 49. See (last accessed 12 June 2020). 50. ‘Le rapport à Cézanne’, in Le Cubisme: l’exposition, p. 12. 51. Ibid., p. 12. 52. See James Ensor, p. 207. 53. See Kellein, Pierrot, p. 134. 54. See James Ensor, p. 181. 55. Ibid., p. 213. 56. Ariane Mnouchkine, quoted by Luda Popenhagen in Ron Popenhagen, ‘Interview with Luda Popenhagen’. 57. Berns et al., Central Nigeria Unmasked. 58. See ‘Conservatoire à rayonnement régional Aix-­en-­Provence’, programme, p. 13. 59. Papet, ‘Pour une histoire’, and Gsell, ‘Qu’est-­ce un masque?’, in Cogeval et al. (eds), Masques de Carpeaux à Picasso, pp. 18, 20. 60. Randy Martin, ‘Modern Dance and the American Century’, in Ludington (ed.), A Modern Mosaic, p. 208.

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3

REFORMING AND UNIFORMING THE BODY

Marionettes Unmasked Conceived as an overblown warrior figure with a bulbous, cascading silhouette, Alfred Jarry’s drawing of Ubu for the programme of the 1896 premiere of Ubu Roi anticipates the conical peasants of modernist painter Kazimir Malevich, as well as Marcel Gromaire’s thick-­shouldered soldiers in trenches. Robust, full-­form workers in landscapes and battlefields are too proportionally balanced to serve as Ubu avatars, however. Jarry sketches Ubu as a towering capitol figure who stands wide and dome-­like with a small, conical cupola. The upper dome has a face; the lower dome has two short foot pedestals. The streamlined but unstable monument houses an inflated ego with status in Poland. Architecturally exemplary as a vaulted citadel of modern Europe, King Ubu looms above his peers in all dimensions of taste and decorum. Building Ubu was a challenge. Jarry’s role-­creation, an Eastern European demagogue-­buffoon, was envisioned as something more than a costume stuffed with straw. Jarry conceived of Ubu as Basilica Sacré Cœur (at the summit of Montmartre) on wheels, capable of complete rotation atop mountain peaks, or at the highest point in Paris. A costume design for the king was an opportunity to dress a new body for the twentieth century, a figure with a look of more substance than a lightweight Pierrot. Alas, this was not to be, even in Peter Brook’s Bouffes du Nord production, where illusion was the stronger choice. However, the timid design execution and onstage manifestation of Jarry’s 60

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image, a collaborative creation by Nabis painter Paul Sérusier, stage director Aurélien Lugné-­Poe and Jarry himself, shied well away from the hypertrophic excess projected.1 Champions of East European culture such as Guillaume Apollinaire and Blaise Cendrars were still too young to offer their moral support to Jarry, and affordable theatre venues had only limited fly space. Shrinking Ubu was the only alternative. Symbolist theatre had already moved beyond naturalistic acting with its performance innovations, but the stage actions of a rogue warmonger like Ubu challenged all established conventions of authenticity. And since in Ubu, Jarry’s language was particularly shocking to the audience, the bombastic verbal text could not, it would seem, be accompanied by too extreme a visual representation. Clearly, an exaggerated, abstracted body form to be worn was not constructed. Firmin Gémier, the first interpreter of Père Ubu in the Lugné-­ Poe production at the Théâtre de l’Œuvre, appeared large but by no means Gargantuan. Olga Taxidou cites Harold Segel’s account which states that Ubu wore a ‘huge cardboard belly’2 as well as a heavy mask. Gémier may have voiced his concern about the viability and the reception of a full-­body costume-­ object that would have severely limited gesture and ambulant range. It is likely that Gémier’s awkward form alterations were attachments that may not have been functional throughout the performance. There are many practical issues with the actor as puppet, including the suggestion of marionette strings on actor bodies, as Taxidou notes.3 Cumbersome statements in form endanger the delicate actor–spectator relationship, particularly when Ubu’s behaviour is already brutish, unpolished and aggressive. This king is not audience-­friendly. (Jarry himself touted a pistol.) In Alfred Jarry and Guillaume Apollinaire, Claude Schumacher discusses Jarry’s reflections on acting and his childhood memories of marionettes in performance. In Schumacher’s translation, Jarry states: ‘The actor should replace his head with the effigy of the character, by the use of a mask …’4 Schumacher reads Jarry’s concept of the effigy as ‘a total-­body persona’5 which demonstrates significant degrees of objectness. (This may be Jarry’s intent, but in French an effigy can be either head-­only or full-­bodied.) Schumacher argues that Jarry’s Ubu effigy with masked face is the first step towards ‘a depersonalization of the performer’.6 Furthermore, he asserts that ‘Jarry advocates the use of encasing the whole body, not just covering the face. Inside this constructed shell the actor should be able to attain absolute impassivity, which for Jarry is essential to the creation of beauty.’7 Ultimately, Schumacher interprets and describes the stage figure as a complete masquerade, without using that term. Such a reading suggests that Jarry imagined Firmin Gémier blasting his ‘Merdre!’ from within a puppet-­like, independently mobile form. In Schumacher’s analysis, Jarry introduced a model for a ‘super-­marionette’ a decade prior to its conception by Edward Gordon Craig. Schumacher 61

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emphasises Jarry’s intent to present the effigy-­personage ‘without the ponderous, accidental, material intrusion of the actor’.8 Schumacher concludes that Jarry’s Ubu ‘would model his acting-­technique on the diminutive doll of the puppet booth’.9 If Ubu is manipulated by an actor within a structure, not simply behind a large mask, Ubu as super-­ puppet requires a cooperative, onstage wearer-­activator. As buried actor, the puppeteer would commit to a total distancing of the self in order to avoid tainting or degrading the purity of the Ubu personage in performance. The out-­of-­sight, out-­of-­mind actor-­ manipulator would refrain from identification with either the role of Ubu or the spectators. Ubu in practice, however, was not ‘depersonalised’ in this manner. A fully human incarnation of Ubu was created for the première where Gémier portrayed an Ubu rotunde, swollen-­ bellied and, perhaps visually accented with cardboard, but not hypertrophied by any means. Gémier, photographed with no fixed-­ form stomach enhancement, was costumed in stuffed, daily dress that was spectator shock-­proof, not as outrageous as one would expect. Jarry’s conception pushed the envelope; in execution, however, Ubu’s début was a compromise which suggested armouring the body, but probably did not contain Gémier architecturally. The visual statement was significant enough to resonate for decades, however. Both the modernist painter Max Ernst and the modernist photographer Dora Maar titled grotesque image making after Ubu. The debate on the actor and the marionette, inspired by Heinrich von Kleist, is a discussion about plasticity and the body of the actor: the treatment of the human body as form. Wooden figures do not think about the movements of their arms and legs; actors think about gestures quite a lot. And actors tend away from strong identification with inanimate form; they cannot be trusted, some theorise, to simply move without expressing and interfering in the purity of the moving mechanics. Theorists have assumed that a human element does not seep through a marionette’s strings to infiltrate and pollute the movement quality of the string puppet. Certainly rational thinking excludes the transfer of actor mind to wooden form, via the supporting puppet strings. It is concluded, then, that self-­conscious intrusion is not possible in the marionette since the actor-­manipulator is safely distanced from the stage figure and incapable of poisoning pure perfection.10 In the absence of human intervention, it is theorised, beauty reigns; the marionette, some imagine, has ‘achieved a state of grace in the spiritual as well as the physical sense’.11 Bert O. States interprets Kleist’s discourse on the puppet and the dancer as a ‘metaphor for a kind of body-­honesty’.12 Jarry’s interest in the distancing effect of hypertrophic plasticity is understandable from two separate points of view. First, his intent could be to stamp out the actor’s over-­humanising of Ubu; secondly, Jarry may have assumed that surrounding the actor with material and establishing inches of separation between the actor and the Ubu façade would allow the stage figure’s crass, bullying nature to 62

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dominate without any actor-­initiated holding back or dumbing down. While logical in theory, it is not at all clear that inching the actor further away from the form surface translates to a ‘no-­influence’ factor from the hidden actor-­ manipulator. It assumes, in contrast or opposition to some modernist artists, that wooden and fibre materials have no ‘soul’. (Taxidou, in her discussion of Meyerhold’s actor training, designed to ‘puppetise the human actor’, refers to Djuna Barnes’s statement that ‘it is with wood that we express so much of that which is the flesh’.)13 There remains an ambiguity about the humanness of living flesh and the presumed lack of inner life of ‘dead’ matter. Is it possible that diffusing actor-­ influence by distancing, cushioning and curtaining-­ off human flesh from exterior façades­– ­or from wooden representations­– ­does not, in the end, disallow actor affectation? How absent is the dissimulated actor? Despite contemporary scholarship on the object as subject, such as Taxidou’s analysis of masks, puppets and mannequins, objects continue to be lumped into a mass of non-­distinctive paraphernalia. Regarded as stage properties, these signs of theatricality have been referred to as ‘lifeless objects (dead things)’14 and ‘dead matter of the material world’,15 neither of which is scientifically inaccurate. I suspect that the modernist flâneur in André Breton’s Nadja might contest objects’ characterisation as ‘lifeless’, however. Helpless, soulless things they may be, but then, maybe not. Objects differ one from the other in their capacity to exhibit latency. ‘Things’ that have been given life by adept actor-­ manipulators are no longer lifeless. Furthermore, mannequins, masks, helmets, boxes, dolls and hand puppets all distinguish themselves in ways that surpass their assumed lack of functional complexity. Puppets and marionettes require additional qualifying descriptions, as the words are often used interchangeably. Casual usage, including my own, equates the actor-­as-­marionette and the actor-­as-­puppet. From an imaging standpoint, a marionette is easier to visualise because it often has strings attached to anchor one’s picturing. Still, wires may replace strings and ‘marionette’ is also utilised in general played-­object contexts. In English, ‘puppet’ embodies figures from hand puppets to rod and shadow puppets­– ­each phenomenally distinct. Manipulated performance objects require description of shape, form, structure and material even when proposed as metaphorical images. A Punch and Judy comparison or association does not equate with that of a Javanese shadow puppet, neither in tempo nor in rhythm and certainly not in weight. When Alfred Jarry announces the need for a ‘pantin’, a ‘marionnette’ or a ‘masque’, particulars must follow. Mask is also a polysemous term, as in some instances it is a concealer of the face, and in others it is a costume and body covering or fixed-­role personage. Henry Pernet, in Mircea Eliade’s Encyclopedia of Religion, notes the vagueness of masking terminology, asserting that the term’s malleability can become useless for a social anthropologist.16 63

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An aesthetic, prolonged contemplation of ‘things’ must include consideration of the rapport between object and human body gesture and displacement. Discussion of the puppet or marionette cannot discount discussion of the manipulator or enlivener. When it comes to aspects of liveness and performativity or image-­creating displays of theatricality, objects cannot be generalised as performance ‘things’. Josette Féral and Janelle Reinelt have theorised theatricality and its associations with the actor.17 If one goes one step further, it is possible to apply similar analyses to the performative object. Such thinking broadens and elucidates the discussion of disguise and masquerade as a developing field of performance within visual culture disciplines. Since Modernism, the life of the object has continually evolved. Visual culture theorists today look more deeply at ‘objects’ and ‘affects’ in discussions encompassing contemporary arts and culture, including thoughts on the theatricality of non-­anthropomorphic objects.18 I address this more fully in the final chapters. In Italy from 1906, Edward Gordon Craig expressed his commitment to the use of masks as a means of impeding the degeneration of acting; subsequently, in 1908, Craig wrote about his concept of the Übermarionette in his journal The Mask.19 Like Alfred Jarry, Craig initially had little practical experience with mask objects and masquerading. He had produced several innovative opera mises en scène (for works by Henry Purcell) in London during the first four years of the twentieth century. Like most other theatre practitioners of the era, masking was an acting technique from Europe’s past that he rarely used in contemporary practice. Directors were not preoccupied with festival masking in contexts outside of drama and theatre; they were, however, cognisant of theatre full-­mask and half-­mask usage on other continents. Classical theatre from Japan was recognised by some artists and scholars as living performance history. Craig was a classicist in many ways; he admired the Greek and Roman worlds, as his interest in popular performance history from southern Europe increased. As a young man, the theatre was Craig’s playground. He, like many modern directors, constructed and animated miniature stages inspired by the puppet stage; he was familiar with backstage theatre activity in the venues where his mother Ellen Terry performed. In On the Art of the Stage, he states: ‘The marionette appears to me be the last echo of some noble and beautiful art of a passed civilization.’20 Craig’s 1905 illustrations (ink and aquarelle on paper) in the folio ‘An Actor’ present remarkable interpretations of his vision of the actor with masks. In a move beyond even the theatricality of Gustav Klimt’s allegorical painting in chalk, pencil and gold, Tragoedie (1897), Craig places his masked figures in performance-­space contexts. In Klimt’s image the face and eyes of the woman holding a mask take primary focus, placed behind a short Greek column.21 The woman is tightly and statuesquely framed within a fin-­de-­siècle, decorative-­art portal featuring two women and a fantastic, long-­ 64

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tailed creature. The two faces and two hands inhabit a dark interior where the human face receives the most light. The elegant Viennese woman presents a face mask before her left shoulder which is, in contrast to her own stern, closed-­off gaze at the viewer, fearfully wide-­eyed and open-­mouthed. There is no suggestion that the presenter plans to don the mask or that she has ever previously worn the mask; the woman presents an object as symbol. She holds, with some trepidation, a strange object from another world which, it appears, she does not intend to embody. The intense, painted mask eyes (not eyeholes) parallel the large circles of her gold earrings. The distressed expression on the mask face is an essential part of an aesthetically constructed composition where the presence of the human skin, and its gold decoration, illuminate. Woman and mask are speechless. Folio 5 and folio 6 from Craig’s Über Marions Berlin also display images of standing figures with masks in hand. The first, Masked Actor Holding Three Masks (1905),22 shows a figure who wears a partial mask covering which hides the face from the mouth upwards; the actor holds a mask in the right hand and has two masks attached to a skirt above the knees. The three carried masks all suggest the male gender with facial hair and larger features; all are intense and concentrated, withholding expressivity. The actor inhabits a formalised, scenographic environment in an ascending landscape with a cityscape behind; the forestage contains five vertically standing four-­sided posts which resemble Celtic stones, creating layers of depth on the stage floor. The actor, a young man perhaps, looks outward with concealed focus as the masks, surrogate faces, exhibit only partially visible eyes. The image contrasts strongly, then, with the directness of the mask and the face of a woman in the Klimt representation of the previous century. The second example of an actor à la Craig, Actor Placing a Mask Before his Face,23 exhibits a masked male actor in profile holding a large, long-­bearded and long-­haired mask in front of his own head; there is a gap of at least six inches separating the two faces. The mask tilts upwards at a 45-­degree angle, as if looking up into the sky. However, once again, the gaze is non-­specific as the eyes are simply dark recesses on the facial plane. Upstage left is the shadow of an actor in action, perhaps also gazing at his mask. The profile of this gesturally active, leaning figure is the most dynamic element of the work; something notable is happening with this secondary figure while the primary, foregrounded figure looks into the interior shell of his own oversized mask object. The shadow on the neutral background ruptures the overall contemplative tone of the stage-­canvas composition; its suspended motion creates a phantom presence which is almost more grounded than that of the featured artist. Here the shadow displays its potential as a material thing­– ­its ephemeral object-­ness­– a­ s described in a visual arts context by theorist Jorella Andrews where she speaks of shadows as ‘part-­object’.24 65

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Both featured actors are costumed in long draping fabric extending to the floor; the paintings are like scenographer’s designs for an upcoming performance. The elegance of the costumes in each painting contrasts with the mysterious intrusion of the masks, whose manifestation does not overpower the presence of the actors. The being-­there, or the ‘there there’ (in Gertrude Stein’s words) of the mask objects is enigmatic. In his commentary on Craig, Patrick Le Bœuf argues that the fundamental importance of the mask for Craig is its ‘valeur mystagogique’.25 Certainly an element of a mystic presence surfaces in Craig’s research between 1897 and 1904. Le Bœuf concludes, however, that masks themselves were not consistently present in Craig’s actor-­training studio work. Mask iconography was influential theoretically, it seems. In Le Bœuf’s discussion of the ‘sur-­marionnette’, he concludes that the mask was not an essential aspect of Craig’s ideal actor-­gymnast. The actor as Übermarionette would, in theory, possess the technical capability to employ masks in performance; the actor’s gestural acting skills would provide the necessary performance acumen.26 Importantly, Olga Taxidou emphasises that Craig ‘never actually built an Übermarionette’.27 For Craig it is the actor that is vital, while the mask is a symbol of the world beyond the everyday. In heightened drama circumstances, a mise en scène of the body, a full-­body costume and head design for the actor, could incorporate the mask object as one of the design elements. Elevating the stylistic level of acting with masquerade could be useful for playing ghosts in Shakespeare, for instance. There is no suggestion that Edward Gordon Craig imagined theatre events with masked actors throughout. And as with Jarry, Craig never incorporated the word ‘masquerade’ in his theoretical writing; there was no precedent among theatre practitioners to do so. Le Bœuf interprets Craig’s preference for the ‘immutable’ face (or perhaps the less changeable, less active face) as an indication of a technical desire to ascend and bypass the commonplace.28 Le Bœuf notes that Craig suggested the use of masks to reduce the actor’s possible six hundred facial gestures to a minimalist six gestures of well-­chosen expression.29 Gesture and displacement of theatrical figures and objects as described for either Craig or Jarry suggests eliminating unnecessary movement, while highlighting that which the ideal viewer (the modernist director or metteur en scène) considers essential. Le Bœuf concludes that Craig offered virtually no studio techniques for the actor to accomplish such tasks; Craig, he asserts, did not acquire actual ‘tacit knowledge’ experience with half-­mask or full-­mask performance. In Beyond the Mask: Gordon Craig, Movement, and the Actor, Irène Eynat-­Confino deduces that Craig sought a significant reduction in movement quantity and certainly an increase in its quality. Eynat-­Confino associates this move towards immobility (or the statuesque) with the stillness Craig had observed in his mother’s acting, as well as in the performances of Eleonora 66

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Duse.30 French dramatist Paul Claudel, profoundly concerned with spirituality in life and in the arts, echoes Craig’s preoccupation with gestural restraint in his commentaries on Japanese Nō theatre. Claudel theorised that in the Nō one observes ‘actions frozen in immobility’31 via the image of masked actors in full-­body attitudes (masquerades, in essence). Claudel adds that in such three-­dimensional silhouettes ‘nothing is left of movement but its meaning’.32 In his recent work on Craig at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Patrick Le Bœuf introduces the possibility that the Übermarionette could be visualised as a ‘body puppet’, in an English-­language appellation within his French-­ language text.33 A more precise term, I suggest, would be the French-­language appellation (already in use), une marionnette habitée or the more rustic un pantin habité (with no strings attached). Le Bœuf makes this suggestion in response to notes that Craig made while reading Denis Diderot’s Paradoxe sur le comédien, where Diderot imagines the grand comédien as an actor enclosed within a large wicker mannequin where the hidden human provides a soul (une âme) to an oversized effigy-­like figure.34 This Diderot-­inspired image is an example which returns us to a figure which would be like a human–object hybrid. The Übermarionette, in this conception, would not metaphorically demonstrate object-­like qualities in a human actor, but would be a ‘thing’ animated by a person. Historically, iconography of the ‘Ü-­m’, as Craig abbreviated the term, defies one’s anticipated image of a large-­dimension puppet-­actor. In Craig’s drawings, for example, one sees, in one instance, a full-­body draping of what appears to be a female body; the draping erases any suggestion of object-­form, although the standing figure reveals no arms. In ‘L’acteur et son jeu’, Robert Abirached juxtaposes Craig’s drawing of La Surmarionnette (1907) with a photograph of actress Eleonora Duse from the end of the nineteenth century.35 The fabric-­covered body of Duse is simplified and streamlined by the amorphous covering, but the body form is enhanced without implying substitution by a firm material. One could add the Craig drawing of his mother, Ellen Terry, as Ophelia (1898) to this group of form-­idealised tragediennes.36 All three actor images exude a subtle humanity and innerness while they project largeness. Only the Edward Steichen photograph Isadora Duncan at the Portal of the Parthenon (1921) proposes a dimension which meets or exceeds Craig’s vision. Dressed-­to-­kill Duncan, reaching like Samson to the towering stones, stands kite-­like as archangel under the stone archway high above. Diminutive, while architecturally volumised, the figure presented by Duncan’s entrance on to this monumental stage displays her as ‘a symbolic revolutionary whose bid for liberty was likened to [my own]’, in Steichen’s words.37 (Craig surely never imagined that an image of the ‘Ü-­m’ would be created years later by the mother of his children, the dancer Duncan. She, as statuesque actor, stands firmly as woman familiar with tragedy’s dimensions.) 67

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Craig recognised virtuosity in the actress; he appreciated the overt grandness and gestural extension of the acting and dancing women he idolised: Duncan, Duse and Terry. Perhaps Craig pictured the classical actress as a monument in flesh and bones, a perfect armature with fine skin. He may have envisioned and conceptualised a new, statuesque actor in flowing robes, masked only by ‘semantic veils’, as Robert Hughes describes hidden realities in Symbolism.38 The balance of the inside and the outside of the Übermarionette, its balance of animate and inanimate­– ­and its gender­– ­all remain rather mysterious. Peter Conrad, while alluding to Jean Cocteau’s modernist assertion that ‘art is science made flesh’, approaches this statement quite literally. Conrad introduces the concept of flesh as ‘a disguise, concealing the busy organs and engines which go about their business inside this decorative envelope’.39 Such independent internal activity makes skin appear troublesome, even dangerous. Therefore, wood, as material, might be a good idea for constructing the new actor, as marionette. Still, even physical masks constructed out of other, ‘nonhuman­ . . . matter’40 do not occupy a place in Craig’s imagining of performing women, particularly on the future Übermarionette stage. While Craig, according to Le Bœuf, was fascinated by a woman playing Pierrot (1891),41 this enthusiasm does not appear to have extended to fixed-­form masking or to his concept of the Übermarionette. The viewpoint of Craig, like that of performance traditions in East and South-­east Asia, does not extend to masked acting for women. In an essential analysis of Craig and his journal The Mask, Olga Taxidou addresses both Craig’s Orientalism and his bewildering and peculiar misogyny.42 Craig, as exemplary internationalist and cross-­ disciplinarian, freely exposed his admiring, enthusiastic Japonisme, like French theatre-­ maker Jacques Copeau and Belgian painter Ensor. Copeau, however, developed his knowledge of the mask beyond its power as a symbol or sign of innovation and revitalisation. He employed masks as pedagogical tools and successfully used masking in performances. He created, invented and played masquerade roles. Copeau’s actors, both men and women, followed his lead in hands-­on experimentation and practice. Craig’s technical abilities with marionettes, on the other hand, continued to develop throughout his lifetime. His legacy, celebrated without pause by the Institut international de la marionnette (Charlevilles-­Mézière), has eclipsed his position as a practitioner of importance in the theatre. Likewise, Craig’s assigned role in the famous scenography duo of Appia and Craig now looks awkward. In late Modernism it seemed a natural partnership, particularly for academic discussions on stage space and dynamics. But in retrospect, Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig were two quite separate stage designers and distinctly different facilitators of the acting profession. Their alternate applications of plasticity in three-­dimensional space mark a divergence in ways of seeing the actor in motion. Appia’s collaboration 68

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with Émile Jaques-­Dalcroze at Hellerau was fundamental to his theory of ‘emotive space’, making him the chosen mentor of Jacques Copeau.43 Taxidou unravels the maskocentric self-­presentation of Craig by highlighting the maleness of the Übermarionette, as well as clarifying Craig’s thoughts on masks within the context of the commentaries of William Butler Yeats and Oscar Wilde. Of particular interest is Taxidou’s reading of Craig’s reaction to the kabuki-­inspired work of Sada Yakko in London in 1900 or 1901. On tour from Japan, Sada Yakko (or Yacco) was a sensation in most of the major cities in Europe over a three-­year period. She was invited to perform at the Paris Exhibition of 1900 in a performance venue coordinated by Loïe Fuller. By 1902 Sada Yakko had made her way to St Petersburg and Moscow, where directors Stanislavski and Meyerhold probably saw her dance as well. Craig’s soon-­to-­be partner Isadora Duncan knew Sada Yakko’s work as a solo dancer; the repertoire, which eventually included Shakespeare’s Ophelia, influenced Duncan’s approach to modern dance. Sada Yakko was the subject of a 1901 pastel drawing by Picasso, Sadayakko; André Gide is said to have seen her perform six times, as Sophie Makariou notes.44 Sada Yakko inspired performance practitioners and theorists; Katia Légeret-­Manochhaya includes Appia and Meyerhold in her inventory of spectator enthusiasts. Outside the theatre community, sculptor Auguste Rodin and composer Claude Debussy also shared a passion for Sada Yakko’s work.45 Légeret-­Manochhaya also suggests the name of Edward Gordon Craig in her list of enthusiasts; Taxidou, however, clarifies Craig’s point of view. Craig opposed performances which broke the gender rules and stylistic restrictions of Japanese classical performance. Taxidou concludes that Craig was not only ‘highly sexist, but also misinformed’.46 Surprisingly, Craig dismissed the fact that Sada Yakko was novel. Her dynamic choreography and tragic evocations were revolutionary in the sense that she was a woman performing adaptations of classical Japanese theatre. Sada Yakko, acting in female roles that remained the domain of men, carved a place for herself in Kabuki performance. She also ventured into contemporary treatments of Western traditions, creating hybrid, East–West performances decades earlier than other innovators. Artaud’s rhapsodic revelations on ‘exotic’ Balinese dance theatre came at the Paris Exposition in 1931. Turn-­ of-­ the-­ century Paris also offered Javanese, Ceylonese, Japanese and Cambodian dance theatre (spectacles ethnologiques) at the Paris Jardin d’Acclimatation (Bois de Boulogne), including a masked devil dance from the French colony of Pondichéry (Puducherry) in south-­east India, from 1889 to 1906.47 Craig’s Übermarionette is drawn as a tranquil, elegant and larger-­than-­life male figure. His admiration for the ‘grace’ of the marionette is many metres of scenographic space away from Alfred Jarry’s puppet-­form Ubu reverie; his vision aligns more with Kleist’s admiration of harmony, mobility and 69

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lightness. In a Kansas City Star article from 1910, Craig collaborator Michael Carmichael described the Ü-­m as ‘an actor encased in a sort of armor, so he [sic] could make none but graceful, slow, sweeping gestures’.48 Craig’s drawing Miss Ellen Terry as Ophelia, his mother contemplating nature draped in flowing fabric, connects with his vision of the actor, as does his complicity with his Italian, dark-­masked, white-­costumed, pre-­Pierrot hand puppet (in his marionette collection at UCLA).49 Le Bœuf’s ‘body puppet’ image and English-­ language word choice prompt a picture of a gigantic glove or hand puppet (marionnette à gaine). Such a vision requires an actor who lives inside an inflated-­dimension fixed form. The ‘body puppet’, then, would be like a hand puppet where the palm and digits are replaced by the whole of the human body­ – ­a figure activated from its own interior with its own ‘soul’. Alternatively, Le Bœuf proposes that the Übermarionette could simply be an ‘avatar of the spectral Pierrot personage’ of the late nineteenth century.50 The Ü-­m would remain, then, a male incarnation of an earthly spirit, well costumed in enveloping fabric. If Craig’s Übermarionette is an aggrandised Pierrot, Jarry’s Ubu is the complete counter figure of Jean-Gaspard Deburau’s Pierrot. As loud-­mouthed gesticulator, Ubu displays his clunky gait, his vulgarity and his scatological humour in robust, pugnacious outbursts, as if auditioning for the role of belligerent soldier bully. Landscapes of the Camouflaged Imagined as a fiery little skirmish that would be brief and valiant, the First World War became a muddy, global brawl extending from the African theatre in Togoland to Kaiser Wilhelmsland in German New Guinea. Land battles in Europe were fought on and in the ground itself with surveillance from above. Military fashion altered, by necessity, into disguise: uniform and total disappearance rather than lofty appearance. Dressing-­up altered profoundly after the first months of combat. The French, for instance, discovered that their tricoloured uniforms with red trousers (using dye from the Provence garance root) assisted effective target shooting as soldiers advanced across battlefields. (An aquarelle by Gilbert de Guingand, a camouflage artist in the French military, clearly illustrated this issue to government officials.)51 Surviving the war meant concealing the body rather than boldly displaying it, and from 1915 onwards, masking the head became imperative to protect it from poisonous gas. Eyes, ears, mouth and lungs were under chemical assault by a silent adversary in the atmosphere. Soldiers bombarded by the noise of unprecedented force and conventional armaments required up-­to-­date camouflage, helmets and modern armour in order to wage battle against the invisible and disappear from the live enemy. In order to replace deficiencies in equipment, French officials solicited assistance from the professional theatre community serving in the war. 70

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Alongside visual artists who were a vital component of the camouflage creative teams, scenographers went to work. In trench warfare it was vital to deceive by controlling where the enemy was looking; it was important to complicate the single-­focus target by diffusing the gaze of the enemy and multiplying the number of targets. Props and costumes that blended in with the setting were required; lines of design needed to mimic the landscape surface, foliage and vegetation. Clothing also needed to appear weathered and fatigued; costume and scenery designers were skilled in the practice of deceptive illusion creating. With the added complication of air-­as-­enemy, gas masks became extensions of the camouflaged uniform. The complete theatre-­of-­war, deceptive human figure referenced hunting and fishing camouflage, as well as masquerade costuming from carnival and festival traditions. Unknown to most uniformed soldiers, their apparel also borrowed ideas from global material culture in museum collections. Illustrations in the book Tromper l’ennemi, for example, show a camouflage jacket used by Scottish Highland hunters that was adapted for use by First World War snipers. A second painting displays a longer, German version of this all-­weather coat which is topped with a camouflaged gas mask and pointed helmet.52 For field crop and bushy terrain soldiers employed plant materials such as leaves, sticks, straw and spruce branches, a tactic utilised in masquerades for centuries. These natural materials were attached to the metal helmets or assembled as tufts on the head so that soldiers could move through bushy countryside unnoticed, as ambulant topiary. The use of straw was particularly effective and efficient. While not fully emulating total-­body masquerades of Irish ‘strawboys’, German Strohbären or Swiss conifer-­covered Silvesterchlausen, quick-­change soldiers were able to effectively infiltrate cornfields or grassy environments and fuse with the foliage. Already in 1914 Belgian soldiers were photographed in helmets with straw horizontally attached; they successfully marched unnoticed through open fields while ‘crowned with straw’.53 In contrast, a photo from Gallipoli in south-­eastern Europe in May 1915 exhibits a bare-­headed, captured Turkish gunner camouflaged as a bush with lightweight foliage; he stands awkwardly between two English soldiers parading spear-­topped rifles on their shoulders. The Turk’s diffused silhouette is revealed only by the crown of a bald head and his boots in the sand. On the ground, strict geographical battle lines disappeared. Enemy trenches separated by a ‘no man’s land’ did not deter any sort of air attack. Poisonous gas permeated space with little respect for enemy lines or military strategy. As Great War historian Susan R. Grayzel stated in 2014, gas as a weapon introduced a form of confrontation that disrupted daily lives well beyond the war zone, ‘complicating, if not erasing, the borders between war and home fronts’.54 A line-­up of early, ineffective gas masks creates a horrifying image. Even the abundant talent of Dada artists in Zürich could not outdo the 71

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grotesque design inventions of early semi-­functional gas masks. In a matter of months, hooded and helmeted military personnel and civilians could be seen outlined against the cityscape as partly anthropomorphic, partly zoomorphic figures. Walter Benjamin’s Great War observation in Illuminationen, ‘Nothing but the clouds unchanged’,55 accurately extended from the war zone to each neighbouring metropolis. Gas masks of variable efficiency infiltrated popular culture, establishing protective head coverings as a vital accessory for all ages, classes and nationalities. Utilitarian masking was the great equaliser during the war. If the death mask represents the nineteenth century, the gas mask­– ­as object fabricated to delay or defer death­– ­represents the twentieth. Grayzel suggests that the proliferation of head protection devices established the gas mask as the new symbol of war.56 And in the end, she concludes, it resulted in ‘the militarization of the domestic sphere’.57 The association of mask objects with death is nothing new; for some ­thinkers, the gas mask link with death makes it a ritual object in a rite of passage. Brigitte Léal connects masks, particularly during the First World War, with objects that intervene between humankind and a hostile universe: magical intercessors. Léal correlates artists’ representations of masking with states of fragility, marginality, solitude and the haunting presence of death.58 She particularly sees such associations in imagery where there is interplay between the skull and the mask, as in the work of some early modernist sculptors such as Duchamps-­Villon, Jacques Lipchitz and Pablo Gargallo.59 When reviewing the early modernist period, one is never far away from the gas mask, as etched by Otto Dix in Der Krieg (The War), for example. Photographs of roughly repaired heads and facial façades, as recorded by the German Fourth Army Dental-­Maxillofacial Unit in Lublin, Poland, provide documentation of the before and the after head, as in German WW I Soldier, Posing with Wax Model of Original Wound.60 Awkward facial disguises, such as tin-­mask face repairs, display the ‘simulacral uncanniness of the mask’. In her study, Katherine Feo concludes that facial repair masking ‘was likely to draw just as much, if not more, attention to the face as disfigurement alone’.61 Grotesque repaired heads from the First World War, part-­ object faces, warranted Sigmund Freud’s introduction of das Unheimliche soon after the war in 1919. In France, it was the duty of the camouflage artists to make Allied gunners, bombardiers and their weapons disappear. The German army already advanced wearing effective, earth-­toned camouflage, transforming masked and helmeted fusiliers into spear-­toting, anthropomorphic tent-­forms.62 Masquerading as dead trees, soldiers animated landscapes as macabre props. The French utilised scene design know-­how to build fake, broken and hollow observation towers that were positioned among the remaining tree trunks.63 Pablo Picasso’s suggestion (sent to combatant-­poet Guillaume Apollinaire in 1915) to imitate the multicoloured, fabric-­pieced Harlequin costume for the creation of cannon 72

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camouflage coincided with the actual establishment of the camouflage artists section of the military. Unfortunately, a version of Picasso’s clever concept for Harlequin-­like patchwork camouflage was simultaneously in production by the Central Powers. A German aeroplane camouflage polygon pattern, reproduced as the signature design element of the 2019 exhibition Picasso et la guerre (Musée de l’Armée, Paris), unknowingly paralleled Picasso’s proposal. In theoretical discussions of disguise, the association of camouflage with cubist art (Braque and Picasso paintings in particular) are frequently proposed. Both forms of painting-­in-­practice fragment and disperse the view while assembling patches of similar colours in organised, but random-­ appearing, mosaics. Isabelle Limousin discusses this chameleon-­effect intent in camouflage and its relationship to Cubism. She states that while trompe-­l’œil camouflage dissolves and confuses the perception of form, Cubism opens it up and reveals the formal aspects of commonplace objects.64 Both, in a sense, complicate the image and disorient the viewer. Gertrude Stein recognised the common structural elements in cubist painting and camouflage. A frequently repeated anecdote, noted in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), recounts Picasso’s comment to Stein as they watched the passing of camouflaged troops in the streets of Paris: ‘We are the ones that created that. It is Cubism.’65 Expressionist painting in Germany also had an impact on camouflage. Der Blaue Reiter artist Franz Marc created a series of nine large-­tent paintings designed to conceal artillery on the ground from aeroplanes flying over. Marc called these gigantic canvases his ‘Kandinskys’, because of their bold use of colour and their rhythmic abstraction. Marc, killed in 1916 on a reconnaissance mission near Verdun, worked in the German camouflage division. He remarked in a letter to his wife Maria that his war painting of tents progressed from Monet-­ like work to its conclusion in Kandinsky-­ like abstraction.66 Marc’s paintings of animals, like his 1912 Ruhende Pferden (Horses in Repose) with part white and part blue horses, ironically anticipated his war camouflage work when he routinely painted white horses with dark colours to render them less noticeable. Marc’s friend, the painter August Macke, killed earlier in September 1914, had frequently taunted Marc about his blue horses. For August Macke in 1911, masks were the most appropriate emblem for contemporary painting because of their strong, ‘primitive’ expressiveness.67 His Clown, caricatured self-­portrait (1913), painted in Bonn or Switzerland, shows the painter gazing outside the picture frame while costumed as a subdued Harlequin. Positioned with an exotic bird over one shoulder, little is revealed by the muted tones of this reflective clown. Still, it is significant that this Harlequin image appears with such confidence at the end of an era when painters were more prone to visually identify with Pierrot. Macke’s dark and melancholic patchwork costume is accented with a festive white collar, a sharp-­ angled hangover of Pierrot’s ruffled neck-­ dress. The portrait is a 73

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t­ ransitional image which foreshadows the withdrawal of silent, white lightness and the entry of wily, action-­packed Harlequin iconography. Both Macke and Marc were German painters influenced by French Modernism; their cultural passions were European, not nationalistic. Macke’s self-­ portrait contrasts strongly with Arnold Schönberg’s very direct self-­ portraits in Vienna. In Blue Self Portrait (1910), for example, Schönberg confronts the viewer with a sharp, intense gaze. (Macke’s reluctant Clown offers only an expression of anxiety, as if waiting and expecting the worst.) Schönberg’s electric Pierrot in blue face overtly expresses theatricality; the eyes of this mask-­face are visionary, almost lunatic. The contemporary discoveries in music, like Schönberg’s atonal and dissonant work, directly affected Macke’s as well as Marc’s use of colour. For Macke the influence resulted from an association with chromaesthesia (coloured hearing); for Marc it was more a condition of synaesthesia (seeing sounds, perhaps). Whatever the circumstance, the noise of bombardment, which Schönberg would also experience, put an end to their aesthetic experimentation. Kandinsky’s earlier musings on ‘soul vibrations’ and synaesthesia were apt. He had explained that ‘any impression of taste communicates itself directly to the soul, and thence to the other organs of sense (in this case, the eyes)’.68 Schönberg, as painter and composer, essayed all tones both visually and aurally, as finely demonstrated in Peindre l’âme (To paint the soul) at the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme in Paris in 2017.69 For soldiers familiar with European culture, the Pierrot figure was a reassuring memory, particularly among those most familiar with British Victorian culture. The childlike version of Pierrot, too naïve to notice the angst of modernity, represents an Other Place. For men and women active in the war, playing Pierrot silenced bombs and bullets. Commonwealth soldiers on Europe’s battlefields took great comfort in disguising as clowning Pierrots when beyond the trenches. A 1917 photograph from the State Library of New South Wales records a group of amateur performers called the ‘Anzac Coves’. The Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) soldiers posed for a postcard image: ‘Anzac Cove Pierrot Troupe, Direct from the Firing Line’.70 Fifteen military men, including a dozen clown travesties with white hats and collars, pose in a documentary photo from a location on the Gallipoli peninsula in the Dardanelles. Hundreds of British and Commonwealth soldiers died at Turkish-­controlled Gallipoli, including a number of First People (Aboriginal) Australians, during a bungled attack in which camouflage served no purpose. Pierrot and Harlequin Disguised Harlequin began to replace Pierrot as the Italian comedy figure of choice for modern artists in France. Pierrot, a figure steeped in nostalgia, better served as a counterpoint to the brutality of trench warfare. The mask of Pierrot as lyrical bohemian did not adequately represent the artist of 1914. Pierrot, 74

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always a fringe figure, offered little to a Dada attitude, for example. The mask, he or she, is a servant role whose habitat remains mostly apart from war and conflict. Pierrot lived very well in the Cold War, for instance; the mask had a successful revival (or survival) in eastern Europe long after Pierrots appeared outmoded in the West. Actually, from Marseilles to Minsk and from Bremen to Bucharest the mask played well in late Modernism. The assumed Czech roots of the Deburau family inspired white-­ faced mime and pantomime figures throughout the Soviet Union, but particularly in Lithuania, Poland and Russia. Some of this work was experimental, political and provocative, but much of it remained sentimental. Pierrot does not really fit the role of avant-­ garde symbol. Within the theatre community, Harlequin is a more prominent feature of the commedia dell’arte; Pierrot, in ageist thought, is for mature people who prefer smiles and tears to belly laughs. Harlequin is vibrant and active; Pierrot is popular. Neither is fully ‘classical’, but Harlequin makes far more appearances in dramatic literature. There is some evidence for marking Harlequin as a symbol of drama and theatre and Pierrot as a marketing device for performance and non-­verbal theatre. While both are servant roles who surface in aristocratic contexts, they primarily partner with the working class. One could state that Ubu is King, Harlequin serves the soup, Pierrot sets the table. Pierrot is very much a French invention and not exclusively Parisian; the south of France contributed to the mask’s development. Few Italian elements remain in the Pierrot role, while Harlequin retains an Italian sharp-­edged rhythm. Both masks, as migrant figures, assimilated well to French culture; Pierrot is an example of complete acculturation. Harlequin’s facility with socialisation allows encultured behaviour; Harlequin’s self-­ awareness is greater. As performers, Dario Fo employed Arlecchino elements in his acting and storytelling; Marcel Marceau created a Pierrot variation. The degree of animality evident in the masks distinguishes difference, as the non-­human element is greater in the Harlequin. Linguistic distinctions, particularly the acoustic qualities of the words, also differentiate. The English Harlequin, somewhat maudlin in tone, arrived from the monotone French Arlequin. The gently polished French Arlequin derived from the uneven and edgier Italian Arlecchino, musically more percussive. With each layer of French acculturation, the rustic, devilish, fauvist, primate qualities of the role were further domesticated. Fully acculturated Harlequin arrived in London with wildness tamed; he is clever, conniving and opportunistic. This is somewhat unfortunate dramaturgically, as ‘animals function as guides to previously unexplored psychic landscapes’; masquerades sometimes benefit from the wild animal. Jeanne Addison Roberts, in The Shakespearean Wild, comments that beastliness can ‘foster subtle modifications of the cultural citadel’.71 Zoomorphic elements in Arlecchino, and less prominently in Arlequin 75

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and Harlequin, provide access to the grotesque in image, gesture and action. The mask of Pierrot sustains the feline without the wildcat-­ ness of Arlecchino; Pierrot is fully domesticated. Even in name, the tone is acoustically soft-­touched and saccharine. Pierrot sounds good in French; Harlequin sounds better as Arlecchino in Italian. Pierrot is an open canvas that can accept and adapt with agility; Arlecchino is more set and strictly limited, open to adventure and pugnacious encounters. Typically, but not always, a ‘he’, Arlecchino is compact, angular, acrobatic and prone to high leaping. Pierrot illustrates, extends, curves, twists and stares, with occasional, less fauvist leaps. Modern artists blended the masquerade signs and qualities of Harlequin and Pierrot, creating hybrids in the early twentieth century. The paintings of Picasso certainly demonstrate this phenomenon. Picasso’s Seated Harlequin of 1901, a reflective, blue-­tinged but white-­faced figure at a café table, is partly Harlequinesque with his black-­and blue-­squared body suit. The costume is accented with white, ruffled cuffs and wide collar. Positioned in an attitude more typical of Pierrot than of Harlequin, the urbane thinker contrasts strongly with both Picasso’s Saltimbanque figures and his later, cubist, pieced-­together Harlequins. While termed a ‘surrogate self-­portrait’ by one critic,72 this Pierrot disguised as Harlequin disappears from the Picasso canvas for quite some time. It suggests Picasso’s interest in the idea of Harlequin, but it does not yet suggest his personal investment in the role of Harlequin. The 1905 At the Lapin Agile enacts this change; Harlequin stands at a bar with a glass of wine beside a Parisienne. The cuff frills are gone and the ruffled collar is now a small scarf tied into a knot. The blue squares have converted to triangles of yellow, orange and green (the three colours of the medieval fool). This figure is a self-­reflection of the Catalan artist on Montmartre, sullen but social. Artists’ interpretations of commedia dell’arte figures, particularly Harlequin, burgeoned in Cubism. The costume triangles appear destined to move, repeat and overlap, suggesting their efficacy for camouflage painting. Picasso dressed for war, in a game of disguise, when he costumed himself as a soldier in Georges Braque’s military uniform of 1911 (Picasso kept his distance from the First World War). Picasso posed for a photograph of this moment, taken by Braque in his artist studio.73 The head is angled in a similar manner to the self-­portrait that Picasso painted in the Montmartre bar. By the time the war arrived, and Braque had headed out there to be wounded in his uniform, Picasso was tearing up the patchwork and fragmenting the Harlequin body in his paintings. A few Picasso, war-­era Harlequins retain a full-­body image­– w ­ ith the upper body fully united­– ­while others section off and immediately decapitate. An image of Harlequin with disjointed neck (the ‘superb’ double-­headed Arlequin of 1915)74 is in the Museum of Modern Art collection in New York. It breaks with Picasso’s earlier work in numerous ways. Jean Cocteau, Henri Matisse 76

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and Gertrude Stein all marked this moment of Harlequin guillotined as a breakthrough event. It is seen as the beginning of Picasso’s self-­identification with Harlequin, or more accurately, Arlecchino. Picasso abandoned the enduring image of Pierrot until his painting of a calm figure with mask, painted in Rome near the end of the war: Seated Pierrot (1918).75 The featured image at Munich’s Pierrot: Melancholie und Maske exhibition at the Haus der Kunst in 1995, this Pierrot is seated in flowing folds of off-­white fabric, with brushed lines of pastel colours dripping down the blouse. The whiteness is stained or textured with vertical lines of colour in the fabric folds. It is as if the rainbow dyes of the Harlequin costume have dripped from above and drained on to the still torso of the actor. The accented whites extend to the rounded cuffs, collar and large, wide-­brimmed hat. The wide-­eyed young man with languid attitude gazes out of the frame; he is mostly expressionless and wears no white make-­up. To his left on a table is an open book; he holds a leather, commedia dell’arte half-­mask in his right hand. The theatricality of the composition is heightened by the indigo, chiaroscuro-­look background behind the seated figure. (The after-­ performance, after-­ mask moment suggests a previous moment of shock, as if the man was recently called up to battle in the final days of the war.) The seated position of the man, with left elbow leaning on the table, prompts one to recall the Braque photograph of 1911 where Picasso gazes out of the frame in the same direction, only with his right elbow leaning on a table. Pierrots also reappeared in France, including in a Juan Gris series of Pierrots and Harlequins in post-­war 1919, where beheading is also sidestepped. Each head-­skull image (tête-­crâne in Brigitte Léal’s term) doubles itself and jolts horizontally but ultimately conjoins with the neck, which is firmly attached to the torso. While cubist-­influenced deconstructions of the bodies persisted, as in Picasso’s Arlequin et femme au collier (1917), the human figure is easily decipherable. Some of the figures are like finely cut-­out paper dolls, sliced and reassembled. The Gris images are light, ghostly and almost magical. The Picasso masked man and necklaced woman jostle about in profile; they are not static images as they awkwardly tilt, advance and dance. Later, in 1924, André Derain once again blended and shared aspects of Arlequin et Pierrot in his 1924 painting, exhibited at the Musée-­Orangerie in Paris. This pair of melancholic musicians nearly establishes the two popular performers as identical twins with unlike costumes, who play while evoking a mood of absence and overwhelming loss. The German painter (and friend of Macke, Marc and Klee) Heinrich Campendonk, in Germany and Holland, painted mixed-­signal Harlequin and Pierrot images both before and after the war. Pierrot holds a red half-­mask in images from 1916 and 1925. Costumed in dark colours with colourful triangles or curved forms, the troubled solitary one’s once-­white face is smudged with grey. Pierrot with Mask (1916) sits staring with his guitar and 77

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green skullcap. More deeply distressed while seated in Pierrot with Sunflower (1925), Pierrot’s expression darkens. The red mask, as alien exoticism, is a mystery, held without care and not regarded. The large once-­white Pierrot collar remains in all the images, including a 1925 Harlekin: youthful, white-­ capped, open-­gazed and holding a black half-­mask, as if actually contemplating its use.76 These blended Harl-­errot images suggest the provisional nature of the commedia dell’arte figures, sufficiently elastic to be modified for a northern, Dutch-­German adaptation. Pierrot in the north sits with his mask, while already masked in paint. Both double-­masking Pierrots are amnesiac figures, stunned and confused by their red loups, uncertain of what to do or how to don the mask. Green-­faced, empty-­handed Pierrot, kneeling alfresco in Pierrot (with Snake) (1923), recounts his tale with increased peripheral awareness and hesitant animality. Flanked by a serpent, a rooster, a nude woman, a ringing bell, a clock, a mountain and a moon, Pierrot is he ‘for whom the bell tolls’. Pirouettes on Eastern Fronts Before the Pierrot music stops, I insert a brief side-­trip to the Baltic States where silence is always treated well. Finely unveiled in Âmes sauvages: le symbolisme dans les pays baltes at the Musée Quai d’Orsay in 2018,77 the work of triple-­careered Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis bridges the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As humble, isolated, distanced cousin of Gustave Klimt and Fernand Khnopff, the Lithuanian’s cycle of seven paintings, Funeral Symphony, parades cloaked and camouflaged figures in procession. In synaesthetic gestures, Čiurlionis­– ­an early modernist painter, choir conductor and composer­– ­provokes a dreamscape in acoustic and pastel hues. As if disguising space while evoking it, scores of hooded, draped and head-­bent phantoms slowly glide forward over a series of terrains. The viewer is immersed in the Čiurlionis soundscape amplified in the gallery (the National Museum of Art, Kaunas). The file of unidentified mourners is interrupted only by a dark-­toned coffin and its bearers; and finally, there is the white skeleton with the white-­ bladed scythe who straddles the wooden casket. The large, white skull, in profile view, rules the apex of the skeleton and contemplates dancing in the moonlight; the processional participants of the ritual departure conceal any gaze at the single-­eyeholed coffin-­rider with ‘savage soul’. Čiurlionis conjures up the numinous in his seven-­staged storyboard of the Funeral Symphony­ – ­a silent, cinematic, painted-­music pantomime for passing Pierrots. In the early years of the twentieth century, when American writers abroad were making a significant mark on European literary culture, it seemed possible that new ideas would radiate eastwards from San Francisco, Chicago or New York. It was challenging to consider that an alternative ‘new’ could originate in eastern Europe. Modern performance, painting and sculpture in greater Russia remained rabble-­ rousing despite the political volatility, 78

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however. Serge Fauchereau elaborates upon the modern approaches to scenography taken by the Ballet Russes.78 From 1909 visual artists collaborated on design elements for the company in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of St Petersburg. Cultural exchange with France, Germany and Italy was assumed in Russia; the Petersburg artist community was au courant. Serge Diaghilev wanted the productions of the Ballets Russes to lead rather than follow; he insisted that the visual aspects of the ballets display up-­to-­date and avant-­garde trends. To this end Diaghilev did not employ established professional theatre designers; he considered their work too conventional. Costumes and scenery for the Ballets Russes were created by working artists with innovative ideas for spectacular, exotic visual statements. It was important for Diaghilev to present surprise after surprise­– ­to appear ahead of his time. A primary objective of the Ballets Russes was to pioneer and prove that St Petersburg was not a provincial outpost.79 Between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the onset of the First World War, a long list of composers, writers, painters, sculptors, directors and choreographers assured the presence of a cultural Eastern Front. Diaghilev’s primary collaborators for a new aesthetic were Alexandre Benois and Léon Bakst; both were insiders in the modern ‘Monde de l’art’ community in St Petersburg. They inspired the groundbreaking, cutting-­edge look of the Ballets Russes. They were integral, also, in the employment of contemporary artists Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov from the Russian avant-­ garde. Ballets Russes costumes disguised and reformed the ballet dancer body of the past. The inspirations were from the inside (lubok images and Russian folk culture) and from the outside (Orientalism). With its shock-­effect tactics, the Ballet Russes was an ongoing masquerade ball. The Eugène Druet photograph from 1910, Vaslav Nijinski dans ‘La danse siamoise’ des Orientales, tells the story rather well.80 The Nijinsky pose is a construction that begins with crossed-­over classical ballet feet and extends to a fez-­like hat with tassel. The forearms parallel to the earth accentuate angled wrists with fingers spread and placed into hybrid positions, combining South Asian theatre with Thai-­Cambodian dance. The dancer poised in a Paris park, it seems, suppresses a smile while meditating and balancing with closed eyes. The combined coding of costume and physical attitude produce an effect that generalises the Asian ‘other’, while admitting a hint of Italian comedy on the side: pirouetting exoticism for hybrid Harlequinades. The influence of the Ballets Russes was global. And as the European empires formed alliances, Diaghilev set out on the high seas for a world tour to the Americas and beyond. As with Zürich Dada after the start of the war, the increased visibility of women artists and writers was evident in Russia, including the painter Goncharova, who exhibited in Paris in 1910, and the poet Anna Akhmatova. The Russian futurist theatre, as recently highlighted by Robert 79

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Leach, featured disruptive, attention-­getting disguise.81 Leach details the use of painting the face as a means of individual expression and representation of linkage between art and daily life in their futurist project. The character identifications paraded by painters and writers such as David Burlyuk announced the infiltration of their work into the domestic sphere in 1913, with the manifestation of a futurist manifesto by Ilya Zdanevich and Mikhail Larionov: ‘Why We Paint Ourselves’. After the outbreak of the war Switzerland emerged as a destination for many who could not accept the justification for this conflict or who wanted to avoid conscription into a country’s military forces. The Swiss cities of Geneva and Zürich experienced an immediate influx of war resisters, artists and writers, which continued unabated throughout the four years of combat. East Europeans were among those travelling west to neutral Switzerland, including several Russians active in the arts communities in Germany. Alsace and Lorraine bilingual artists, the sculptor-­painter Jean Arp and the poet-­ playwright Yvan Goll, were two of the first to arrive in Zürich; the French dramatist, essayist, novelist, art historian and acknowledged pacifist Romain Rolland was soon to follow. The Cabaret Voltaire in German-­speaking Zürich became the creative centre for an international assembly of activists, war avoiders and disengaged soldiers. The cross-­disciplinary and international programme of the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916 was initiated by German poet Hugo Ball, his partner Emmy Hennings, a visual artist, Jean Arp and Berliner Richard Huelsenbeck, an expressionist writer. From Romania, Tristan Tzara, already a prominent literary figure, and the visual artist-­architect Marcel Janco joined the group of dadists, as did the Romanian artist Arthur Segal. As Huelsenbeck claimed, the community of Dada artists had direct influences from all the major modernist movements across Europe: Cubism, Expressionism and both Italian and Russian Futurism. Artist Hans Richter recalled that Zürich had a ‘strange atmosphere’ in 1916, where fundamentally different people could unite as a community and agitate.82 Disguise and masquerade were important elements of performance at the Cabaret Voltaire. The widely circulated, anonymous photograph of Hugo Ball in the ‘Bishop Dress’ exemplifies the collaborative improvisation that emerged from this venue. Ball wears an aerodynamic but cumbersome, cardboard costume-­container. This 23 June 1916 image and event are iconic despite uncertainties concerning the authorship of both the costume and its photographer. Described as multi-­coloured, the encasing structure features a cylindrical body-­core shell with paper-­pipe legs and paper-­pipe hat. Fauchereau describes the image as part robot and part armoured fowl.83 Both Ball and Janco declared themselves the builders of the costume. Most likely ‘the truth lies somewhere between the two’, as Eugène Ionesco would say. These scenographic artists were not working in isolation; Dada Zürich performance always featured 80

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some degree of collective, cooperative creation. The body-­ form structure contains elements of both sculptural and architectural input. The container performance showcased Ball reciting a nonsense text full of alliteration, read from papers placed upon a music stand. The recital of this noise composition or scripted glossolalia (perhaps referencing African song texts and Arnold Schönberg’s Sprech-­Gesang) was accompanied by laborious gestures performed by arms with extended-­finger hand masks. It was an insult and outrage to many; it was an appropriate message to the belligerent powers for others. This recitation was soon followed by other Dada poems. Fauchereau recounts that Dadaists Huelsenbeck, Janco and Tzara performed a trilingual text a week or so later, a simultaneous reading in English, French and German. This performance foregrounded the languages of several of the warmongers.84 Painters and writers, Ball asserted, are linked in their love of the unfamiliar, the strange and the absurd.85 As with the musicality of sound, Dada artists approached everyday objects as material for their performances. Objects, particularly Janco’s masks, can be pictured as glossolalia in form, as well as anthropomorphic abstractions of living characters and personages. (One mask represented Tristan Tzara.) Janco’s ephemeral paper masks were structures built for a few performances; they were constructed from designs that resemble cubo-­futurist drawings. The three painted cardboard structures displayed in the Modern Art Gallery at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, from 1919, are not the same masks used at the Cabaret Voltaire. It is unlikely that paper props worn, manipulated and possibly tossed about the stage a century ago would be in a condition suitable for hanging today. Romanian Janco built the masks in Switzerland, a mask-­rich culture like that which he knew in the Balkans. Tom Sandqvist explores this cultural intermingling in Dada East: The Romanians of Cabaret Voltaire. Dada performance demonstrated principles that were theorised and advocated by Yvan Goll, particularly scale, exaggeration, the grotesque, body masking, voice disguising, playing the opposite and all art that instructs adults to be re-­formed as children.86 Writing in Le Surdrame in Paris soon after the 1917 Parade performance, Goll declared his intent to defy realism and fully display the hidden that the drama of the ‘real’ conceals, citing Guillaume Apollinaire’s use of the term surreal. Nearly concurrent with Swiss Dada, a counter-­cultural, vegetarian community was thriving in the mountains to the south in Ascona near Locarno, in an Italian-­speaking canton of Switzerland. Monte Verità was founded by a collection of anarchists, spiritualists and ‘naturalists’ from the north (particularly Holland and Germany) at the beginning of the twentieth century. The site had been significant to the Roman Church for centuries; religious teachers and scholars built a sophisticated complex of spaces with spiritual importance in this village above Lake Maggiore. In wartime, pacifists and artists from across 81

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Europe passed through or took temporary residence at Monte Verità. The list is long and varied: dancer Isadora Duncan, historian/philosopher Mircea Eliade, psychoanalyst Otto Gross, writer Hermann Hesse, psychiatrist Carl Jung, artists Otto and Atya Van Rees, sociologist Max Weber and painter Marianne von Werefkin, not to mention scores of women dancers who had enormous impact upon the future of modern dance in Europe. Rudolf Laban arrived in Ascona in 1913 and soon established a school of dance. Laban had spent many of his younger years in Sarajevo and Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina; he arrived from Hellerau near Dresden. Laban had trained with Émile Jaques-­Dalcroze, who taught that the actor ‘requires the same heightened sensitivity to rhythm as the musician’.87 He was also introduced to Swiss designer Adolph Appia’s theories regarding the need for the actor to move like ‘a three-­dimensional instrument within a dynamic environment of light and shadow’.88 Laban worked surrounded by nature, dancing on the grass with bare feet. Students wore loose-­fitting, free-­flowing clothing as work uniforms; they scandalised the community by occasionally dancing nude in the outdoors. Philosophically, Laban wanted to rediscover the essentials of movement by getting closer to the earth itself and by eliminating cultural affectations. The acculturation at play at Monte Verità began with forgetting learned movement and starting afresh as if reincarnated. Urban, modernist anxieties were tossed to the wind; dance was accompanied by drumbeats and the striking of a gong. In the early years Laban promoted ‘une danse féministe’ that could, he suggested, allow women to escape the influence of men.89 It appears that it was a challenge to escape his influence, however. Women and men arrived in Ascona from Dresden, Geneva, Hamburg, Munich and even England and Russia, including, most importantly, Mary Wigman. Masquerading of the head and body emerged in dancers’ inventive output and in Laban’s choreography at Monte Verità. Wigman, like Laban a student of Émile Jaques-­Dalcroze, created her famous Hexentanz (Witch Dance) in 1913 and 1914. In this piece she displayed her discovery of the ‘primitive’ within, and she manifested an ability to express simultaneous aspects of both beast and woman. Wigman’s solo performances, as well as her choreographies utilising full-­face masks, originated in her early work in Ascona and Zürich. Laban himself performed a solo mask dance at the Cabaret Voltaire; he also collaborated with Wigman on a masked dance in Munich. Sophie Taüber and other Laban company dancers performed a choreographic work at the Cabaret Voltaire based upon Native American themes. Costumes and movements emulated Hopi Indian rituals and designs. Monte Verità dancers under the direction of Laban produced a night-­time, outdoor performance on 18 August 1917 entitled Sang an die Sonne, which utilised plant masquerades and head masks that were ritualistically tossed into a fire after use. In a second production, Die Wunderblumen, ancient rites from Mexico, Egypt, Africa and 82

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Asia were the inspiration. Productions were titled in three languages: French, German and Italian.90 During the war, Laban, Wigman and Taüber moved on to Zürich where Emmy Hennings was developing performance work with marionettes. The exchange of ideas between artists in the two Swiss alternative communities also included the German painter and film-­ maker Hans Richter and the Russian-­born Der Blaue Reiter painter Marianne von Werefkin, who moved to Zürich, then Monte Verità, from Munich (without painter and partner Alexej von Jawlensky). Paul and Lily Klee, friends of Werefkin, also interacted with both communities. Mask performance and dance linked the Cabaret Voltaire and Monte Verità. Marcel Janco’s action-­ packed, claustrophobic, sharp-­edged painting of stage and spectator interaction at the Cabaret Voltaire­ – ­a lost work­– ­documents Dada performance events in a black-­and-­white photograph of the original. The image, featured on the cover of this book, concentrates elements of multiple ‘happenings’ into one moment of dynamic theatre. As colour-enhanced composite of intense, anarchistic performance in a jam-­packed theatre space, the c. 1970 cover screenprint preserves the Dada atmosphere of 1916. The spectator discomfort experienced in the Cabaret Voltaire may have, as intended, produced an effect similar to Fernand Léger’s graphic representations­ – ­active words-­in-­colour on paper­– ­of the violent First World War experience of death, as recounted in Blaise Cendrars’ poem J’ai tué (I killed). Spectators and assailed auditors who may have witnessed the Zürich bedlam include author-­pacifist Annette Kolb, sculptor Augusto Giacometti, psychiatrist Carl Jung, poet Else Lasker-­Schüler, revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, painter Marcel Słodki, essayist Roman Rolland, etcher Frans Masereel, artist Arthur Segal and novelist Stefan Zweig. As the mother of a German soldier killed in combat, Käthe Kollwitz understood already in the 1920s that ‘the First World War never really ended’,91 in the words of Susan R. Grayzel. Kollwitz masks her face with a hand in Nachdenkende Frau (Woman in Thought), a lithograph illustrating distress and a profound sense of loss. As Grayzel wrote decades later, the First World War ‘segued into a post-­war world prepared for the horrors of scientifically enhanced warfare to come’.92 Alone in the north, in Königsberg in East Prussia, then Berlin and Dresden, Kollwitz shared her pacifist leanings in her images and also in her political actions. The stern, sculpted statement made by her facial features masks nothing; even her closed eyes demand attention. Initially Kollwitz’s playwright and sculptor friend Ernst Barlach celebrated Germany’s military might with warrior imagery such as that of The Avenger (1914). The aggressive stance of this heavily draped, advancing aggressor, balanced in forward attack with blade in hand, is a celebration of a medieval, belligerent berserker. After enlisting in 1915, however, Barlach’s feelings about 83

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war reversed. After he was medically discharged, he aligned himself with the radical, socialist views of Kollwitz. In a memorial sculpture commissioned for Magdeburg Cathedral, Barlach critiqued military heroism with helmeted, troubled soldiers and distraught civilians hiding their faces in distress. Six wooden figures display six states of sorrow and misery in an uneasy assembly that stands as the antithesis of pride near the grave of a war victim. In 1936 both Kollwitz and Barlach were deemed ‘degenerate artists’ from the Baltic north, and much of their work was confiscated. Barlach’s Der Schwebende (Suspended Angel) commemorates the atrocious First World War. The suspended figure is a bronze, horizontal-­hanging body in a heavy robe. With head lifted to look forwards, the mask-­like face, with eyes closed, is framed by an almost square page-­boy head of hair. Like the faces of the figures in Kollwitz’s Krieg woodcut prints of 1922, the flying angel reminds one of the woman holding a child in The Widow II. Kollwitz, the assumed model for the sculpture, nobly suspends and floats in a quiet brick cathedral in Güstrow, ‘Berlachstadt’, never completely at rest. To the south, diverging stylistically from memorials from Malta to the Isle of Man, Constantin Brancuşi’s Endless Column (1937) stands tall in a provincial town near the Carpathian mountains. In Târgu-­ Jiu, Romania, Brancuşi’s ascending 23-­ metre tower is part of a trio of outdoor sculptures, which includes his Gate of the Kiss and his Table of Silence. Brancuşi, the modernist sculptor from Paris, created this colossal, vertical war memorial, and its low, quiet, horizontal counterpoints, to venerate the soldiers who defended Târgu-­Jiu from the advancing Central Powers. The Endless Column’s non-­ representational design is, in a sense, simple and serene. It allows space for the viewer to look and to respond. One can see it as a line-­up of three-­dimensional rhomboids; it can also be seen as a column-­accumulation of the lost and the truncated. The landscape of re-­formed heads, gas-­masked, paper-­masked or streamlined like Brancuşi’s Muse sculptures, rolls on in one Endless Column. The solitary, abstract pillar in situ in Romania or the wooden mini-­version in the Museum of Modern Art, New York (which visited the Centre Pompidou in 2019), is a modernist icon. The outdoor column can be read as sixteen stacked skull-­heads that ascend as four-­sided cranial forms­– ­each with four gazing profiles. The heads look north, east, south and west, contemplating Minsk, Odessa, Salonika and Sarajevo. As landscape and bodyscape, this noble memorial to an endless, less-­than-­noble war features cubic ‘eggs’ rather than the oval ‘eggs’ displayed by Brancuşi at the Armory Show (1913).93 This marker, and its wooden shadow, is beyond the pale in all its aspects.

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Notes   1. See Daniel Couty, ‘Théâtre moderne: le temps des metteurs en scène’, in Couty and Rey (eds), Le Théâtre en France, p. 71.   2. Segel quoted in Taxidou, Modernism and Performance, pp. 21–2.   3. Ibid., p. 22.  4. Jarry, Ubu (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), p. 310, quoted in Schumacher, Alfred Jarry and Guillaume Apollinaire, p. 101.   5. Schumacher quoted in Popenhagen, ‘Embodiments of the Mask’, p. 77.  6. Schumacher, Alfred Jarry and Guillaume Apollinaire, p. 102.   7. Ibid., pp. 102–3.   8. Jarry quoted in ibid., p. 102.   9. Ibid., p. 103. 10. Popenhagen, ‘Embodiments of the Mask’, p. 65. 11. States, ‘Playing in Lyric Time: Beckett’s Voice Plays’, p. 462. 12. Ibid., p. 462. 13. Taxidou, Modernism and Performance, pp. 34, 41. 14. Roman Paska, ‘The Inanimate Incarnate’, in Feher et al. (eds), Fragments for a History of the Human Body, p. 412. 15. Bell, ‘Puppet and Object Performance’, in Cheng and Cody (eds), Reading Contemporary Performance, p. 253. 16. Henry Pernet, ‘Theoretical Perspectives’, in Eliade (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion, pp. 260–1. 17. See Josette Féral, ‘Les paradoxes de la théâtralité’ and Janelle Reinelt, ‘La politique du discours’, in Féral (ed.), Théâtre/Public, pp. 8–11 and pp. 12–20. 18. Andrews and O’Sullivan, Objects and Affects. 19. Edward Gordon Craig, ‘The Actor and the Über=Marionette’, The Mask, 1.2, pp. 3–15. 20. Craig, On the Art of the Theatre, p. 82. 21. Philippe Thiébaut, ‘La modernité et l’antique à l’aube du xxième siècle’, in Cogeval et al. (eds), Masques de Carpeaux à Picasso, p. 191. 22. Patrick Le Bœuf, ‘Edward Gordon Craig et le renouveau du masque théâtrale’, in Cogeval et al. (eds), Masques de Carpeaux à Picasso, p. 202. 23. Ibid., p. 203. 24. Andrews and O’Sullivan, Objects and Affects, pp. 46–9. 25. Le Bœuf, ‘Edward Gordon Craig et le renouveau du masque théâtrale’, in Cogeval et al. (eds), Masques de Carpeaux à Picasso, p. 201. 26. Ibid. 27. Taxidou, Modernism and Performance, p. 25. 28. Le Bœuf, ‘Edward Gordon Craig et le renouveau du masque théâtrale’, in Cogeval et al. (eds), Masques de Carpeaux à Picasso, p. 204, quoting Craig, ‘A Note on Masks’, The Mask, 1.1, pp. 9–12. 29. Ibid. 30. Eynat-­Confino, Beyond the Mask, p. 70. 31. Claudel, Claudel on Theatre, p. 55. 32. Ibid., p. 55. 33. Patrick Le Bœuf, ‘Edward Gordon Craig et la marionnette’, in Le Bœuf (ed.), Craig et la marionnette, p. 20. 34. Ibid. 35. Robert Abirached, ‘L’acteur et son jeu’, in Couty and Rey (eds), Le Théâtre en France, pp. 151, 153.

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36. Le Bœuf, ‘Edward Gordon Craig et la marionnette’, in Le Bœuf (ed.), Craig et la marionnette, p. 27. 37. Steichen quoted in Ewing (ed.), The Century of the Body, pp. 58–9. 38. Hughes, Shock of the New, p. 124. 39. Conrad, Modern Times, Modern Places, p. 77. 40. Bennett, Vibrant Matter, pp. viii–ix. 41. Le Bœuf, ‘Edward Gordon Craig et la marionnette’, in Le Bœuf (ed.), Craig et la marionnette, p. 19. 42. Taxidou, The Mask, pp. 79–109. 43. See Ron Popenhagen, ‘Adolphe Appia’ and ‘Émile Jaques-­Dalcroze’, in Williams (ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Stage Actors and Acting, pp. 31–2, 276. 44. Sophie Makariou, ‘Ombres, masques et autres forms de théâtre’, in Samuel (ed.), Du Nô à Mata Hari, p. 23. 45. Katia Légeret-­Manochhaya, ‘Les Premières Scènes exotiques françaises’, in Samuel (ed.), Du Nô à Mata Hari, p. 220. 46. Taxidou, The Mask, p. 95. 47. Ibid., pp. 220–1. 48. See illustration #66, ‘Article de Kansas City Star’, 1910, in Le Bœuf (ed.), Craig et la marionnette, pp. 58–9. 49. See Le Bœuf, ‘Edward Gordon Craig et la marionnette’, in Le Bœuf (ed.), Craig et la marionnette, pp. 27, 32–3. See also illustration #64, ‘Photographie anonyme’, p. 56. 50. Le Bœuf, ‘Edward Gordon Craig et la marionnette’, in Le Bœuf (ed.), Craig et la marionnette, p. 19. 51. Coutin, Tromper l’ennemi, pp. 14–15. 52. Ibid., pp. 43, 31. 53. Ibid., p. 181. 54. Grayzel, ‘Defence Against the Indefensible’, p. 422. 55. Benjamin quoted in Hughes and Blom (eds), Nothing but the Clouds Unchanged, p. 4. 56. Grayzel, ‘Defence Against the Indefensible’, p. 423. 57. Ibid., p. 433. 58. Brigitte Léal, ‘Du visage au masque’, in Cogeval et al. (eds), Masques de Carpeaux à Picasso, p. 211. 59. Ibid. 60. Ewing (ed.), The Century of the Body, pp. 56–7. 61. Feo, ‘Invisibility: Memory, Masks and Masculinities in the Great War’, p. 25. 62. See Maurice Mahut’s illustration in Coutin, Tromper l’ennemi, p. 31. 63. Coutin, Tromper l’ennemi, pp. 116–38. 64. Isabelle Limousin, ‘Picasso et la première guerre mondiale’, in Picasso et la guerre, pp. 71–9. 65. Picasso et la guerre, p. 334. 66. Coutin, Tromper l’ennemi, pp. 189–90. 67. Auguste Macke, ‘Die Masken’, in Kandinsky and Marc (eds), Der Blaue Reiter, pp. 21–6. 68. See Hughes, Shock of the New, pp. 299–300. 69. See Arnold Schönberg: peindre l’âme (exh. cat.). 70. Australian War Archive photo in the exhibition Life Interrupted: Personal Diaries from World War I, Sydney, 2014. 71. Roberts, The Shakespearean Wild, pp. 75–6. 72. Leslie, Pablo Picasso, p. 16. 73. Picasso et la guerre, p. 12, fig. 1.

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74. Cocteau quoted in Limousin, ‘Picasso et la première guerre mondiale’, in Picasso et la guerre, pp. 73–4. 75. Also titled simply Pierrot or elsewhere Pierrot with Mask. 76. See Kellein, Pierrot, pp. 169–70. 77. See Rodolphe Rapetti, ‘Terra incognita’, in Rapetti (ed.), Âmes sauvage, pp. 20–2. 78. Fauchereau, Avant-­gardes du XXième siècle, pp. 231–57. 79. Peter Rand, ‘Introduction’, in Purvis et al. (eds), Les Ballets Russes, pp. 7–11. 80. See postcard, N3 Nijinski, Département de Estampes et de la Photographie, Bibliotèque nationale de France. 81. See Leach, Russian Futurist Theatre, pp. 20–1. 82. Richter quoted in Fauchereau, Avant-­gardes du XXième siècle, p. 318. 83. Fauchereau, Avant-­gardes du XXième siècle, p. 319. 84. Ibid., p. 318. 85. Ibid., p. 318. 86. Yvan Goll, ‘Le Surdrame’, in L’Expressionisme dans le théâtre européen, pp. 359–60. 87. Popenhagen, ‘Émile Jaques-­Dalcroze’, in Williams (ed.), Cambridge Encyclopedia of Stage Actors and Acting, p. 276. 88. Ron Popenhagen, ‘Adolphe Appia’, in Williams (ed.), Cambridge Encyclopedia of Stage Actors and Acting, p. 31. 89. Noschis, Monte Verità, p. 93. 90. Ibid., pp. 99–100; Manning, Ecstasy and the Demon, pp. 77–9. 91. Grayzel, ‘Defence Against the Indefensible’, p. 434. 92. Ibid. 93. Blake, The Armory Show at 100.

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4

FEIGNED AND DISTORTED BODYSCAPES

Masquerades, Aspirants and Pretenders Charlie Chaplin’s tramp personage, borrowing from vaudeville, the English clown and Pierrot, evolves into a figure who ‘tricks the enemy’ (to quote the title of Cécile Coutin’s book) without really trying. Chaplin’s naïve ‘mask’ moves from one profession and surrounding context to another in each film, with the mobility demonstrated by a Harlequin caméléonesque. In Shoulder Arms (1918), ‘Charlot’ lands in a First World War boot camp where he trains with the ‘Awkward Squad’. Part boyish Pierrot and part trickster-­without-­ design, Chaplin’s tramp figure marches into the killing fields. The apt French title of this 45-­minute film set in the trenches is Le rêve de Charlot soldat. The film was a serious departure, as cinema directors kept their distance from the war; most films about the First World War did not appear until the 1930s. Shoulder Arms is one bold gesture, replete with kinetic, modernist fragments. Chaplin’s mostly authentic uniform, complete with mousetrap attachment, is a convincing disguise and set-­up for his dream of heroism. Charlot’s role as soldier evolves further when twice uniformed by a full-­body, biomorphic masquerade, as he is camouflaged as a bombed-­out tree trunk. The realistic object-­ image has legs as an absurd structure of disguise which encases the agitated, wide-­eyed Chaplin. The stump uproots and heads into enemy territory where it kicks and slaps the opposition and prompts a chase scene through the forest. The enemy German soldiers are the butts of the visual jokes which culminate 88

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when the Kaiser is captured by a goggle-­clad Chaplin and his French peasant amour. Chaplin, as male tramp comedian, exhibits a liberty for disguising which does not easily transfer to the female comedians of the era, who appear to follow Craig’s directive and remain unmasked­– ­in this instance, pale-­faced. The lovers are rewarded after their escapade; there is no punishment for the masquerading (unlike some women who fought as men in the Great War). Coutin’s work on deceiving or fooling the opposition with camouflage during the First World War documents the historical sourcing of Chaplin’s botanical mask. The ambient tree was not a Chaplin fantasy; the costume’s design varies only slightly from the ‘observation trees’ built by war scenographers who, working in a circus-­arena atelier at Châlons-­sur-­Marne in France, set about set-­ designing the battlefield.1 The pint-­ sized film version of the tree-­mask adapts to Chaplin’s stature, but is also grounded in fact, excepting the split-­ trunk lower zone which allows leg movement for rapid escapes. Camouflaging in Shoulder Arms could have extended even further by citing the faux cow-­carcass huts built to house soldiers hiding and observing the enemy; such bovine body-­masks, rendered with realistic Jersey and Guernsey patterns, mirrored the remains of animals killed by bombs, gas and shells in the war zone. The cows did not warrant the attention given working horses and donkeys, which were assigned gas masks. Soldier-­pretenders, soldier-­malingerers and cross-­dressing soldiers were all features of disguising during the First World War. The military uniform, even prior to its camouflage design, functioned as a unifier, eraser and uni-­form maker. It was not always effective in its intent, however. Given the rapid deployment of troops, the military uniform must have felt, to the wearer, like a costume assigned to an amateur actor for the creation of a tableau vivant. It is not surprising that the frequency of self-­harm (or feigning malady) incidents in the First World War alarmed all. For example, Alon Rachamimov looks at the ‘disruptive comforts of drag’ in Russian prisoner of war camps in a discussion of disguising in a specific war zone context.2 Costuming and performance, as also demonstrated by British and German battle zone theatre companies, was useful as a diversion and as a therapeutic aid in trauma treatment. Frequently referred to as a poet-­boxer-­artist, Swiss-­born francophone Arthur Cravan was a celebrity British soldier-­pretender and nephew of Oscar Wilde. Cravan spent much of the war masquerading as a soldier so that he would not be conscripted into the army. His privileged, neutral-­Swiss birth assisted his hiding game; however, his semi-­pretender avocation of art critic enraged Guillaume Apollinaire. His outrageous commentaries nonetheless entertained modernists Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia. Cravan’s lifestyle, characterised as an expression of the Dada spirit, ultimately led to his untimely death off the coast of Mexico, assuring his notoriety. A century after the fact, details of Cravan’s boat accident remain shrouded in mystery; the incident put an end 89

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to his passionate, but brief marriage to poet Mina Loy in 1918. Cravan had already made headlines as a clever rogue who went head-­to-­head with Jack Johnson in a highly publicised boxing match in a Barcelona outdoor arena in 1916. This popular theatre mismatch was promoted as the amateur white guy versus the professional black guy, a bruising acting exercise for Cravan. Posters for the event have achieved iconic status, as shown by a recent exhibition on portraits of blackness, Le modèle noir de Géricault à Matisse, at the Musée d’Orsay (2019). As noted in Cravan’s reference to his own writing in his review Maintenant, each new episode of his own life ‘eliminates the preceding ones. Let’s be modern!’3 Body Architecture and City Escapes While Paris was under attack from bombs during the war, the city continued to function as a centre of modernist activities. Annette Becker notes a postcard exchange between Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso in which Picasso assures Stein that his work has not been interrupted or destroyed. Alone among most of his close friends, Picasso did not pursue French citizenship by joining the forces. Both Guillaume Apollinaire and Blaise Cendrars selected this route with success, albeit with permanent physical damage. Picasso’s decision was defended by his closest friends, at least most of the time. Apollinaire commented, however, that Picasso would never suffer trauma, disappear or be forgotten because of any war.4 Most agreed that Picasso’s talent was too great and his work too imperative for him to risk injury. (Braque was wounded and traumatised; Cendrars lost his right hand; Apollinaire was grazed on the head and died two years later during the flu pandemic and days before the Armistice.) Picasso was summering in Avignon at the outbreak of the war. Braque and Derain were also in Provence. Both soon left, while Picasso remained in Avignon before returning to Paris. It was in this period that Harlequins started to appear more frequently in Picasso’s work, very often as masked figures. It is significant that Picasso was drawn to the energy and exuberance of Harlequin, a multifaceted figure with acute social awareness when within an assemblage of people. Picasso, like Harlequin, was a pivotal figure. With Paris as his centre, Picasso was the centre of the centre, unless in the presence of Gertrude Stein, when she was central, while understanding Picasso’s centrality. Stein writes in A Completed Portrait of Picasso: ‘If I told him would he like it. Would he like it if I told him.’5 Picasso did a drawing of the wounded Apollinaire in 1916. Apollinaire’s own watercolour self-­portrait of the same year, in which he pictures himself as a ‘masked’ and ‘decapitated’ knight on a black horse, shows blood copiously pouring down the side of the steed and trailing along the ground.6 Le Poète assassin was published the same year with a more realistically conceived Apollinaire figure drawn as a man on a horse, bleeding from his forehead. 90

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The marked and wrapped head of Apollinaire has, over time, accumulated significance as the skull-­icon of the avant-­garde poet. In 1917 Picasso went to Naples to feed his imagination in preparation for a much-­anticipated collaborative project with the Ballets Russes. A celebrity creative team was assembled for this high-­visibility event at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Today, Parade endures as an inventive, modernist spectacle with brilliant design, frolicsome narrative and pioneering music by Erik Satie. The opening performance, organised as a fundraiser for the war effort, ruptured the silence of lights-­out theatres in Paris. Parade’s line-­up of dancing personnages ranged from high-­flyers to prancers and lumbering slow-­movers. The tone of Jean Cocteau’s scenario, with roles for a child, adults and an animal, is simultaneously urbane and rowdy. Performers attempt to attract spectators to enter their venue and watch their performance. Parade reads­ – ­visually and musically­– ­as a circus cavalcade interrupted by vaudevillian numbers: buoyant, colourful and overtly presentational. As realised and noted by the dancers and the producers, the production was not the wartime fare foreseen by spectators. It did not unfold as an assuring, heartwarming tale of soldier, horse and family; it is neither patriotic nor nationalistic. Parade is, however, international and cosmopolitan. It can be seen and heard as an intellectual provocation and as a surreal vision, as Apollinaire noted in the programme. The public reception of the music with machine-­noise elements and the solo, duo and trio ballets­– d ­ anced in popular theatre dress and disguises­– w ­ as mixed; for most, it was a blend of the absurd and the frivolous. For others, the show was a dishonest, Dadaist invasion of the legitimate stage. Perhaps the pleasant and seemingly silly and naïve animal act tilted sympathies in the wrong direction. The horse is, unintentionally, the only soldier in and on Parade. While the painted (semi-­camouflaged) figure has no rider and the choreography is jolly, it is painted in darker tones and there is nothing stopping one from seeing it as a warhorse ‘absent without leave’. The Picasso-­designed costume, topped by a large geometric mask with African motifs, could conger Franz Marc’s horses and subsequently direct one’s mind to other images of trauma. (Deceased soldiers were never far from a spectator’s consciousness.) Such accidental signs from comic, visual choices were unanticipated risks. Cubist painter Picasso was already perceived as sympathetic to Germany and its allies by many Parisians, primarily because of his association with the German-­born Parisian art dealer Daniel-­Henry Kahnweiler. Christian Derouet and Annette Becker detail the business relationship between Picasso and Kahnweiler. Theirs was the most important among the many associations that Kahnweiler established with Parisian artists exploring Cubism.7 In politicised wartime culture, Kahnweiler disseminated Kubisme (from Die Kubismus, published by Kahnweiler) which was German Kunst or art for Germans like the Kaiser. The foreigner ‘Pikasso’ did not realise how rapidly 91

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his modernist work could achieve status as art boche: aggressive, belligerent, German junk. Many Parisian cubists (Braque, Gleizes, Léger, Metzinger, etc.) were French and fighting in the war. Picasso insisted, always, that Cubism was not French but, more expansively, Latin in origin, thereby integrating artists from Catalonia, Italy and Spain (and perhaps Portugal and Romania, as well). Picasso saw no German element in his or any Parisian’s Cubism. The cubist structures built to costume Le Manager américain and Le Manager en habit noir in Parade extended Picasso’s experiments with collage and sculpture into a new, kinetic dimension. Luigi Gallo explains how Picasso’s interaction in Italy with Fortunato Depero provoked this leap into an incorporation of full-­body masks for these two roles. Depero’s futurist design concepts, illustrated in his painting Meccanica di ballerina (1917) and later in Balli plastici (1918), suggest the costuming of actors as mobile sculptures.8 The temptation is to look at the Managers as ambulatory marionettes. The question is: Why are they marionettes if they propel themselves forward and dance in circles of their own volition (as mapped by choreographer Léonide Massine)? Marionettes are not self-­propelled; these fixed-­form figures may move like puppet objects, but they are actually actor-­ dancers in disguise. Picasso’s cardboard creations have immovable sections which are complemented by articulated parts: knees, ankles, feet and some arms and hands. Gallo sees the Managers as fragmented, dehumanised sculptural forms assembled with morsels of material: ‘monuments of synthetic cubism’.9 Picasso understood that they were costumes; Coco Chanel, who financed the execution of all the scenographic designs for Parade, also understood that these remarkable masquerades were fashion statements in paper and paint. Playing the Managers is a troublesome proposition; the actor-­ dancer-­ manipulator wears a type of clothing that does not bend; it is uncooperative and gesture-­resistant. Body-­part articulation is limited as large sections of the body centre must move as one. Only feet, fingers, hands and arms can function in isolation, restricting many expressive actions. Displacement, however, is possible in moderation. These costumes, as iconic manifestations of the stresses that accompany modernity, comment upon the speed of travel, the fear of collisions, the anxieties of tall buildings, breathing restrictions, loss of balance, impaired vision, hearing loss, weight problems and a lack of friends. It takes skill to bring life to this sort of construction. The galloping horse provides yet another challenge; manipulation requires excellent cooperation between its two players. The skills required are closer to those of circus clowns such as the Parisian Fratellinis who perfected acrobatic entrées clownesques, including a vast repertoire of ways of walking. As observed by many modernist painters, writers and performers, the Fratellinis excelled in their play with objects and object-­costumes as obstacles troubling daily activities. Another body-­mask, a cross between manager and horse costumes, is suggested in 92

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Paul Klee’s Maske Furcht (Masque peur). Mask of Fear or Dread (1932) is an enormous walking head with two sets of legs passing through an open green landscape. Large-­dimension body-­masks of this genre are common fare in the ritual performances of indigenous cultures, manipulated by two or three actor-­dancers. It is not typical fare for ballet dancers, however. (A Melanesian two-­person body-­mask from the Sulka group on the island of New Britain, suggesting the difficulty of two-­person manipulation, is displayed at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.) East European painters and sculptors often communed in Montparnasse chez Marie Vassilieff, a Russian painter and designer of theatrical costumes and objects. Vassilieff’s canteen and studio (off avenue du Maine) was a site of refuge and idea exchange for artists who lived and worked at La Ruche (rue de Dantzig), the iconic circular studio-­residence site in then rural south-­west Paris. Vassilieff’s Slavic hospitality offered a rough and ready atmosphere that accommodated disorderly personalities like Jarry, Modigliani and Soutine. Belorussian, Lithuanian and Polish artists exhibited and gathered at her venue-­residence: Chagall, Kikoïne, Kisling, Lipchitz and Zadkine, for instance. Vassilieff was enthusiastic to receive women artists to her community space as well; visitors to her urban sanctuary included the English writer Beatrice Hastings and the Welsh painter Nina Hamnett. Fernand Léger presented a series of lectures on modern art in her canteen and exhibition space. Vassilieff welcomed Braque’s return from the war with a Dîner Braque attended by Apollinaire, Gris, Jacob, Matisse, Metzinger, Picasso, their partners and others in 1917.10 The Villa Vassilieff was a contrasting scene to the select salon of Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein, a half-­hour walk away. War-­years socialising at the Villa and at La Ruche facilitated an exchange of image ideas that contributed to subsequent subject matter choices by artists; the post-­war move to repainting Pierrots and more Harlequins might illustrate this tendency. (Vassilieff closely followed Picasso’s costume construction work for Parade.) Three-­dimensional art and performance work was important to Vassilieff. Alongside her puppets and doll figures, she constructed her own Harlequin-­as-­ woman masquerade with triangular hat, head mask with half-­mask attachment and triangular-­patterned costume, created for the famous Bal banal in 1924 at the Salle Bullier (Montparnasse). This event, billed with modernist poster art as a ‘Masquerade for Russian Emigrants in Paris’, was staged at the lively venue which Sonia Delaunay had immortalised in her dynamic Le Bal Bullier (Tango au Bal Bullier) painting of 1913. On this large canvas, Delaunay amalgamates ballroom dancing steps and turns within a ‘kaleidoscope of forms and saturated colors’.11 This dynamic effect in paint anticipates Delauney’s fashion creations and costume designs of the 1920s. Ukrainian-­born Sonia Delaunay, raised in St Petersburg, illustrated Blaise Cendrars’ prose poem La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de 93

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France (1913), one of Paris Modernism’s most astonishing and unparalleled collaborations. It traces the journey of a poet and his companion through Siberia from Moscow to China, then onward via the North Pole to Paris. (Cendrars worked in St Petersburg as a young man and, like Apollinaire, had a passion for the ‘East’.) Clara Pacquet declares that this two-­metre, illustrated, vertical poem represents ‘a manifesto of Simultanéisme’12 because of its successful counterpointing of colour-­ patch and colour-­ text sections. Pacquet explains: ‘The Orphic forms and the text in colours interlace to create a musical score of visual rhythm.’13 One hundred and fifty renderings of this long, paper-­strip painted poem were published. Assembled atop one another, the colour-­highlighted strips would reach to the apex of the Eiffel Tower, as intended. (Sixty of the paintings remain in collections today.) Cendrars and Delaunay’s words-­in-­action poems build upon the concept introduced by Apollinaire’s Calligrammes, in which the target is pictorial poetry. The Transsibérien allows the undercurrents or under-­layers of the prose poem to surface via the gesture of painting. In Lausanne, Igor Stravinsky composed a music-­ theatre drama about a wandering soldier away from the battle zone. Bridging the war cultures of Russia and France, L’Histoire du soldat (The Soldier’s Tale) was a 1918 collaboration with Swiss writer C. F. Rumez. The performance mixed acting, dance and libretto text with robust music and unique instrumentation. The narrative is based on a Russian folk tale, ‘The Runaway Soldier and the Devil’, and concerns an encounter between the devil and a soldier returning home. While war itself is not central to the story, recent atypical life experiences seem to the haunt the wandering soldier, who may have abandoned combat. The soldier, a man in this instance, has four objects of importance in his rucksack: a medallion, a mirror, a photo of his fiancé and a violin. These objects do more than just reflect his passions; they define him and serve as his identity. The fiddle object and its folk-­music intonations adds scope to the soldier’s body; the violin houses the soldier’s ‘soul vibrations’. The central narrative concerns the exchange of the fiddle for a book and wealth after the soldier encounters a stranger (the devil) at the edge of a river. The soldier’s objects are seized by the devil disguised as an old man. The loss of the mirror represents, perhaps, lost self-­knowledge and impending darkness. Throughout the tale the devil reappears in new disguises: as a merchant, a peddler woman and an accomplished violinist. Only in the final scene of The Soldier’s Tale does the devil unmask and display his true identity. (For centuries the association of the devil with disguising persisted; associations with Harlequin as devil followed and moved to Harlelquin’s aptitude for masking as untrustworthy or evil.) The concluding dance of the jubilant devil-­brute assures that aggression and bullying never end. The French text of L’Histoire du soldat suggests that wars will continue, overtly or furtively. The soldier-­without-­a-­name can represent 94

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an AWOL soldier on either the Eastern or the Western Front. The circumstances proposed are sufficiently open to suggest a Christian, Islamic or Jewish tale in the work’s wide, earthy and brutish spaces. Only the sustained tones of the violin offer colourful relief. The opening march and the exuberant march at the end communicate viscerally; Stravinsky scored the performance for six instruments, plus percussion in abundance. There are roles for three speaking actors (Soldier, Devil and Narrator) and the Dancer who does not speak. The ensemble of players and musicians evokes a medieval itinerant theatre group or a pared-­down Faust production touring the provinces. The choice of eleven musicians plus conductor was probably an economic necessity considering the challenges of producing new work in wartime. The composition’s mixture of lyrical moments, demonstrative parading rhythms and twirling dance-­step arrangements is facilitated by sudden changes in time signature. The dancer, as fantasy lover of the soldier, performs a waltz, a tango and ragtime. Violin and percussion emerge as the essential voices of the narrative. The Soldier’s Tale presents a belligerent clashing of ‘high art’ and ‘low art’, quite distinct from Stravinsky’s previous work with the Ballets Russes. The listener can imagine, intermittently, Schumann’s Salomé in Vienna, Liesl Karlstadt and Karl Valentin cabaret clowning, with clarinet and trumpet, in Munich or Dada drumming and word blasting in Zürich. Picasso’s journey to Italy for the upcoming Parade ballet collaboration with Jean Cocteau, Sergei Diaghilev, Léonide Massine, Igor Stravinsky and his new companion Ballets Russes dancer Olga Khokhlova was planned as a research tour of Naples, Pompeii and Rome. Stravinsky accompanied the others in his personal search for inspiration that would provoke originality for his next musical composition. As first-­ time scenographer, Picasso gathered objects and images to supplement his knowledge of French and Spanish popular cultures. Naples was of particular interest because of its fertile intermingling of Mediterranean civilizations. Picasso discovered something new here, which included a still-­ prominent touch of Spanish heritage from past centuries. The bonus value of a sense of place for this theatrical collaboration became apparent to all. Carmine Romano notes Stravinsky’s description of Naples as ‘half Spanish, half Oriental, an Arab Montmartre’.14 Romano also references Walter Benjamin’s perception of the city as enduring in a state of perpetual change and flux, theatrical in its act of transformative play. Picasso played along and exhibited his enthusiasm for disguise and identity play, already in process in Paris when he identified with the fools and clowns at circus performances. Picasso’s evolving bond and self-­identification with commedia dell’arte roles in French dress, Arlequin at this moment, met with a reality check in Naples and along the Tyrrhenian coast. Real-­ life manifestations of heroic pretenders­– ­with bravado­– ­criss-­crossed the Naples streets. The Spanish-­inspired mask of Capitano, the Italian Colombina and the Neapolitan 95

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Pulcinella lived as if incorporated into and diffused throughout the quotidian rhythm. The captivated Picasso recognised and wrapped himself in this social and spatial dynamic in order to disperse his impressions in costumes, mask forms and scenic designs. Other artists preceded Picasso in this experience of the south. August Macke amalgamated Italian comedians into a 1913 self-­ portrait after his journey to Tunisia with Swiss painters Paul Klee and Louis Moilliet. Macke’s weary Harlequin at dusk, an offstage circus clown or a Pierrot who has abandoned the profession, is more soldier than saltimbanque. Both Stravinsky and Picasso were impassioned by the possibility of putting Pulcinella onstage in a new work. Picasso experienced an awakening which sparked his interest in theatre and performance.15 The street culture of Naples inspired as it exuded theatricality: the performance venue architecture, the plaza spaces and the ex voto, poster-­ like illustrations depicting miracles. These ex voto depictions, Romano explains, shared stylistic elements with the posters on the walls of theatres and stages for puppet and commedia dell’arte performances.16 In the first decades of the twentieth century marionette and puppet performances­– ­indoors and out­– ­showed signs of increased popularity in Naples, while such Italian popular performance was also enhanced by Craig’s recent work in Florence. Cocteau, Massine, Picasso and Stravinsky were all fascinated by the performance objects themselves, as well as by the puppet stages. The modernists purchased Pulcinello character statues and collected a supply of presepios (manger-­scene figures) sold by vendors in the street. Cocteau recorded his enthusiasm for the more-­ real-­ than-­ life movement observed in Italian puppet performances in postcard correspondences. Neapolitan pupi gestures, described by Italian performance scholar Alessandro De Simone, suggest that the Neapolitan puppet figures are ‘supra-­individuel’ in the sense that their movement is non-­natural, mechanical and anti-­realistic; they are gesturally ritualistic, he claims, and not unlike the awkward gestures of a priest in training celebrating the Mass.17 There are obvious echoes of Craig’s and Kleist’s theories in De Simone’s assertions, as well as Henri Bergson’s theories which connect comic gesture with repetitive, machine-­like motions of the human body in Le Rire (Laughter). The futurist painter, sculptor and marionnettiste Fortunato Depero provided design concepts to Picasso as he developed his form-­model idea for the Manager roles in Parade. After the Parade creation, Depero continued Picasso’s sculptural masquerade concept with the further development of his Balli plastici at the Teatro dei Piccoli in 1918. Rather than maintain the human element, Depero believed that he could create a more grand impression of geometry and liberty in the costumes by using actual marionettes. He affirmed, also, that this choice would allow for a greater rapport between setting and personage. Depero imagined the ‘living automaton’ as the ideal player.18 Depero’s ‘living’ means animated and suggesting liveness, while actually exist96

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ing as a form: an anthropomorphic, robotic object or a new-­look marionette. Picasso did not continue in this direction after his experiences with the Parade costumes; Picasso’s subsequent scenographic collaborations with the Ballets Russes employed a more conventional treatment of the dancer body, as in Pulcinella (1920). Spectators do not categorically reject a temporary effacement of the actor as constructed in containing body-­masks. Even total immersion of the dancer in Picasso’s Manager and Horse costumes is accepted; viewers assume that in the end the face of the actor will return and be seen. Visible feet, plus a hand or two, assure spectators of the actor presence; when the body performs with only selected parts seen, the actor is not designated a puppeteer. Viewers accept the feet as synecdochally representing the whole body, for instance. The curtain call is the moment when the previously concealed is revealed. The pleasure of the delay and the instant of exposure of the entire body is a fundamental aspect of the surprise principle: satisfaction after postponement. However, in some puppetry genres, where the actor-­manipulator is invisible during performance, the dynamic differs. This total curtaining-­off changes the circumstance because the personage seen is a figure attached to a human body by connectors: strings, a stick, but no human skin (Depero’s marionettes, for example). A glove puppet, on the other hand, encases the palm and fingers, the human body and the puppet are in contact. Such nuanced distinctions initially appear as minor concerns, but the differences are significant. The separate spaces of performing object and human activator demonstrate distancing, but also concern tactile sensation. Dancers playing the Picasso Managers are in physical contact with the forms inhabited. The actor must ‘own’ the object-­ costume in order for it to animate and ‘play’ as a masquerade. A hand puppet and hand share tactility, but move in unison, without the possibility of human body movement isolated from the body-­mask. A marionette with strings has no liberty and, fundamentally, no human body contact. It is metaphorically a body extension, but it is not directly connected by touch to the operator’s hands. In theatre contexts when object manipulators are viewable in the performance space, whether wholly concealed, partly hidden or fully visible, they are received as actors. Their actor impulses are channelled in and through the puppet or object and into the affected or occupied space beyond the edges of the enlivened object itself. Effective body-­animated objects and their surfaces radiate like a fine actor’s skin. Picasso’s next notable venture into performance-­object construction concerned the mask design for the ballet Pulcinella. The research for this adaptation of musical compositions by the early eighteenth-­century composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (and his contemporaries) was carried out by Stravinsky. Picasso and choreographer Massine participated by promoting aspects of the Pulcinella character which they found appealing in performance 97

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history illustrations. Stravinsky’s work produced a vibrant, robust, twentieth-­ century composition with rhythmic unorthodoxy, worthy of the roguish protagonist. The storyline follows the example of I quattro Pulcinelli from Pergolesi’s era: seductions, disguises, murders and resurrections.19 Descriptions of the choreography, actor gesture and actor movement reinforce conventional assumptions about the commedia dell’arte: angular, mechanical, puppet-­like, rough, popular action. This is all, in fact, rather difficult to visualise. Italian scholarship supports such movement qualities for certain military-­based commedia dell’arte roles like the Capitano, where marionette-­like gesticulation can be utilised to great effect. However, the transfer to mechanical-­movement qualities as defining characteristics of commedia dell’arte acting is another matter. Selective body positioning activated like the movement of machine-­ parts does not necessarily result in an authentic, unified figure; it may appear lifeless. (Photographs of Nijinsky in South-­east Asian dress, quoting parts of Cambodian classical dance through selected limbs, are not received as fully readable images with a unified gestural code.) The attraction that Massine and Picasso felt to the popular theatre with Pulcinella was the actors’ energy expressed alongside an oozing humanity; it was the humanity and not the mechanics that held their attention. There was also, clearly, a comprehensible, unique gestural pattern and, perhaps, a rhythmic patter which they musically remembered and borrowed. Contemporary performance and scholarship in Italy acknowledge that the Pulcinella tradition has not been significantly transformed by northern European influences; Pulcinella is actually a regional figure and has remained so. The mask is not an idealised member of society, but rather an unattractive, often nasty figure. ‘He’, in most instances, does not travel well; Pulcinella holds a low position on any list of admired figures with whom one might choose to self-­identify. Still, some element in the making of Pablo Picasso allowed him to realise that Pulcinella could become a partner in arms. Picasso studied an eighteenth-­century leather Pulcinella mask preserved in an Italian theatre museum and designed and constructed his individual interpretation of it. Both objects were displayed in the Musée Picasso-­Paris exhibition Picasso obstinément méditerranéen in 2019. The transformation-­abstraction is curious and compelling. Luigi Gallo describes the Pulcinella mask-­role as ‘ironic, skeptical, ambiguous and elusive’.20 A designer and actor must imagine building a Pulcinella masquerade that allows sufficient flexibility to freely shift from rustic athleticism to more subdued reflection and, perhaps, envy; the figure requires enough openness to show emotional range. Typically stout, compact, crooked and bent, the Pulcinella silhouette is distinct. Picasso built a bold wooden form that was all about a prominent nose, dominated by an unforgettable profile. The mask is oversized, dark-­coloured and accented with simple white lines to clearly 98

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display the mouth and eyes; all is boldly overstated. The traditional off-­white, Pierrot-­variation costume with cylindrical hat is altered and certainly slowed down by Picasso’s head-­form. With split vision because of the protruding nose panel, the actor’s gaze is bi-­ocular, somewhat like that of a stereoscope photo viewer. Each eye gazes independently, setting up a circumstance where the actor always has the nose partially in sight. The masked gaze is frequently a gaze changed, but this perspective proposes an unusual degree of obstruction. Long-­range viewing would be less problematic than the disorienting effect of regarding the nearby and the close-­up. The Pulcinella actor-­dancer’s head becomes a sculpture in wood, fabric and paper with double eyes: the painted circles of the dominant profile and the cut eyeholes of the recessed frontal view. In Stravinsky’s Pulcinella ballet, the dancing figure does not speak in his role as lover, melancholy seducer, obscene trickster, troublemaker and disguiser. Gallo characterises this interpretation of the masked figure as ‘invincible and polymorphous’ and the ballet’s atmosphere as ‘light and fanciful’, subduing or domesticating, it seems, Pulcinella’s notoriously aggressive nature.21 For Picasso, this reading of Pulcinella was intertwined with his personal identification with the role of Harlequin as both inventive and destructive mask-­role. In Gallo’s analysis, Pulcinella for Picasso was simply an ‘alter ego’ of Harlequin, asserting that both of these Italian masks exhibit dual natures.22 Once again, the disguising role in this narrative is the already masked featured male additionally masked by a black cap-­hood; Pulcinella’s fiancée Pimpinella, a fishmonger, is unmasked and costumed with a large skirt-­object, peasant scarf and décolleté blouse. (Stravinsky himself concluded that Polichinelle, as named in French, is, in fact, an obscene, peasant boor in both word and action.)23 While Picasso’s Pulcinella construction was less cumbersome than his Parade Managers, the unconventional mask-­helmet required a skilled dancer who could manipulate the awkward disguise-­object. The statement made by the worn sculpture justified the mechanics of playing it, but activating the illusion required professional effort and concentration. Photographs of Léonide Massine as Pulcinella (Monte Carlo, 1920) in Picasso und das Theater show him wearing a black leather commedia dell’arte mask for the role, which suggests that Picasso’s oversized, wooden sculpture­– ­impressive as an art object­ – ­proved untenable as masquerade extension in performance.24 Collaborative Masquerade Designs Picasso’s body and object juxtaposition was just the beginning of artists’ collaborative work as scenographers for theatre and dance. Visual statements by designers for Rolf de Maré’s Swedish Ballet in Paris or for Granovsky’s Yiddish Theatre in Moscow introduced stylistic border crossings that could not have been anticipated. The music of Darius Milhaud, whether for the Swedish Ballet or for his collaboration with Jean Cocteau on Le Bœuf sur la 99

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toit, further expanded innovative and multidisciplinary partnerships between the performing arts and the visual arts. The first public performances of Milhaud’s Brazilian-­ influenced music for Le Bœuf featured masquerading actors dancing on a set designed by Raoul Dufy. The exaggerated-­form actors employed were the Fratellini family clowns from the Cirque Médrano in Paris, slowly displacing and positioning as figures in a café-­bar where lively tango music accompanied the eccentric appearances and happenings. Character costumes included large masks designed by Guy Pierre Fauconnet in this performance event at the Théâtre des Champs-­Élysées in 1920. It was the first of many mixed-­genre experiments of modern masquerade in the 1920s. In Paris the Swedish Ballet’s creative team of choreographer Jean Börlin, writer Blaise Cendrars, painter and sculptor Fernand Léger and composer Darius Milhaud collaborated on La Création du monde. This Ballet suédois assembly of artists pushed dance-­theatre to an extreme display of actor as scenographic object. The 1923 production included dancers and actors who were fully concealed behind painted, manipulated scenic-­forms that moved within a stage space painted with lines, colours and geometric forms; the environment is further decorated with African-­themed music rich in percussive rhythms. The oversized masquerades in La Création du monde cited the Managers from Parade in a dense layering of scenographic texts­– ­like the Dada stage at the Cabaret Voltaire­– ­which packed the landscape and soundscape with a chaotic mix of actors, dancers, objects and masquerades. The production was challenging in many respects, as the visual components dominated and, for some viewers, overpowered the actor-­dancer presence. The stage picture was like a massive Léger painting in three dimensions; this canvas with depth, however, had the capacity to advance and recede, to lift and lower and to appear and disappear. Léger was pleased with the outcome which achieved his goal as designer to ‘conceive of objects as the pivot of interest, objects so beautiful that they have an enormous spectacle value’.25 Objects were indeed the primary focal point. The African visual culture elements extended to costumes for animals, birds, insects, Woman and Man. Léger’s research on masks and sculptures resulted in figures painted in earth tones which Judi Freeman termed ‘mechanocubist’.26 The ballet narrative, written by Blaise Cendrars, emerged from his previous work on African myths in Anthologie nègre (1921). Cendrars and Léger worked closely on coordinating story and visuals; they subsequently collaborated with Milhaud on inventing music that would complement action and image. The stage figures’ movements within the jazz-­music environment were experienced as a dialogue between saxophone and brass instruments, accented by percussion. Lynn Garafola explains that ‘the scenic elements themselves were mobile, while the human figure became a fully pictorial element indistinguishable from the surrounding objects’.27 Rolf de Maré gave free rein to the writer-­creators for the 100

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final visual and aural texts; subsequently, the performance was not typical of the Swedish Ballet’s repertoire. The celebrity dancing of Jean Börlin was minimalised. Nancy Van Norman Baer notes that Börlin’s role as choreographer was also secondary in importance; this ballet featured moving-­object dancers, foregrounded by author and scenographer.28 Léger published many of his ideas on cubist objects and their application to theatrical performance in Paul Rosenburg’s journal Bulletin de L’Effort moderne. The subordination of Woman and Man to masquerade figures with visible human feet in La Création du monde shocked the public; the jammed-­full stage provided no glimpse of a ‘natural’ human face. Many dancers were dissatisfied with the casting and with their gestural responsibilities, which restricted their movement expression; dancers expressed their opinion that their contribution was no better than that of an ‘invisible stagehand’.29 It is true that the dancers were not really dancing in La Création. Spectators never anticipated such a radical masquerading of the human body; even a glance at performers’ feet was sometimes denied. Pleasure, for the viewer, needed to be found in the music or with the unexpected arrival of a new piece of scenery. For many, the wait to connect a face to the passing feet was far too long, and the eventual unmasking of the body proved non-­epiphanic. It is fortunate that La Création du monde was one of several choreographies in the evening’s programme. While moderately successful, the decision to demand highly trained professional actors and dancers to perform in camouflage as modernist objects was questionable. Léger’s large-­scale birds, beetles and masked anthropomorphic abstractions were critiqued and queried. The ostentatious gesture of pushing a concept to its maximum potential was appreciated by others, nonetheless. Some dancers left the company because they were not interested in playing the role of invisible puppeteer, which, they felt, negated any individual invention. Voluntary invisibility is one thing; imposed, involuntary, total immersion is quite another. Total dissimulation of the performer-­self places the actor in an ambivalent position. If I cannot really feel the spectator gaze upon me, am I really seen? Am I still here? Rather quickly, the performer senses that performer-­identity has been supplanted. There is no light upon me; I have been ousted, deposed and superseded: death by darkness. I resign, therefore, my post as wearer or porter of a thing. Nearly complete dissimulation has persevered in Japanese theatre for centuries; it is perceived as limited­– ­but privileged­– ­body display, rather than as purging the stage of actors. The primary Nō players themselves are totally covered, as if Samurai warriors, but they are also totally present performing bodies; the secondary ‘invisible’ players­– ­the koken­– ­are also physically present, but unseen as theatrical personages. Concealed by discreet black costumes and hoods, they serve the drama as voluntary non-­identities who support and facilitate ‘the pleasure of the play’.30 Ariane Mnouchkine’s 101

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adaptation of the koken concept (in her Shakespeare productions of the 1970s) and in her subsequent employment of actors as human-­form Bunraku puppets placed performers in the position of object-­manipulators who perform unseen. Roland Barthes and more recently Georges Banu have theorised aspects of the public, the private and the hidden in Japanese culture and theatre.31 Banu, for instance, writes of the near-­total dissimulation of the shite, the masked lead actor who reveals only the skin of his hands and a portion of the neck where the mask meets the body at the chin. Banu emphasises the disappearance of the actor in the disguise, and secondly that of the character that arrives, plays and departs never to return.32 Full-­body masking in Nō and Kyōgen is a Theatre of Dreams, Theatre of Play.33 Anthropomorphic masquerades are more reassuring to the spectator; the presence of a human form, even when seriously transformed, offers the spectator moments of recognition. The flatness of the Léger objects in La Création du monde disconcerts. Flat-­planed, painted representations held as placard costumes are too close to the image of two-­dimensional paper dolls; their falseness is too apparent. Agit-­prop theatre in the historical avant-­garde effectively employed sandwich-­ board-­ toting actors, but the Swedish Ballet performance space, a site of celebration of the three-­dimensional dancer, was an inappropriate context for such disguising. Phenomenologically, masquerading is not a flat activity; it presents in three dimensions. Hiding behind a panel is not experienced in the same way as wearing, or being immersed within, a body-­mask; immersion is more layered and thus more complicated because it has depth and projects depth to the viewer. Shallow stage images can result from shallow physical forms, even though a painted surface can imply depth. Flat object-­façades are not the same as painted-­face façades, which are not plank-­ like. Faces are capable of morphing. Painted skin can imply more depth than it actually has, sometimes convincing the viewer that it has both a front and a back. However, skin façades do not really contain in the three-­ dimensional sense; their ‘within’ is an illusion which functions as a containing object in theatrical space. Still, the painted face is a façade sur the face: a surface; it remains amorphous, immaterial and ephemeral as sculpted form. Effective masquerades intrigue by withholding and containing. The release of the withheld is a theatrical exposure, willed by the actor. The masquerade, an assertion in space, displays an alternate identity which contains a home-­based identity. This central point of departure and return is fixed but not bound. Invented identities­– ­in the plural­– ­are possible as impermanent and alternate identity extensions. Transitory masquerades­– ­aesthetic departures and fantastic choices­– ­disturb less than involuntary transformations. When masquerade clearly presents itself as a voluntary act of pretending it is not so frightening; it represents order rather than suggesting disorder ‘within’. Elaborate disguising in the east and north-­east of Europe intermingled with 102

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the Russian Revolutions, desertions during the First World War, the abolition of the Pale of Settlement and migration and exile to the west and to the further east. With unprecedented fervour, Marc Chagall, selected as a theatre scenographer, set about painting a stage setting, stage objects, costumes, faces, body parts and theatre walls for the State Yiddish Chamber Theatre in 1920.34 Aleksei Granovsky, his employer with a Yiddish-­language theatre group, was shocked by Chagall’s enthusiasm and overwhelmed by Chagall’s comprehensive colouring of everything in sight, including the theatre lobby. Such unbridled fervour for disguising the ordinary was astonishing. Designers for the Yiddish Theatre (GOSET) in subsequent years, inspired by Chagall, developed a low-­ key, delimited version of Chagall’s marks of celebration on stage surfaces. Like Léger’s statement in paint for the Swedish Ballet in Paris, Chagall’s passionate, all-­encompassing and total-­vision approach to performance design was eventful, but overstated; subsequent designers integrated Chagall’s enthusiasm and invention with more harmonising and measured methodologies. Granovsky’s mises en scène, as a result, evolved into Gesamtkunstwerken with pictorial, musical, gestural stage and soundscapes unique to the 1920s. Granovsky’s synthesis of modernist European performance innovations established a style in the east which assimilated Max Reinhardt’s Berlin and Vienna advances, Russian avant-­garde theatre and the intimate work of the Vilna Troupe in Lithuania, Poland and Romania. Granovsky’s directing and actor training lifted the actor engagement to a high stylistic level, where each actor stood as a complex visual text with liveness. The entire stage became a rhythmic statement that embodied cubist and expressionist influences from France and Germany, as well as demonstrating physicalities similar to Meyerhold’s biomechanics-­trained actors. Awareness of Russian constructivist stage design practice complemented the effects of Granovsky’s stagings. Granovsky’s performance acumen guided his company’s design choices; his scenographers accented the actor rather than surrounding the actor body with an image-­heavy scenic space. Head and face object-­extensions, masks, geometric face painting and distinctive costume silhouettes coalesced into a unified assertion of performance style. His influence stretched from Marijampolė in Lithuania to Iaşi in Moldavan Romania. Granovsky’s productions from 1921 to 1926 exemplify successful collaboration in the rich, forward-­looking theatre culture of Moscow, dominated by masterful metteurs en scène: Konstantin Stanislavky, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Aleksandr Tairov and Evgeny Vakhtangov. Still images capture the kinetic force of this brief Renaissance in the east, in which action shots from a production such as Granovsky’s The Sorcerer display concentrations of organised social pandemonium in the urban context. A fundamental communication difference between the spectatorship of La Création du monde and Granovsky’s production of The Sorcerer, two distinctly separate productions which incorporate aspects of masquerade, is 103

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their ease of access to the expressive actor. Eye movement speaks and when the stage abounds with active-­gazing performers, the humanity of interactive liveness penetrates throughout the actor–audience exchange. When actor gazes cannot be perceived, however, substantive liveness is endangered. Fernand Léger’s scenography was eye-­shy. The eyeless stage is always a gamble, as inexperienced masqueraders may not have the technical ability to channel humanness into and through inanimate objects. Granovsky understood, perhaps, that even the back of the head and the flat plane of the actor’s back can appear to have sight. Fine actors displace their gaze to wherever it is most efficacious. Some actors can infuse an object with pulse and the illusion of breath; they can bring it to life (or bring life to it). Painted images of eyes can sometimes be ‘brought to life’ by an actor-­manipulator who can support and animate the painted surface sufficiently to coax the ‘illusion of life’ on to the illustrated plane. When a spectator senses the presence of a gaze, even an invisible one, the object appears to breathe and pulsate. The illusion of ‘implied respiration’, sometimes perceived in death masks, elongates the playing time of an otherwise mortuary object. Interest is sustained by constructing illusory life in the ‘thing’, by providing it with the details of lifelike behaviour. Granovsky’s work with disguising accentuated the actor-­head by celebrating the eye and its capacity to see, to be seen and to be seen seeing. An ensemble of actors with such abilities, converged into a tight body-­assemblage under light, fully engages the spectator­– ­whether the group-­image is in motion or in stasis. Disguises affect seeing, hearing and breathing; such restrictions impact the actor’s playing time while masqueraded. Léger’s flat panels-­with-­feet were short-­time players. Painted faces, particularly with well-­accented eyes, can hold the stage for a very long time. Half-­masks in the Italian or Indonesian tradition also sustain interest well, if the player has concentration and skill as a conductor of the movement–stillness binary. The degree of eye-­presence in the mask-­form affects the nature of the gaze and its playing time. Eyehole voids differ from mask eyeholes where the mask surface hugs the face and allows partial sighting of human eyes. The separation space between a mask and its player’s face is a boundary between the public and the private. It is not to be taken for granted; it is a battlefield of give and take. From a dynamics point of view, all masks share aspects of death masks and gas masks because ‘liveness’ is always in peril. Blindness and asphyxiation, metaphorically, are always just a breath away in mask-­form performance. Masks, Clowns and Pulcinella Variations In the theatre, Jacques Copeau in France, Vsevolod Meyerhold in Russia and Max Reinhardt in Austria and Germany addressed the re-­education and reintegration of the actor body in the years during and following the First World War. The need to address the fragile constitutions of actors familiar 104

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with combat and its surroundings was palpable. Urban creative arts communities witnessed damaged bodies and minds on the streets and in train stations; the body ravaged was all-­pervading. For many, forgetting the body in uniform was paramount. Initially, the training of the actor-­body had little to do with disguising it, but this quickly changed. Rudolf Laban’s early experiments with modern dance displayed the urge to pare the body down to its simplest, most pure form; an actor without affectation was the new model, as Edward Gordon Craig also theorised. Soon interest in the spirit of play revived fascination with the Italian commedia dell’arte, Asian theatre performance and the unassuming immensity of Greek tragedy. Theatre-­makers identifying with performance in other places, other times and other practices­– r­ eplacing the familiar with something novel­– ­were stimulated by thoughts about approaching acting differently. Theatre practitioners were cognisant of new directions taken by American and German women in modern dance, as exhibited by the liberty in the movement of dancers Maud Allan, Josephine Baker, Olga Desmond, Isadora Duncan, Loïe Fuller, Martha Graham, Ruth St Denis and Mary Wigman. Visionaries such as scenographer Adolphe Appia and composer-­educator Émile Jaques-­Dalcroze, quite accustomed to collaborations with women, provided additional non-­verbal approaches to the actor presence in space and time. Copeau, Craig, Meyerhold and Reinhardt, each individually interacting with Stanislavsky as well, broadened their horizons beyond established tradition by looking outward. The commedia dell’arte, constructed around an assumption of disguising and masquerade, became central to the interwar theatre narrative in France, extending to the contributions of Charles Dullin, Copeau’s daughter Marie-­Hélène Dasté, and her husband Jean Dasté. A revamped modernist actor who could work with improvisation as an actor-­creator, as well as an actor-­interpreter, was beginning to be imagined. Interest in the commedia dell’arte, and interest in mask objects, never waned as source material for visual artists in Modernism. The paintings and sculptures created in Barcelona, Berlin, Paris and Vienna, in particular, integrated new directions of representation while citing examples of long-­standing masking imagery. The seventeenth-­century portrait by Lorenzo Lippi, Allegorie de la simulation (1640–50) or La Femme au masque, reminds one of the vital role of the mask as ‘symbol of dissimulation’, in Christine Besson’s words, and the mask’s traditional role as ‘emblem of the theatre’.35 Lippo’s painting shows a woman who holds a mask in her right hand, gently touching its nose and lips, and a split-­open pomegranate in her left; Besson interprets the intriguing image as an allegory of the tragic or the untrue.36 The woman fixes her gaze on the viewer, while the mask’s sizeable eye-­openings mirror but enlarge the scope of looking far beyond the pictorial frame. In images from 1901 and 1902, Fernand Khnopff photographed and then painted his draped and hooded sister 105

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Marguerite as she contemplates an architectural mask, attached as decorative art to a column; the woman gently touches the lips of the female figure with her thumb. The Secret and the painted Secret Reflection are less confronting than the Allegory of Simulation with its full-­frontal gaze. The Belgian modernist’s colour rendition warrants Khnopff’s ‘Master of Enigma’ appellation for his symbolist imagery.37 Khnopff, unlike his contemporary Edward Gordon Craig, juxtaposes a mask with the face of a woman, foregrounding the exchange of their silent dialogue. The mask object persisted throughout the first decades of the century as representative of the act of disguising. Mask usage, as a performance tool, was beginning to generate interest and relevance for theatre practitioners. Perhaps this appeal was also fuelled by the burgeoning masquerade fervour sparked by Dada and futurist theatre work and artists’ collage work with paper and objects. The photomontage work of Hannah Höch proposes performances staged in two dimensions with paper fragments as actors. The pictorial frame as theatre venue is densely populated with decapitated, transformed, manipulated and disguised bodies. Some figures are part machine; some are part animal. The reassembled bodies are often surrounded by word placards. The setting is in a state of constant transition; a diverse collection of Other Places co-­habit the frame. Eliza Adamowicz suggests that Höch combines female body fragments with the ‘tribal mask as metonymic signifier of “non-­European body”’.38 The image as a whole is in flux; it has numerous foci and its centre, as well as its grounding, are unstable, even tentative. Cut with a Kitchen Knife reconstitutes bodies; it reassigns genders; it chops up military heroism; it refigures history. Höch attempts to redress a misogynistic, objectifying culture by intentionally misplacing the man-­objects themselves. Höch forces one to re-­envision the commonplace and unmask the webs of connectedness that feebly hold the quotidian together. She cuts up the familiar, repairs it and jolts the viewer into rethinking the obvious: Dada politics with a slice of humour. In a subversive masquerade ball in two dimensions, Höch masquerades as Harlequin and complicates the plot; as object-­manipulator she stirs the pot of paste and turns the world upside down. Jacques Copeau also experimented with masks in performance. He carved and assembled masks for Molière comedies and subsequently introduced masking as part of his actor-­ training curriculum in 1921.39 A group of Copeau’s students in Burgundy, a troupe calling themselves the Copiaus, put together characters in full masquerade. Both Copeau and his assistant Suzanne Bing performed masked roles in Copeau’s drama-­theatre creation L’Illusion. Copeau played the Magician in a squinting, grinning, full-­faced mask with dangling hair and long robe. Bing played the Spirit of Comedy wrapped in white. Michel Saint-­Denis (Copeau’s nephew) constructed the mask for Bing, modelled on a mask from Oceania; Marie-­Hélène Dasté sculpted Copeau’s 106

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mask in the style of an ‘African’ mask of undesignated origin, which was discovered during the actors’ anthropological research. This performance took place in 1926. Between 1925 and 1929 the Copiaus created and developed characters and their costumes that became recognisable in the Pernand-­ Verglesses region of Burgundy. These iconic community personages included Jean Dasté as M. César, Michel Saint-­Denis as Knie and Suzanne Bing as Célestine from the L’Illusion production. Copeau’s text was an adaptation of Fernando de Rojas’s L’Illusion comique of 1636.40 The development of stock characters in a rural environment emulated the experiences of itinerant performers in the late medieval and early Renaissance periods. The rich experiences of the Copiaus lived on in Jean and Marie-­ Hélène Dasté’s directing, acting and masking inventions, as well as in Michel Saint-­Denis’s Compagnie des Quinze and his subsequent teaching and directing at the Old Vic in London, the Comédie de l’Est in Strasbourg and the Julliard School in New York. Guy Freixe’s study Filiation: Copeau, Lecoq, Mnouchkine further details the evolution of new actor pedagogies in France during the twentieth century. A web of lineage radiates from Copeau’s Théâtre du Vieux Colombier, encompassing schools, studios and companies throughout Paris (Barrault, Decroux, Dullin, Jouvet, Lecoq, Marceau, etc.) and well beyond France. (Some of this work is detailed in Chapters 6 and 7.) Asian actors’ guest performances in Europe increased the level of attention focused upon ‘oriental’ theatre traditions, particularly those beyond the immediate east of the Levant. Motivated by attitudes of difference in the actor-­body, performers and directors collected the available images of performances where coded gestural vocabularies were evident. Facsimiles of Nō theatre bodies-­in-­ action, painted Kabuki faces and rebuilt fragments of the South-­east Asian actor’s silhouette, like Jean Börlin’s sharp-­angled Danse siamoise image (Royal Opera Ballet, Stockholm, 1919), motivated theatre practitioners to restructure the actor-­body in ways akin to the many theatrical objects explored in avant-­ garde performance explorations. In Russia, Vsevolod Meyerhold was already producing theatre that referenced the commedia dell’arte in 1906, still early in his career as director and actor. His production of Alexandre Blok’s new play The Fairground Booth or Balagan featured Meyerhold himself in the role of Pierrot, frustrated and t­roubled in a love-­triangle narrative comprised also of Columbine and Harlequin. ‘Mystics’, carved from cardboard, and a parade of carnival masqueraders are present in his unconventional staging. The balagan, according to Colleen McQuillen, is ‘an informal act such as a puppet show, clown performance or other slapstick comedy routine dependent on physical gimmicks, overacting, bright colors, and sonic ebullience’.41 In The Modernist Masquerade, McQuillen explains how Petersburg ‘Paper Balls’ organised 107

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by women predated the cardboard costumes for The Fairground Booth.42 The play’s popular theatre form, which welcomes spectator interaction, was typically presented in outdoor plaza settings. Acknowledging the performance form’s popular roots, Meyerhold adjusted the physicality of the actor to suit the circumstance. The real and metaphorical masking of the actor-­body later developed as an element of Meyerhold’s actor-­training initiatives. His biomechanical system of physical actions, attitude forms, gestures and displacements reached its completed form in 1922. Meyerhold’s visual thinking and the invention apparent in his mises en scène certainly matches McQuillen’s assertion that an ‘avant-­garde strategy for rebelliously stylizing the body’s appearance’ was at play in modernist Russia.43 McQuillen firmly establishes the link between ‘the masquerade topos, a master trope of Symbolism’ and the Russian enthusiasm for sartorial representations of Pierrots in the snow, as photographed at ‘White Balls’ staged at ice skating rinks in the 1910s.44 Social masquerading contrasts and counterpoints the futurist, avant-­garde masking. In the Magnanimous Cuckold and the productions which followed, Meyerhold aimed literally to incorporate his perception of commedia dell’arte acting and other modes of popular performance tradition. Working on Lyubov Popova’s constructivist, flexible, one-­set, playground-­like performance environment, full spectator concentration was upon the actor’s body, its actions and its attitudes. The farce by Belgian playwright Fernand Crommelynck featured people and objects jointly in action atop and around a bare armature wooden structure, which included and represented a mill with a large turning wheel. The mill-­ in-­ motion included several step units, ramps and walkways which further complicated this gymnasium for actor-­athletes. The cast featured Meyerhold’s partner Zinaida Reich and comedian Igor Ilinsky in uniform, work-­clothes costumes suitable for acrobatic attacks, slaps and rebounds. Popova’s scenographic construction was a kinetic sculpture in wood that represented and defined place and space. Roann Barris argues that ‘[w]ithout looking anthropomorphic, the structure became an actor’.45 Meyerhold stage-­ blocked his actors and precisely choreographed their movements on the playing field levels, referencing Italian comedy performer positions, with particular attention to the architectural proposal of the stage set-­object. As previously established here in discussion on disguise, the commedia dell’arte mask is more than the material mask that it may employ. C. Moody explained in 1978: ‘Like the puppet, the commedia dell’arte actor with his unchanging dress and appearance from scenario to scenario made a mask of his [sic] whole self.’46 In her analysis of the constructivist object, Roann Barris goes even further, adding that just as Meyerhold regarded the body-­form of each role as a ‘mask’, it is possible that designer Lyubov Popova viewed the wooden, scenographic playground and its kinetic components as larger ‘object-­masks’.47 Popova apparently interacted with her stage objects 108

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as if it were possible to dialogue with them. Barris adds that in Meyerhold’s collaboration with writer Sergei Tretiakov, both named the material aspects of words and text vocalisations ‘speech-­masks’.48 Mask presence and importance in the modernist actor-­training and performance lexicon is undisputed; the intended meaning of the word ‘mask’, in the surplus of varied contexts, can obscure comprehension; meanings become murky. Meyerhold’s concept of the role of the mask is ‘formal’ in the sense that it suggests a physical posture or set-­armature that is animated by an appropriate gestural vocabulary. Meyerhold’s mask would display a designated tempo, with rhythmic variations, utilising a pre-­determined repertoire of role-­appropriate gesture positions. The specific movement role code, like most elements of Meyerhold’s practice, would be explicable in musical terms. The delivery of dialogue or monologue, whether spoken or sung, would also extend from the role code as an additional or separate text layered upon the ‘mask’ of the role. The resulting ‘character’, in English theatre terminology, could then be considered the result of each unique actor’s intersection with the mask’s limitations, which are selected and recorded after analysing the playwright’s creation in words (and named in the dramatis personae). Different actors playing the same role-­mask would display individual differences, based to a degree upon the unique actor-­instrument of the individual player. When Meyerhold adapted and directed Mikhail Lermontov’s Masquerade (St Petersburg, 1917), just prior to the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, the masked ball scenes displayed credible representations of commedia dell’arte roles. Clearly Meyerhold’s excellent rapport with designer Alexander Golovin resulted in a large, lavishly costumed spectacle of this Russian Romantic classic. Edward Braun emphasises that the production (in the final days of the Russian Empire) embodied the crazed and carnivalesque ambience of St Petersburg, which was transformed into ‘a true “Venice of the North”, sharing its atmosphere of outward show and inner corruption’.49 The masquerade ball scenes, scene two and scene eight in Meyerhold’s ten-­scene restructuring of the play in four acts, featured masked characters in full-­body masquerades appropriate for maskers in the Venice Carnival. The role of the Stranger or ‘A Mask’ wore the seventeenth-­century Venetian bauta mask, a sharp, angular, almost abstracted, almost zoomorphic form costumed in black cape and tricorn hat. Braun quotes one of the Russian actors in the cast who described the well-­known (in Italy) carnival figure wearing ‘a weird terrifying white Italian mask’. The actor, Yuri Yuriev, relates the moment on stage when the figure enters and ‘stares fixedly at them through his strange mask; they all freeze as one, riveted by his gaze’.50 Yakov Mulyutin, an actor who played the Stranger in a later revival, explains that from his point of view the role of the Stranger at the masquerade event is ‘not so much a man as a devil in disguise’.51 Golovin also designed mask and costume for the Pulcinella role in this production, 109

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further displaying Meyerhold’s appreciation of an Italian grotesque in all its manifestations. Meyerhold’s sophisticated agility in navigating actors from ‘mask’ character to masked actor in full-­body masquerade at a society ball is impressive. The supposed isolation of the Baltic north is not apparent, as his staging of Masquerade reveals an awareness and complicity with Empires-­in-­ Decline masquerading (like those staged in Vienna). The legacy of a theatrical kingdom created by Vladimir Nemirovich-­ Danchenko, Constantin Stanislavsky and Vsevolod Meyerhold survived the turmoil of all the political upheaval to come. Their work, and particularly the production work of students Yevgeny Vakhtangov and Alexander Tairov, demonstrates an interest in the theatricality of disguise, as well as technical facility with masking the actor. Vakhtangov’s staging of Carlo Gozzi’s Turandot (1922) and Tairov’s work with Alexandra Exter on Oscar Wilde’s Salomé (1922) exemplify the Russian avant-­garde and its employment of facial and body masquerading. Neither of these productions aimed for the total confluence of stage figure and scenography, but both exhibited an architectural treatment of the body as ‘form’ which prevails nonetheless. Russian theatricality can be represented by painted images of actor-­director Vsevolod Meyerhold. Challenging the iconicity of the Kazimir Malevich Black Square paintings, the assortment of framed Meyerholds documents much of his life. These images include drawings, paintings and photographs and fall into two categories: the theatre actor-­director and the contemplative theatre artist as Pierrot. Boris Grigoriev’s Portrait de V. Meyerhold (1916) displays Meyerhold as a tuxedo-­clad actor suspended in an attitude of jagged gesture or eccentric dance; in this image, Meyerhold is shadowed by an actor-­figure in an Asian-­influenced movement uniform in bold red who poses precariously; his oblique-­angled attitude suggests a biomechanical gesture-­sequence. The parallel figures of western–eastern, interior–exterior and formal–informal figures are frozen mid-­step in a bizarre pas de deux. Both actors, plus the mask attached to the forearm of the black-­costumed figure, focus upon an event outside the image frame. The action-­shot painting with split focus simultaneously references a past and a future.52 Alexander Golovin’s Portrait of Meyerhold (1917) also presents doubling points of view. As if seated before a mirror, one sees both the Meyerhold front façade and his rear façade while perceiving both profiles concurrently. It is an imperfect mirroring, however, as the hands remain a downstage image visible on both bodies. The effect almost suggests a Janus figure with faces positioned on opposite sides of a head. Meyerhold looks at the viewer while also looking away from the viewer. Both the left ear and the right ear listen attentively in full view. Sans maquillage, Pierrot contemplates the egress and the ingress.53 Golovin’s backstage Meyerhold is costumed in an ample white blouse replete with fabric folds. He wears a large black ribbon tied in a bow like the cliché 110

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image of a painter of the past. His head is crowned with a red cylindrical cap like that of a Balkan folk musician. Posed and created in 1917, as Meyerhold directed Masquerade, the metteur en scène teeters on the cusp of cultural crossover and social transformation. The world’s most northern city and a modernist city in the east of considerable symbolist import, Sankt-­Peterburg or ‘Piter’ is, at the moment of the sitting, transitioning from St Petersburg to Petrograd and soon to Leningrad. Her decade of display harbours Meyerhold’s multiplicity, as well: Vsevolod and his Pierrot, Petrushka and Pulcinella ‘masks’. Zinaida Reich, collaborator and partner in the Moscow masking, was far more than his Columbine. She would most accurately be cast as the Arlecchino to Meyerhold’s ruminating, white-­clown swan. Actress Reich, one half of the officially registered Reich–Meyerhold and Meyerhold–Reich union, was the first half-­portion of the whole to be eliminated by the authorities in 1939. ‘Why?’ asked Peter Brook in his production of the same name (Bouffes du Nord, 2019). Finita la Comedia. The Pierrot mask fits Renaissance scholar Henry S. Turner’s definition of ‘form’ as ‘generalization’. Turner states that form ‘has the integrity of the cloud or the cluster and not that of the block or the sphere’,54 which reads like a description of the amorphous Pierrot mask itself. Perhaps Pierrot, in essence, is the ideal representation of a mask without set form, almost a vapour-­object. In an elaboration upon Bert O. States’s phenomenological perspective, Turner concludes that ‘bodilessness turns out to be a condition for [a]­. . . character’s mode of existence’. The fictional figure, for Turner and States, ‘turns out to be a state of perpetual desire for a body that always remains absent’.55 A set-­form mask, standing materially at another level of disguise, is fixed as it moves from one body to another, where a unique closed-­circuit of the particular masked body is created. Even the wooden mask sculptures with neck pedestals carved by Ossip Zadkine, generalised and partially abstracted heads, are sufficiently material to stare and pulse without a body (Masques, 1924). These two masks are not playable; they are not built as theatrical character-­role masks. While their material form is fixed from generation to generation, their reception as three-­dimensional image wavers somewhat. Pierrot fluctuates always, however, in detail of surface, content and form: ‘a blank check, an open presence’.56 The celebrity of Charlot differs from that of Pierrot, as do other regionally iconic figures in the avant-­garde. Charlie Chaplin’s tramp ‘mask’ is transnational and, to a degree, transcultural. In the commedia dell’arte domain, Charlot does not align with any particular mask; his is a hybrid personage with indeterminate parentage. Chaplin’s gradual evolution from vaudeville to Charlot did not pass directly through Pierrot. Still, as a face and gait to remember, there are some lingering effects of the silent mask. Charlot is less disruptively modernist in substance than some other masquerading figures such as cabaret artists and pocket theatre personalities. In Munich, Liesl 111

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Karlstadt and Karl Valentin, while not specialising in Bergamo dances as a commedia dell’arte duo, were provocative music makers with odd instrument manipulation in white-­ painted faces. Their verbal comedy and rhythmic jests were neither Gli innamorati love scenes nor chase scenes of Columbine pursued by pining Pierrot. Like Chaplin in the world context, their work presented the specific world of Munich at night. Karlstadt played men as well as women; Valentin, the eccentric, transformed with difficulty; he was less the chameleon actor than she. Valentin was the constant, the highly recognisable, slight-­but-­towering, straight-­man figure. Karlstadt was compact and transformational. This did not go unnoticed by Bertolt Brecht, as roguish singer and narrative model for his own Baal; he venerated both clowns and certainly admired the raucous atmosphere of their glib, abrupt cabaret texts. Karlstadt and Valentin’s scenography included an accumulation of now-­collected objects and screwball constructions (made even stranger in-­play, one imagines). Their treasured objects, vital to Liesl Karlstadt’s transformations, are on display in Munich’s Valentin-­Museum. Also on display in the Viktualienmarkt food market is a statue of Valentin himself: the ‘Charlie Chaplin of Germany’, as proposed by Brecht and the Bavarians. The absence of a statue of Karlstadt in Valentin-­stadt remains a dissonant enigma. While Karlstadt and Valentin interacted like Zanni I and Zanni II, physical opposites like Laurel (Karl) and Hardy (Liesl), Alexander Vertinsky emerged from the First World War and the Russian Revolution as the Pierrot of the east. Vertinsky played Pierrot and established a career as a cabaret singer, composer, poet and actor all in one. He had the ability to shift from Pierrot to Harlequin and entertain, also, as a fine Brighella. Vertinsky’s greatest contribution to Russian culture was his music: songs, lyrics, compositions and recordings. Still, as a Ukrainian, he is regarded as the ‘Russian Pierrot’ who initially went west. He played in Istanbul, Bessarabia, Poland and finally landed in Paris. While in Montparnasse he performed and interacted with other Russian artists and, very likely, visited La Ruche and the canteen of Maria Vassilieff. Vertinsky was fully engaged with Parisian Modernism, while Vassilieff was building costumes for the Swedish Ballet. Following successful tours to the Middle East, Vertinsky performed for Russian communities in the United States and ultimately landed and settled with Russian emigrants in Shanghai, after the Great Depression forced him to move on from North America. During the Second World War he was permitted to return to the Soviet Union where he was engaged in the cinema, alongside his continuing work as a cabaret artist. His fame continued to grow until his death in 1957. One hundred and thirty years after his birth, Alexander Vertinsky was honoured with a commemorative stamp in the Ukraine. And, also in 2019, a large bronze statue of Vertinsky as Pierrot was erected in central Kiev with great fanfare. The statue pays homage to his reputation as traditional Pierrot and his 112

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alternate identity as the mysteriously disguised ‘Black Pierrot’ (black costume, white collar, white sleeve cuffs and white pom-­poms). Vertinsky’s unparalleled career as singer, musician and cabaret celebrity is globally recognised. Today, he poses in a sleek-­lined Pierrot costume while looking thoroughly modern and ever-­contemporary; the figure in bronze withholds its abundant volume of theatrical memories. Sculptor Borys Stepanovych Dovgan notes: ‘Pay attention to the hands: he sang even with them.’57 In Kiev, Vertinsky in bronze is even bigger than Chaplin, and far more secretive. Notes   1. For an image, see Coutin, Tromper l’ennemi, pp. 78–9.   2. See Rachamimov, ‘The Disrupting Comforts of Drag’, pp. 362–82.   3. See Labarthe, ‘Modernity?­. . . Modernity? …’, p. 19.   4. Annette Becker, ‘Est-­il possible to regarder Picasso en temps de guerre?’, in Picasso et la guerre, p. 64.  5. Stein, If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso, in Stein, Gertrude Stein Lectures in America, pp. 81–2.  6. Picasso et la guerre, p. 90.   7. See Christian Derouet, ‘Picasso et le spectre des ventes’, in Picasso et la guerre, pp. 66–70.   8. See Luigi Gallo, ‘Les Costumes’, in Voyages imaginaires, pp. 18–51.   9. Ibid., p. 20. 10. Image of invitation, in Picasso et la guerre, p. 97. 11. ‘Couleurs et matières’, in Le Cubisme: l’exposition, p. 34. 12. Clara Pacquet, ‘Deux voies pour une nouvelle peinture’, in Franz Marc & August Macke, p. 45. 13. Ibid. 14. Stravinsky quoted in Carmine Romano, ‘Les Décors’, in Voyages imaginaires, p. 54. 15. Ibid., p. 56. 16. Ibid., pp. 95–6. 17. Alessandro De Simone, I teatri popolari di Napoli dell’Ottocento (2014, p. 909), quoted in ibid., p. 88. 18. Fortunato Depero, Fortunato Deperonelle opera e nelle vita (1940, p. 208), quoted in ibid., p. 89. 19. Gallo, ‘Les Costumes’, in Voyages Imaginaires, p. 24. 20. Ibid., p. 25. 21. Ibid., p. 24. 22. Ibid., p. 25. 23. Stravinsky from Robert Craft’s Conversations with Igor Stravinsky, quoted in ibid., p. 25. 24. See Berggruen and Hollein, Picasso und das Theater, pp. 164–81. 25. Léger quoted by Judi Freeman, ‘The Ballet-­Spectacle, the Object-­Spectacle’, in Baer (ed.), Paris Modern, p. 103. 26. Ibid., p. 100. 27. Lynn Garafola, ‘Rivals for the New: The Ballet suédois and the Ballets russes’, in Baer (ed.), Paris Modern, p. 72. 28. Nancy Van Norman Baer, ‘The Ballets suédois: A Synthesis of Modernist Trends in Art’, in Baer (ed.), Paris Modern, p. 28. 29. Ibid.

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30. States, Pleasure of the Play, title page. 31. See Banu, L’acteur qui ne revient pas, pp. 91–2. 32. Ibid., p. 16. 33. See Theatre of Dreams, p. 15. 34. See study for Introduction to the Yiddish Theatre, in Harshav (ed.), Marc Chagall and the Jewish Theatre, fig. 8, or Harshav, ‘Art and Theater’, in Goodman, Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theatre, pp. 68–87. 35. Christine Besson, ‘Allégorie de la Simulation de Lorenzo Lippi’, in Cogeval et al. (eds), Masques de Carpeaux à Picasso, pp. 86–7. 36. Ibid. 37. See Fernand Khnopff, pp. 82–3. 38. Eliza Adamowicz, ‘Between Museum and Fashion Journal’, in Adamowicz and Robertson, Dada and Beyond, p. 196. 39. Leigh, ‘Jacques Copeau’s School for Actors’, p. 30. 40. Ibid., p. 64. 41. McQuillen, ‘From The Fairground Booth to Futurism’, p. 418. 42. McQuillen, The Modernist Masquerade, pp. 163–5. 43. McQuillen, ‘From The Fairground Booth to Futurism’, p. 414. 44. McQuillen, The Modernist Masquerade, p. 167. 45. Barris, ‘The Life of the Constructivist Theatrical Object’, p. 67. 46. Moody, ‘Vsevolod Meyerhold and the “Commedia dell’arte”’, p. 866. 47. Barris, ‘The Life of the Constructivist Theatrical Object’, p. 75. 48. Ibid. 49. Braun, Meyerhold: A Revolution in the Theatre, p. 145. 50. Ibid., p. 143. 51. Ibid., p. 144. 52. Fauchereau, Avant-­gardes du XXième siècle, p. 247 53. Braun, Meyerhold: A Revolution in the Theatre, p. 149. 54. Henry S. Turner, ‘Generalization’, in Turner (ed.), Early Modern Theatricality, p. 15. 55. Ibid., p. 20. 56. States, Great Reckonings, p. 109, quoted in ibid., p. 16. 57. See Matvieienko, ‘Monument to Alexander Vertinsky’.

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5

ACTORS’ EFFIGIES AND PHOTO-­PORTRAITS

Ballerina Objects and Mechanical Pierrots Dancing and the interwar years’ disorder showcased the ‘return to order’ in Paris. Costume balls in Montparnasse brasserie venues spilled into the streets and avenues; collaborative, cross-­pollinating theatricality paced up and down the Boulevard du Montparnasse, but sculptors and painters did not abandon their studios. Parisian society was at play and a boîte de nuit was the ideal location for displays of painted faces and farcical cheek-­mask disguises. The artists came out when it was party time, as documented by a nightclub photo of bowler-­hatted Léonard Foujita, fashionable French-­Japanese Parisian, in a crowd of revellers in the 14th arrondissement (1925). Suited-­up, ‘still single at 25 years’ women paraded the boulevard for the ‘fête des catherninettes’, photographed in 1928 wearing short skirts of paper, high heels and outlandish, architectural hats. (It was always only a short walk to La Coupole.) André Kertész photographed a pyramid of science students protesting with bullhorns, posters and black hats who are no less theatrical (1927). Costumes and showtime were all the time during les années folles.1 In painting, the post-­war period also brought change as total abstraction began to fade; Cubism gave way to figurative representations where the human figure as subject was represented, but abstractly rendered. In Rome and Paris, for example, Gino Severini marked his return from the war with clear-­cut presentations of the human figure. An intact, assembled 115

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body is obvious in his work, which immediately introduces figures from the commedia dell’arte; Severini abandons his rapidly splintering body pieces of Futurism. His Bohémien jouant l’accordéon (1919) displays a broken-­up head with a face of four puzzle pieces. Still, the body structure is easily apparent as the right hand is body-­attached and extends to make direct contact with the buttons on the piano accordion’s right. (This makes the instrument a left-­ hander’s instrument as the piano keyboard is, in the hegemonic right-­hander world, typically on the right, with the buttons of the bass on the left.) In 1922 Severini painted Deux Pulichinelles (Two Pulcinellas) with realistically presented actors in leather masks, tall conical hats and full-­flowing white pantaloons and blouses. This extremely civil, respectable and almost classical duo on guitar and clarinet suggests a total loss of memory of Europe’s second decade of the twentieth century. Order is fully restored with sweet music, and Pulcinella, it appears, has recently completed finishing school with honours.2 Pablo Picasso the Catalan, not to be outshone by fellow Spaniard Juan Gris’s L’Arlequin assis (1920), painted a new take on roles from the commedia dell’arte with Les Trois Musiciens aux masques (1921). These two contrasting images, aptly juxtaposed in the book Paris: la belle époque, les années folles, les années trente, reveal Picasso moving one step further in his identification with Italian performers in masquerade. Harlequin the guitarist is flanked by Pierrot as clarinetist and a mysterious, bearded and hooded accordionist in monk-­like garb. The trio, painted in collage-­effect geometric fragments, all have circular mask eyeholes that match the eye representations of the Gris Harlequin image (which does not detail a face mask). All four figures from the two paintings peer directly outwards, sending their gaze back to the viewer. The Gris Harlequin, with parallel lines for a mouth, retains the contemplative mien displayed in his previous Harlequin paintings. The Spanish Harlequin sits alone, however, while the Catalan trio interact. Picasso’s masked performers solicit attention and absolutely anticipate an exchange of gaze. The complexity of these three performers must be acknowledged. Each is an actor playing a masked role who is playing a musical instrument, while acting the role. The painter, in this case Picasso, could identify with either the actor playing the role or with the role-­mask itself: the player disguised in the role, or the personage played. When provided with three distinct characters, one can only speculate about possible Picasso-­character identifications. Harlequin, it should be noted, is positioned in the centre of this image. However, in a second version of this painting, Picasso scrambles the seating order of the musicians, placing the Pierrot in the middle while Harlequin is on the audience’s left; Picasso maintains the sombre figure with hood on the right. (The hooded, masked monk of the Order of Capucines, holding sheet music and/or accordion, has lost his beard in the second version.) Harlequin, 116

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now clearly using his bow to play the violin rather than to play a guitar, shares prominent position behind the table with Pierrot holding the clarinet. The hooded figure, an outsider when reviewed within the visual lexicon of the commedia, recedes slightly. In version two, all three players are quaintly and comically moustached; each is distinctly wearing a half-­mask, allowing the Spanish facial hair folie to take focus. Also, the six mask eyeholes containing the six hidden eyes of the actors are slightly more apparent and individualistic in the reworked version. Perhaps Picasso is hiding inside the mysterious monk’s tunic, giving acting a shot, while keeping the technical requirements low. He can characterise the monk role as he wishes but can take the opportunity to try out commedia-­style masking while, in his imagination, gazing back upon the spectators who peruse and judge his representations of Harlequin and Pierrot. Picasso is then sympathetic to, or even empathetic with, the actor rather than the mask. Identifying with the player who plays the Outsider is a relatively safe and informative starting point for the developing actor who disguises. In this position of player and observer, Picasso fills out the Latin dance trio by featuring an Italian Arlecchino on strings, a French Pierrot on woodwind and a Spanish El Místico on the free-­reed, tango bandoneon. (Note: the dog under the table in version one has fled in version two.) Picasso is in preparation for actual, embodied masquerading; in the fifties his disguising becomes overt, playful display with found objects. The shift from post-­war fatigue to celebration experienced a slower recovery period in Germany. This complicated story of political turmoil was recounted in images in 2015 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The Aktion! Art and Revolution exhibition exposed how ‘the end of World War I did not bring immediate peace to Germany’.3 The process that led to the formation of the Weimar Republic in 1919 was chaotic and disorderly; it was not by any means the transition from war to fête. Max Beckman’s Die Nacht (The Night), painted in 1918–19, captures this claustrophobic tension with a fiesta of domestic violence, ruthless gesture and coarseness. The butchery of the men’s war is remembered here; it is vividly re-­enacted with attacks on women and their families.4 There was no rapid return of merriment in German cities where revolutionary thoughts prevailed. In Austria, following the dissolution of the poly-­lingual Austro-­Hungarian Empire (and its twenty-­ six languages and dialects), new European states surfaced. Budapest and Vienna, the former capitals of the Dual Monarchy, temporarily lost prominence as ‘central power’ urban centres. While Paris danced in an array of dressed-­up fashions and fêtes, the music paused for a while in eastern cities. The silence was finally broken by a consortium of strong, artistic personalities still healthy and active after the war. At the forefront were Hugo von Hofmannsthal, poet and playwright, and stage 117

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director Max Reinhardt. Prior to the war, in 1911, Reinhardt created the mise en scène of Hofmannsthal’s play Jedermann. Reinhardt was already directing at the Berlin Zirkus Schumann, a circus building soon to become the Grosses Schaulspielhaus. Jedermann was an adaptation of the anonymous English morality play Everyman and other mystery plays performed in the late medieval era. Death is sent by the Creator to tempt and test the wealthy and successful Everyman in a series of challenging scenes. The presentation of Death­– ­his or her costuming or masquerading­– i­s wide-­open territory for visual expression. While often simply played as a man with a face, Death is not male in all cultures; skulls are not strongly gendered and hoods and capes dissimulate. Where death speaks, masking follows. In the wake of several confrontational years in Europe, Reinhardt and Hofmannstahl proposed to take Death and Jedermann to a fresh, out-­of-­the-­way, natural, outdoor setting. Reinhardt and Hofmannsthal, assisted by composer Richard Strauss, conductor Franz Schalk and scenic designer Alfred Roller, opened the first Salzburger Festspiele in August 1920. The opening performance was Reinhardt’s Jedermann production; it was presented on a platform stage in front of Salzburg Cathedral. The Salzburg Festival, which celebrated its centenary in 2020, aimed to repair and renew central European culture with an event that surpassed nationalist fervour and camouflaged battlefields with scenery. As in Berlin, Jedermann was played by the celebrated Austrian actor Alexander Moissi, an outsider in both name and tenor in the German-­language theatre. Moissi, an Austrian of Albanian descent, spoke German with an Italian accent, the result of one parent’s residence in an Italian Albanian community. Appropriately, Moissi was internationalist and multicultural by birth and nature; German spectators read him as ‘foreign’. This appellation can be decoded as Arabic, Jewish or Turkish, it would seem. While the spotlight is upon summoning Everyman, Death always steals the show, and almost always gets photographed. Occasionally, when scenographers will it, harbinger Death enters in flowing white garb, confronts Jedermann and, in language well spoken, delivers the weighty dispatch. White Pierrot-­like images haunt even this Alpine valley as bells toll. In the midst of urban bedlam, the Bauhaus School emerged as a counter-­ culture entity separated from Germany’s atmosphere of instability. It survived for fourteen years before renewed turbulence in 1933. Introducing a new perspective and temperament, the Bauhaus in Weimar, Dessau and finally in Berlin (at Bernau) found reason for amusement. Joyfulness returned via original, theme-­ based galas with festive objects of fine design. Bauhaus masquerading activities during the Weimar Republic evolved into notable displays of entertaining, architectural innovation. Oskar Schlemmer joined the Bauhaus faculty in 1920, enriching the fertile environment established by Walter Gropius. Teaching staff included the painters Johannes Itten and 118

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Lyonel Feininger, plus sculptor Gerhard Marcks. Schlemmer’s work with theatre, body masking and performance expanded the curriculum. Artists Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky arrived in 1922, adding their accumulated experience with Der Blaue Reiter painters and expressionist arts in Austria and Germany, Dada collaborations in Switzerland and knowledge of the Russian avant-­garde. At first sight, the assembly of artists registers as another stronghold of male hegemony; this is true with regard to the administrative personnel of the early years. Germany’s brutally exhausted and depleted male population in the 1920s created opportunities for women, who were noticeably present as students at the Weimar Bauhaus. Later in Dessau, an anonymous photograph of an unidentified Woman in Mask (c. 1927) illustrates, with its oblique asymmetry, a figure askew and out-­of-­sync with her surroundings. A dark, full-­faced mask conceals the woman’s face while accenting her one visible hand which supports her lost equilibrium; she leans against a gallery wall hung with framed modernist photographs.5 One of the Bauhaus Mädels featured in the introduction of a recent publication on these women, she demonstrates the precariousness of her social and physical position. The austere mask face aligned in perfect verticality with the floor is the only object in harmony with the room’s architecture. She, in contemporary dress and narrow stance, resists falling into a chasm of abstraction in black and white.6 Fêtes with performance projects, organised by ‘masters’ and students, were hugely successful events at the Bauhaus; objects and attire from these events are well documented in photographs. László Moholy-­Nagy, an accomplished photographer, encouraged photographic innovation and promoted experimental image making in Weimar. A photo from 1923 preserves a collection of marionettes constructed and performed by Friedl Dicker, a student from Vienna, who followed Johannes Itten to the Bauhaus. Her kinetic sculptures on strings were mechanical figures that had the capacity to be animated with electricity; they appear like comedic characters, similar in design to geometric objects created in Cubism and Futurism.7 Dicker’s modern marionettes resemble figures constructed by Alexandra Exter in the Russian avant-­garde of the same era. Exter’s cubo-­futurist costume designs can be seen in the film Aélita, made by Yacov Protozanov in 1924.8 Dicker’s work expanded into theatre, drawing and textiles; she became an innovative educator who worked with children, including work at the Theresienstadt concentration camp where she perished.9 Costumes in form were designed for special events celebrated by the Bauhaus students. Already in Weimar a Pegasus figure was built that allowed the half-­ man and half-­horse figure to move along with two legs and the back part of the body supported by a unicycle. The ‘fantastic disguise’ from 1924–25, an example of the comic grotesque, was documented by a photographer.10 A second photographed figure stands as a series of panels constructed from 119

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varied geometric shapes that are attached in parallel planes; a human foot and lower leg are visible within the structure. This body abstraction moves like a piece of kinetic scenography which is animated by a hidden manipulator who lifts the architectural disguise while walking, turning or spinning. Not unlike forms essayed in Paris ballet performance, this Bauhaus model, in contrast, maintains an implication of building-­ in-­ motion rather than a flat-­surfaced canvas for painted images.11 There is little separating objects and costumes for festive disguise from those made as serious Bauhaus functional designs; conceptually, they are the same. Performance, for Bauhaus students, was an opportunity to place ideas in form within a social environment, as if testing an object’s communicative capacity. In Weimar from 1919 to 1925, a festive ambience accompanied Bauhaus study and research. Subsequently, this foundation in performance work was formalised in Dessau, where Oskar Schlemmer’s theatre projects developed. Schlemmer’s painting, drawing and design work became applied art activity as scenographic expression. For Schlemmer, his architectural treatments of the human body were acts of repair, in response to the horrible destruction of the body that he had witnessed in the First World War: macabre images, he stated, that ate into his soul.12 Designing and building masks was integral to Schlemmer’s approach to theatre studies. True to the prevailing Bauhaus vibe of functional forms with purpose, designers in the theatre division introduced useful performance objects that resembled and complemented practical objects from everyday life. Erich Consemüller photographed a woman wearing a modern Bauhaus mask while seated in one of Marcel Breuer’s furniture designs, an iconic Bauhaus photo. An image from the Dessau school when Walter Gropius was director, the actor-­model is either Lis Beyer or Ise Gropius, depending upon the source. The head of the woman is contained within a helmet mask globe which shines like a metallic ball. From oversized, human-­shaped eyeholes the figure stares directly at the photographer and the camera. Fully at ease, the fashionable woman sits cross-­legged in high heels. She dominates the image intended to feature the sleek, metal tube chair. The woman wearing the non-­gendered mask displays a triangle-­piece nose and oval mouth with closed lips.13 The photograph looks contemporary and stylish nearly a century after its creation in 1926. The steel look of the mask above the stress-­free, composed female body is wonderfully strange. The observer assumes the round black holes of the eyes within white-­painted ovals permit the actor to actually see. The openings are strategically placed to allow vision, but it is impossible to perceive whether they align properly with the model’s own eyes. In either instance, the real eyes would probably not press against the front façade of this mask. Even in the photograph, the viewer feels viewed; one experiences the gaze from an armoured head. The spectator is forced to acknowledge a difference in the 120

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self from that of the masked subject: the viewer is head-­naked. The woman in metal imposes a focused stillness which provokes a physical reaction from the spectator: an inhalation, a sharp retreat or an eye movement. The masked figure will not be ignored. The smooth, bald and shiny head-­image with eyes is striking because a breathing body within animates the masquerade. The mask alone, placed upon the metallic-­ framed chair, would intrigue but it would not disquiet in the same manner. Salvador Dalí once referred to one of his astonishing costume creations as an ‘être-­objet’, suggesting that his masquerade was part ‘being’ and part ‘thing’. The surreal object, consummately explored by Hal Foster, displays its ‘compulsive beauty’ and its surreal ‘marvelous’ throughout twentieth-­century Modernism.14 In many circumstances when the actor body transitions to body-­ with-­ objectness, the looking-­ at and the looking-­ from change. Disguise, it seems, affirms the latitude for an exchange of glances to become an exchange of gazes. When the actor appears different to others, the actor should, indeed, be looking differently in response. A second photograph, also produced to secure attention and assert the importance of an object design, presents a table with coffee-­ making and serving utensils. An unidentified man with a mask sits at a table of finely crafted objects. He stares forward at the unidentified photographer. No movement is implied here, which differs from the previous photo. The woman in the chair stares outwards over her shoulder, as if an intruder has suddenly drawn her attention. The sober, masked man at the table demands notice, albeit subtly. His nonchalant attitude invites further interest, and the viewer does, in fact, further investigate the other objects in view, as was the original intent.15 Theatre at the Bauhaus incorporated elements from all aspects of the greater design curriculum. The black square performance space was a site for experimentation of all kinds in all media where cross-­fertilisation reigned. Directed initially by Lothar Schreyer, the Theatre Atelier followed a rather traditional path, an outcome in line with Schreyer’s previous work in expressionist performance and contemporary painting circles. When students deemed this direction insufficiently connected to the art and design prospectus, the more traditional approach was discarded. Schlemmer, who had already completed unconventional performance projects for the disguised body in Stuttgart, promised a more challenging and adventurous pedagogy; he was a successful painter with an interest in work in three dimensions. The exaggerated body forms that would eventually become the dance figures for the Triadic Ballet (Triadische Ballett or Ballet triadique) are now widely recognised as iconic mask-­character objects. The body masks and masquerade forms were incorporated into a series of scenes performed with new music by Paul Hindemith (1922). They represent, however, only one aspect of the Bauhaus theatre work during Schlemmer’s tenure as director. 121

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Schlemmer’s contributions to the Bauhaus curriculum considerably expanded it; the programme became more interdisciplinary and progressively more risk-­taking. Schlemmer’s fields of interest included acting, choreography, dance, marionettes, mime, photography, stage design and writing; he was a theatre practitioner and a theorist, as well as an experienced actor and director. In contemporary twenty-­first-­century theatre parlance, one would identify Schlemmer as metteur en scène and scenographer. His ability to work across disciplines in an atmosphere where there existed an ever-­present discussion on architecture and the dynamics of space made Schlemmer a perfect fit for this unique centre of learning. Schlemmer’s dance-­theatre-­performance played with kinetic art and stage space, as well as all the potential dynamic relationships between stationary and mobile objects and people. Schlemmer’s masks and body forms, like his paintings and his designs on paper, are distinctive and unusually precise; there is nothing random in his work. He exhibits a passion for geometry and a mathematician’s pleasure in number play; therefore, Schlemmer’s vision encompassed engineering as well as the architectural. Schlemmer’s appreciation of burlesque, the parodic and the grotesque contrasts with his rational process of invention and documentation. Schlemmer’s clown is overtly comical. White-­faced and wildly patterned in costume, the clown-­figure plays a purely rectangular stringed instrument with a rapier; Schlemmer’s box-­ cello performance object resembles a Picasso cardboard-­ collage guitar that is bowed like a cello. In performance, the clown smiles with eyes closed in deep appreciation of his own playing; Schlemmer’s painted, white-­face maquillage highlights, with dark, painted accents, his eyebrows, eyelids and lips. The figure is neither mechanical nor robotic as one might anticipate; this is a clown­– ­a sartorial invention in boldly patterned blouse and trousers over white undergear­– ­who bows his musical instrument within an atmosphere of soft tones and calm: a reflective Pierrot. Bauhaus photographer T. Lux Feininger captured Schlemmer’s personage in 1927.16 The image of disguise uncovers and reveals, while foreshadowing the forms of solidity more directly associated with figures in Schlemmer’s drawings and sculptured forms. The humanity apparent in the stature of this musician in white gloves exposes the fragility appropriate to some manifestations of the French Pierrot, like Schlemmer’s contemporary, Maurice Farina. Farina (‘flour’ in Italian and Latin) was at the peak of his career in France in the 1920s until he fell ill in 1928, the result of mustard gas inhalation during the war. A favourite of Colette, Cocteau, Debussy, Tzara and André Antoine, the Farina Pierrot played in Morocco, Holland and New York at a time when the Pierrot figure represented, as Antoine repeated, an ‘incomplete art’. Ending his career as an archivist and collector of mime artefacts, Farina, according to Pénélope Driant, was modern in the sense that his stylistic range extended from the traditional mime to farcical burlesque.17 Driant asserts that Farina’s Pierrot 122

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fully represented the ‘white phantom like a page not yet written’ that Stéphane Mallarmé described in 1897.18 Iconography confirms Farina’s make-­over and repair of the ‘decadent’ fin-­de-­siècle Pierrot. Schlemmer’s clown as Pierrot is more complex than nostalgic, as the figure evokes the circus clown tradition alongside the cabaret comedy of work of Karl Valentin and Liesl Karlstadt. Schlemmer’s clown figure counterpoints his other figure creations which formalise and idealise the human body, with simplified but enlarged treatments of the real: abstractions fully realised as forms with human-­form foundations. Beneath or within his body exaggerations stands the pulsating, breathing body of an actor. Schlemmer’s silent circus musician is a knight warrior disarmed and exposed, with helmet and armour removed. In a similar vein, Feininger photographed a Schlemmer mask, often referred to as the ‘Baby’ mask, costumed as an angel (circa 1928). Seated beneath a Christmas tree fashioned from steel tubes typically used to construct furniture in the Bauhaus style, the baby plays the saxophone. The spherical white head and white costume are spotlighted under the metallic framework suspended with an array of shiny ornaments: a two-­dimensional doll figure, puppets, small brass instruments, unidentified metal objects and a dark, glossy helmet mask. Feininger’s photographic composition on a theme of Noël is anchored by an editor’s description which denotes the image’s context and its display of ‘music and enigmatic meditation’.19 The ambiguity of the angel figure, so obviously human with plain-­skin hands and eyes­– ­visible through mask eyeholes­– ­suggests both the ironic and the comic grotesque. The angel’s gaze, directed to the camera and to the photographer in mischievous complicity, defies even a hint of angelic, infant or toddler innocence. Positioned onstage with a towering wooden ‘T’ tree decorated with tin toys above, the baby-­faced adult buzzes away on the soprano sax; it is an uncanny image. The realism of the facial features and the surrealism of the objects and circumstance combine to evoke the marvellous strange. The same mask reappears in other contexts, photographed in contrasting costumes; the mask’s gaze is far less interrogating when the surrounding environment is a more quotidian space. Still, this strong-­looking figure remains inquisitive and unsettling, supporting, perhaps, Bazon Brock’s discussion of the troubling German political dynamic with his declaration of ‘good-­bye to the pure innocence of modernity’.20 Erich Consemüller’s photograph of masked figures positioned on the roof of the Bauhaus building in 1927 presents an array of body forms in an unlikely, but certainly not untheatrical, outdoor setting. An inflated, disproportionate and asymmetrical fiddler-­figure sits on a bench with a paper accordion hanging from its neck. Clown-­masked with bulbous nose, the figure holds a useless, frame-­only umbrella to shield the sun. On the roof floor beside the clown is another mask object costume piece temporarily abandoned by its wearer. Other masked and oversized standing figures face the photographer while 123

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holding peculiar objects: a globe, a large pipe, a triangle. The ensemble of five actors from a theatre course at the school is pictured during a rehearsal break from a planned presentation.21 The photo reveals the free-­flowing ambience of amateurism which permitted experimentation and invention in the theatre courses. As critics have noted, most of the theatre masters in Dessau were not products of performing arts conservatories, nor were they prominent, professional theatre-­practice artists. Many suggest that this circumstance allowed for greater student enthusiasm and free thinking. A later photo from the same year shows these same five masked personages each strategically placed for a photographic composition on the roof and lower balconies of the Bauhaus building: five actors on five separate exterior floor levels.22 The disguised actors become living statues and decorative, but kinetic, forms. Curiously, the presence of their flesh-­form, curved shapes gradually refers the viewer’s eye to the sharp right angles of the building’s square and rectangular panels. The complementarity actually increases the theatricality of the image. In the Triadic Ballet Schlemmer structures a performance in eight scenes which are divided into three sections, each with a precise colour tone and an identifiable dramatic spirit. All eight scenes require from one to three actor-­ dancers; seven of the scenes are either solos or duets. Only the final scene is played with a trio. The first three scenes transpire before a yellow background; they are characterised as ‘joyful-­burlesque’. Scenes four and five featuring pink are ‘festive’. The final three scenes with a black background are ‘mystical-­ fantastic’. The dramatic progression through the eight scenes is illustrated by developments in the colour sequencing in costume and scenography, as well as in the transitions in form and costume construction materials. Nothing happens by chance; Schlemmer has planned the choreography and scenography with mathematical detail and systematisation; his paper mise en scène, evolved over more than a decade of performance trials and errors, culminated with a work which was produced by Bauhaus actors in Dessau. The nine form types, and nearly double the number of actual costumes, extend or accent the human body in unique ways. The distinctive forms themselves make significant statements through colour and treatment of selected body sections; line, mass and material add supplementary meaning and determine the final declarations made by frontal and profile silhouettes. The actor in body-­ costume must follow the directional possibilities for movement that each particular structure allows and encourages. Gesture and displacement qualities are to a degree built into the structures; it is essential, for best practice, to submit to these decisions in form. The movements for the ballet were precisely pre-­set in Schlemmer’s choreography; however, the costume-­objects themselves are already embodied with choreographic intent. The director and actor must simply read and respond to these kinetic codes. These objects, as object-­ accessories for actors, are dependent upon an 124

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activator; they are incomplete without a body to make them mechanomorphic; they are not self-­determined robots. As spatial texts-­in-­waiting, it is simply not an option to eliminate the human performer. Not all dancers can supply the adopted skin or shell with pulse, breath, gesture, musicality and a rich and full interior imagination; likewise, not all actors can inhabit and effectively move in an alternate encasing armour. Schlemmer’s forms are challenging projects for any performer because manipulating them, as instructed and choreographed, is simply not enough. Like many fine masquerades, these forms must be wholly and profoundly occupied. It is important to realise that the actor within must not only activate the surface of the form, but also its contained space. Masquerade balls, carnival parades and Halloween parties encourage the participation of any and all; they are open, democratic, performative events. In such contexts, disguising is meaningful but playful. Designed masquerade creations, like those of Schlemmer, have established, set properties and performance parameters. As roles-­in-­form, their spatial boundaries and movement character must be honoured. The script of the form must be read, and the actor must respect the proposition and conform to an astute analysis of the said text. Individual interpretations of a form can be tested and adopted in some instances, which may stretch or extend assumed parameters. However, some frontiers cannot be transgressed if they endanger the form’s credibility. One must learn to read the form as one reads a mask, as one reads a face. One must also learn to see and to look from the viewpoint of the form, which is a viewpoint affected by the nature of being inside. As a separated point of view, it is not the actor’s accustomed point of view. The actor’s new gaze must be embraced and inhabited, just as the form is inhabited. The actor-­manipulator remains intact, although temporarily rebooted and rebuilt. While perhaps not seen, the actor does not disappear. In Didier Plassard’s fascinating study L’Acteur en effigie (The Actor as Effigy), the human body as performance object is thoroughly analysed. Plassard looks at puppets, mannequins, masked figures and human-­machines in theatre and design during the historical avant-­garde in Europe. His ‘effigy’ as subject encompasses the creation and usually performance of figures within scenographic contexts in France, Germany and Italy. Most of the effigies considered are either visibly manipulated by an actor or manipulated by a person or machine who is not seen; there are also effigy figures that are essentially free-­standing, three-­dimensional stage objects or personages. Plassard details how a personage can be ‘mise en corps’ or ‘mise en effigie’.23 The first instance refers to the traditional, realist actor who creates a personage with all the available expressive tools of the human body. When the personage is created and constructed with other materials, partially or totally, the stage figure is, in Plassard’s terminology, an effigy. The implication is that in some performance contexts there is little difference between the live, undisguised presence and the 125

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absent, totally hidden actor presence. Some avant-­garde projects were designed or presented with objects only and activated completely by machine. The concept of the effigy-­object implies a transformation and dehumanisation of the actor-­body; it is characterised by identification with mechanical forms exemplified by the marionette or the automaton. Its thingness is paramount and its life-­as-­object prevails over the quotidian human form. A head-­masked, modernist stage figure of Italian futurist design, for example, is termed an effigy in Plassard’s analysis. This nomenclature does not unequivocally align with the concept of masquerade which I present in these chapters. In a masquerade as I propose, the human body is incorporated; it is an embodied construction and, as noted earlier, a mise en scène of the body itself. Without the actor, dancer or player, there is no masquerade. An actor could, of course, construct a character likeness of an existing masquerade in a sculpted form sans comédien which could aptly be termed an effigy of that masquerade. From my point of view, such an effigy stands alone as a separate entity from an actor-­containing, actor-­animated masquerade. This does not mean that an effigy as Plassard proposes has no importance or significance as a viable stage figure within the theatre context. As Plassard explains, theatre without actors was proposed, theorised and essayed by avant-­gardists between 1910 and 1930. Since that time, experimental productions have tested the possibility of theatre as purely scenographic event. It remains an interesting proposition; conceptualising such an event isolates theatre essentials and highlights which actions and objects contain performative potential. Plassard acknowledges that the substitution of objects for people signals ‘a challenge for the actor’.24 Oskar Schlemmer considered theatre without live actors present; he imagined such a théâtre d’objet would consist only of ‘light, colours and music’.25 Jacques Lecoq’s experiments in his school’s Laboratoire pour l’Étude du Mouvement (LEM) re-­initiated experiments in this vein in the late 1970s; experiments emphasised the dynamics of architectural forms as objects in a framed or contained, lighted and designed space. (This concept is further considered in Chapter 6.) When the human body is missing-­in-­action from the scenic landscape, it is perhaps best to envision this as a different genre of theatre that has no pretension of representing that which is or appears to be human and real. In Didier Plassard’s discussion of the actor as effigy, he notes that the total dismissal of the human element suggests ‘un autre théâtre’.26 However, neither Schlemmer nor Lecoq trained actors for a theatre where they would not be required. The Bauhaus theatre work, including the Triadic Ballet, needs actors. Schlemmer’s most recognised stage figures are all actor-­driven, even if perceived as beings that resemble a deep-­sea diver, a doll or a spinning top. The forms establish a movement vocabulary with their distinctive shapes and their individual manner of restricting liberty. The degree of sensory deprivation, 126

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often quite significant, contributes to the temperament of each constructed personage; the forms impose awkward performance conditions for the actor. And as human performers, the interpreters or executors of these demanding choreographies (hidden within the form) possess the right and the capacity to look back at the director-­creator-­scenographer and voice their critiques on the subject of discomfort, for instance. There exists an element of risk in the rare performances of Schlemmer’s ballet role-­forms. The potential frustration and unease for the actor would not be an issue if the Triadic Ballet, for example, were to be performed by puppets, marionettes or mechanised mannequins; such objects are completely manageable and well behaved. Actors are more troublesome and unpredictable. Schlemmer wrote many of his projects as ‘tänzerisch-­pantomimischen Etüden’ or ‘dance-­like mime studies’ which leave little room for individual expression.27 In live performances­– ­special and rare events for Schlemmer’s creations­ – ­the risk of actor rebellion is real. This may be the one, viable association of these figures with the commedia dell’arte. Many references are made by scholars and by Schlemmer himself to how some figures are inspired by the Italian comedy; most would agree that this kinship is not overtly evident. The  ever-­present threat of actor rebellion, so vital to the actual commedia dell’arte (rather than that idealised in painted pictures), does come to mind for the spectator of the Triadic Ballet. What if an actor threw off mask, costume or connector, scattered them at the feet of the dancing partner and exited the stage? There is a dramatic tension installed by this real, enduring, mounting potentiality. Lurking hazards, potential perils and frequent failures allow the human element to infuse or infiltrate the plastic elements of Schlemmer’s forms. When one views the figures with an awareness of the actor’s contribution to the making of the image, they appear to be less passive. Since most scholars considering the forms know them from photographs, an actor–photographer dialogue makes the final product viable. Consideration of body angles, head positions, facial expression, plus hand and foot positions was required to construct the action shot. The stillness-­in-­motion achieved in some images, like Oskar Schlemmer posed in the cymbal-­playing ‘Turk’ role,28 is the result of live consultation and debate. The Turk is not a puppet; it is not an effigy. If anything, the Turk is closer to a Nō actor than a no-­actor object. Self-­portrait Masquerade Alternative displays of disguise developed at the Bauhaus. Gertrud [Hantschk] Arndt received a scholarship to study in Dessau and arrived planning to further pursue her interest in architecture. To her surprise there was no formal course in the subject and, as a woman, the textile course was suggested to her. Arndt was successful in her work with weaving and fabric constructions, but also focused on photography. Lásló Moholy-­Nagy was influential at the Bauhaus 127

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in this era; Arndt was introduced to an array of photographic experiments and modernist ways of seeing. She carved her own path, however. In a series of forty-­three Masked Portraits (Maskenporträts), Arndt explored the disguising of her own face as a means of imaging ideas of the feminine. She utilised a variety of objects, including costumes, veils, netting, lipstick and mascara, as well as facial gesture. Her photographs, completed between 1929 and 1932 when Arndt was a ‘guest student’ following formal studies, are groundbreaking in their simplicity and directness.29 Arndt’s work was inspired by the contemplation of her own gaze. The resulting guises reveal a very steady gaze surrounded by faces in flux; Arndt photographs an unstable façade of transformative skin. The photographer devised a method of taking her self-­ portraits while utilising an old camera that had no delaying self-­timer. She used light from a window, and her system of snapping the shot involved a chain of actions activated by the fall of a broom as she looked into the camera. ‘Arndt did not use a specific narrative and did not serialise her photographs around a certain theme.’ They were simply ‘instantaneous moments of emotion captured on film’.30 Eye-­ to-­ eye with the self in subtle disguise, Arndt encountered the acting-­Arndt at play. She did not, it appears, take her photos while regarding herself in the mirror; she did not have the advantage of such a set-­up. She imagined herself mirrored in the camera lens. Her work is often seen as the precursor of contemporary artist Cindy Sherman. In Masked Portrait numbers thirteen and fourteen, Arndt gazes directly into the camera; in the first, she is poised with eyes closed and head tilted downwards; she tilts her head to the side in the second.31 The second photo is also a double exposure which provides overlapping images; it reveals open eyes adjacent to those closed. The sophistication of the image is startling, as the doubling is not immediately apparent. While one imagines the eyes behind the closed eyelids, the real eyes surface and respond to the viewer’s supposing. Surface textures in both photos are complex, as fabric, skin, brows and lashes curve and paint lines that are muted by netting or spotted by decorative marks on almost invisible veiling. Other figures wearing skullcaps suggest women with soft helmets whose layers of fabric drape like sheer skins. The French photographer, poet and theatre artist Claude Cahun incorporated costume and disguise in her self-­portraits of the same era. An untitled Cahun image from 1928 shows her standing in a black cape before a white lace curtain crocheted with flower and leaf motifs. She wears a dark half-­mask in the Venetian bauta style and looks straight forward into the camera. Cahun’s left hand emerges from within the cape and holds a white full-­face mask with painted eyes which look in the viewer’s direction. This clownish mask with a large mark on one cheek suggests female gender. There are additional masks attached to the cape. The largest is a white full-­face mask with lipstick which 128

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wears a black loup or eye-­zone mask on its façade; this mask hangs at Cahun’s left shoulder. There are a minimum of five other loups of various tints of black and white randomly attached to her costume. The total image is chaotic and multi-­focused. As the lightest mask against the darkest background, the mask in Cahun’s hand takes centre stage. Cahun herself is buried deeply within her improvised shroud; the mask which she wears has little personality beyond its beady eyes. The presence of Cahun’s chin gains interest the longer one gazes at this image. However, the viewer’s reception of this photograph mimics the rhythm of the object-­subjects; the eye darts here and there and comes to rest on the blank expression of an unidentified and non-­gendered identity. The image is not without interest; it intrigues with the scattered nature of its statement. The image is not marked with any details that reveal the decade exposed by the photo; it is timeless. Cahun is present but lost within a crowd of shifting identities. In Cahun’s self-­portrait circa 1929, she sits in a provocative tilt as she gazes at the camera lens, dressed in a lightweight white dress, light-­coloured scarf and beaded jewellery. Cahun, in elegant attire, contemplates the viewer while one of the masks mentioned above hangs from the ceiling in the upper left frame of the photograph. This white face with painted facial features and mark-­on-­cheek appears to gaze downwards emptily. There are two character masks in the framed image; one is a false-­visage-­only and the other is visage with a head behind it. The display of identity play is subtle and accessible. The photo was displayed alongside others at the Jeu de Paume in Paris at a retrospective in Paris in 2011. Its mise en scène resonates with other celebrity photographic portraits of women or men framed in the company of a mask object. The Cahun pictured here contrasts deeply with her self-­portraits as a short-­haired man, particularly her image as man in a checked coat beside a wall mirror which allows a powerful double image of her action-­image portraiture as theatre and performance event. In an article dedicated to Claude Cahun’s work in more conventional theatre settings, Miranda Welby-­Everard discusses her choice of work with the self-­portrait genre; she suggests that photography is ‘an instrument with which to image the actor, to give her actual and imaginary roles material form, and above all to render permanent that which is essentially transitory’.32 The impulse to preserve masquerading events, as noted in earlier chapters, is significantly present in the history of photography. This urge to arrest the image persists throughout Modernism, and in no way tapers away; today, a wide range of publications feature embodied masquerade, surprising in their tenacity and variety. While most are not exclusively dedicated to self-­portraiture, this option remains a significant choice. Disguise surfaces as an interdisciplinary element of the avant-­garde. Welby-­Everard seconds the narrative voiced by other scholars that ‘the mask is the sign of artifice’ (her emphasis).33 The 129

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mask object for scholars is a member of the doll, effigy, mannequin, puppet and marionette family of inanimate things. This position is generally accepted by those who recognise masks as objects that display wholeness and completeness, perceived as fully present things. An understanding of the mask as finished object in the here-­and-­now is not universally acknowledged, however. As noted in earlier chapters, the mask object is incomplete; it is not present in its totality when separated from a nourishing human body. It lives in fullness and breathes with its actor as a parasitic extension of the human form. From this point of view, the lonely mask displayed in isolation is a sign of lack or a symbol of absence, as a figure-­in-­waiting. The mask object is a surface without a container, a label without a bottle. Neither superficial nor artificial, the mask awaits a host­– a­ site appropriate for habitation. Only then does it represent Heimat rather than the unheimlich. Welby-­Everard notes that it is not certain that Claude Cahun activated the shutter on all her self-­portrait photographs. Certainly she performed in all and she served as metteur en scène in all her creations. It is possible that her partner Marcel Moore assisted with some shots; the two women collaborated on many writing projects, sculptures and photomontages. During the rise of Nazism in Europe they fought antisemitism in any way possible. In the end Cahun and Moore fled to Jersey in the Channel Islands. France fell to the Germans, and soon after the Germans occupied the islands. The two women were active in the resistance, working in subtle disguise among the occupiers, where they secretly hid and distributed anti-­war flyers and pacifist, ideological propaganda to German soldiers. Eventually arrested, imprisoned and sentenced to death for their underground theatrics, they were both released following the Liberation. The self-­portraits of photographer Paul Outerbridge, the tuxedoed man in disguise, ally with Claude Cahun’s self-­identification art projects. As one of many Americans in Paris in the 1920s, Outerbridge interacted with avant-­ garde photographers such as Berenice Abbott and Man Ray.34 Outerbridge’s self-­portraits feature a series of physical attitudes in the same hat, gag mask and costume, along with cigarette-­prop held in a white-­gloved hand: ‘signifiers of masculinity’, according to curators at the Met in New York.35 The Outerbridge face is finely veil-­masked by an amorphous fabric covering which flattens his features; the face sports a thick black moustache below an exaggerated plastic nose and dark glasses. The circa 1927 image is boldly actorly while tongue-­in-­cheek. With wide-­striped white shirt and bow tie, the total mise en scène is edgy and confronting. Each version of the postured body adds to its recognisable swagger and its growing iconicity. Outerbridge, in up-­close view, is covered with an imperfect, wrinkled fabric skin. The opaque, close-­fitting, veil-­like covering has farcical masking attachments, which initially read as plastic theatrical shop toys; they are actually a pair of close-­fitting goggles joined by a sculpted nose attachment of unknown firm material. The entire 130

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composition is a playful display of the false in an intentionally off-­the-­mark configuration. The thick faux skin and the disguise elements, in the Met critic’s assertion, ‘dehumanize him, transforming him into an automaton, at once elegant and sinister, powerful and emasculated’.36 On the contrary, the Outerbridge façade­– h ­ is self-­masking peau d’éléphant­– e­ ffaces but enhances his humanness; this new head’s formal properties enlarge and inflate the Outerbridge presence. Disguised, the Outer-­one is hyper-­humanised; a personality of greater dimension has taken shape. Self-­portrait photographs continued to flourish among identity-­searching personalities at all three Bauhaus locations. Other examples include Marianne Brandt’s photo-­collage subtitled The Feminist (1926), Xanti Schawinsky’s Self-­ Portrait in Dada Pose (1927–28), Karl Straub’s double-­exposure Self-­Portrait (1923–24), Moholy-­Nagy’s photogramme-­collage Self-­Portrait as shadow-­ mask face (1926) and Umbo’s (Otto Umbehr) Self-­Portrait at the Beach with round sunglasses in the shadow of his own hands and camera (circa 1930). Elsewhere, Hungarian-­American André Kertész produced a self-­ portrait in disguise in 1921. His Self-­ Portrait as a Woman is a semi-­ outdoor image sitting on a porch in a dress, hat and make-­up. He looks at the camera as if in conversation with himself, amused and bemused. As his career developed in Paris and across Europe, Kertész initiated a pattern of self-­portraits where he shares the image of himself with an image of his camera. His Self-­Portrait with Friends (1926) displays his camera on a tripod with the photographer behind it, accompanied by a woman on his right, a man on his left and a painting of a woman on the wall behind. All three living figures look out to the viewer, as the camera eye, camera gaze and camera lens feature as central subject. Camera-­photographer self-­portraits repeat and solidify until the concept is established as a modernist trope. The 1929 photo-­still created by Dziga Vertov from his film Man with a Movie Camera shows the photographer’s brother Michael Kaufmann side-­by-­side with a large-­lensed camera.37 Vertov (David Kaufman) is remembered for his statement about his potential, as innovative photographer, to surpass the limitations of actual machines: ‘I am the Cine-­ Eye. I am the mechanical eye. I the machine show you the world as only I can see it.’ And concluding: ‘I am in constant motion­. . . My path leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world.’38 The Vertov partnership of eye and camera elevates the importance of photography to new heights. Vertov’s theory of a new, modern way of picturing the world through montage and documentary filming contributes to Maggie Finch’s concept of the ‘photographic gaze’.39 Finch theorises how the camera structures and impacts the way that we look and see, suggesting that there exists ‘a particular photographic way of looking’, which is certainly modernist in origins.40 Photographers who photograph themselves while looking into the camera engage in a dynamic, private dialogue. The attentive viewer meditates upon the possible content 131

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of this inner monologue in the form of silent interchange. Images such as the complex Self-­Portrait with Friends by Kertész offer an ‘overlapping of gazes’,41 which essentially triples the intricacies of the looking. The lines of sight and lines of gazes returned animate the space, separating eyes from object. Ilse Bing’s Autoportrait au Leica of 1931 utilises an angled mirror to set up an alternative way of perceiving and photographing herself. The play of gazes present in collaborative projects with complicit co-­ creation between disguised subject (masquerader) and keen-­eyed photographer is addressed in Chapter 7. Germaine Krull’s Autoportrait à l’Icarette suppresses the direct gaze of the photographer while showcasing the camera itself. Krull’s face is blurred and out of focus while she eyes herself. Her exposed left eye is hidden in shadow and thus becomes a masked eye beside the camera, one of the three eye-­circles connected to the image-­ machine. The effect offers the viewer a choice of where to look and what to focus upon. As in Australian photographer Brook Andrew’s image I Split your Gaze (1997), there is no single focus. (Andrew’s image treats a nineteenth-­ century ethnographic portrait of an Aboriginal Australian; the image plays with the mirroring of gazes experienced when a contemporary viewer gazes upon the colonised subject.)42 In the Krull photo, the white skin of Krull’s face and hands is highlighted by the light falling on the photographer. The camera and its wire framing devices function as a hand-­held mask, semi-­attached to the right side of the Krull skull, as she holds a cigarette between her left index and middle fingers. The contrast of the black camera and the entire spatial chiaroscuro which frames it pushes Krull’s white skin, her blouse collar and her sleeve cuffs into the limelight. Krull’s Étude publicitaire pour Paul Poiret (1926) closely frames the face of a woman who gazes directly into the eyes of the camera and into those of the photographer. The image is a double or triple exposure, however. After more rigorous examination, one discovers three more heads and faces  of women beyond the primary model’s façade: all three gazing out-­ of-­ frame to the viewer’s left. Two stand front-­on while the third and largest image is back-­to-­spectator with her head turned to profile. Her satin-­like cape veils the left eye of the model while additional transparent fabric veils the rest of the featured woman’s face. The fashion subject of the publicity photo disguises as well as decorates the female body; the veiling is enhancing. The three secondary models, seemingly implanted as ornaments upon the primary model’s forehead, contribute to an elegant composition with four snappishly focused eyes echoing the eyes of the framed head, while the additional viewer in profile mediates. This still-­ life shot is packed with active engagement. Krull has fabricated an image of active disguise in layers of perfection, while prompting the viewer to consider the protagonist’s thoughts on objectification. She, the model subject, resides deep within the image, further back even than the poised ladies at her hairline. 132

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In a direct display of modernist fashion, painter and designer Sonia Delaunay transferred her visual sensibilities from canvas to textiles, as she marked with both fabric art and clothing. Her work in Paris was exhibited in the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts (where the aforementioned ‘modern’ Pierrot Maurice Farina was featured as silent actor). Delaunay modelled some of her bold creations when she was photographed standing beside cubist tree sculptures built from reinforced concrete by Jan and Joël Martel. Delaunay and an unidentified second model pose beside one of the imposing slab-­branches in ‘wearable art’ with similarly designed accessories. Fearless ‘simultaneous’ dresses, fashion statements in squares and rectangles, hold their own with the gesticulating robot look of the botanical ‘totems of modernity’.43 The self-­assured invention of Delaunay’s designs established her work as a vital contribution to the multidisciplinary projects associated with the Union des Artistes Modernes (UAM), which promoted forward-­thinking art and design beauty and utility in France from 1929 to 1958.44 The UAM’s domain encompassed craft and object design, jewellery, graphics, furniture, visual arts and buildings with an architectural perspective similar to practice at the Bauhaus. Man Ray’s Black and White photograph (1926) with shiny, dark, wooden African mask, hand-­supported by a reclining white woman, keeps both mask and head in focus. Kiki de Montparnasse contemplates the mask which she touches with eyes closed; her head lies horizontally on a table like a Brancuşi sculpture. Borrowing from Sarane Alexandrian’s surrealist lexicon, one could suggest that Kiki silently experiences ‘the poem-­ object’ while Man Ray manipulates ‘the optical machine’.45 The intimacy of this photograph keeps Man Ray the photographer present and gazing while all eyes are hidden. The sculpture’s eye slits, if they even exist, do not reveal a space behind the surface of the represented face. This is not a mask designed to align eye-­to-­eye with a human head; it is an undersized masking device. The Kiki and Man Ray narrative, iconic in its own manner, peeks into focus, and Man Ray’s withdrawal behind the camera disguise is not successful in keeping him out of the picture. It may be that the image is about looking at the absent gaze of Kiki while she contemplates (without sight) the object-­prop. The mask object is not a mask at play; it is not masking. Its function as ‘dreamt object’ or ‘interpreted found object’46 assists this mise en scène of voyeurism. Masked Dancers and Absence in Form The Belgian modernist dancer and solo performer ‘Akarova’, née Marguerite Acarin, experimented in Brussels with costumes, masks and disguise in her wide-­ ranging, highly theatricalised character choreographies.47 Like Mary Wigman, Akarova had studied movement, rhythm and musicality with Émile Jaques-­ Dalcroze. Her ‘eurythmics’ training prepared her to interpret and 133

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choreograph contemporary, modernist music composed by a wide range of composers, including Claude Debussy, Manuel de Falla, George Gershwin, Arthur Honneger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Sergei Prokofiev, Maurice Ravel, Erik Satie and Igor Stravinsky. She also focused on the rhythmic proposals of abstraction in modernist painting as a source for movement-­pattern invention; she was inspired by Cubism in France, Futurism in Italy, as well as Constructivism and Futurism in Russia. Giovanni Lista notes that Akarova’s collaboration with Marcel-­ Louis Baugniet in the early 1920s produced effective ‘kinetic (cinétique) painting’ on flat, two-­dimensional surfaces for Akarova’s scenery, transforming the entire playing space, and the objects contained within it, into a site of choreographic performance.48 Akarova’s scenographic imagination, enhanced by Baugniet’s scholarship and technical skills, distinguished her work from that of most contemporaries; costumes, masks and settings united to create a total, all-­encompassing design concept. It is pertinent to equate the Akarova stage environment­– ­a space with a point of view­– w ­ ith the audacious Sonia Delaunay design for a furnished-­room interior for the 1926 film Le P’tit Parigot (by René Le Somptier), which showcased large paintings by Robert Delaunay, Albert Gleizes and André Lhote on the room’s walls.49 In the 1930s, Akarova danced in painted leotards and masks as the Bird in Stravinsky’s Firebird and as the Devil in his Soldier’s Tale. As the Buffoon in Prokofiev’s Chout, Akarova’s ballet technique lyricism juxtaposed the straight-­ line geometry of her performance surroundings.50 Her dancing and designing continued through the 1940s and included adaptations and performance work with texts by Paul Claudel, Michel de Ghelderode and Jean Giraudoux. In her solo dances with her own costume creations, Akarova became a flexible, three-­dimensional canvas-­in-­motion; her presence does not imply posed attitudes of modernist sculpture in sequence, as is frequently insinuated by quick readings of documentary photography. Nell Andrew, in a commentary on a 1923 Akarova photograph, repeats the dancer’s descriptive phrases on this interdisciplinary work: ‘music-­architecture’, ‘living geometry’ and ‘pure plastics’.51 Akarova was, simultaneously, masquerading dancer, fashionista and visual artist­– ­depersonalised in performance, but never dehumanised. Women performing in disguise play with conceptions of beauty. Mary Wigman, acting with Ecstasy and the Demon, as Susan Manning’s book title suggests, challenged status quo perceptions of the beautiful with Masked Dance (1926). Covering her expressive face with an expressive face-­ form seemed pointless to some spectators, and certainly a questionable means of reaching for the dazzling or the sublime. An aesthetic of the ecstatic could characterise the work of both Wigman and Akarova, as each carved ‘a private space’ for beauty with masking devices. Efrat Tseëlon theorises this space-­ apart hypothesis in her commentary on beauty, masquerading and disguis134

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ing.52 Akarova, porteuse of a semantic disguise with her identity-­creating stage name, suggests a possible affiliation with dancers in the Ballet Russes. North of Paris, Akarova became the Belgian Isadora Duncan, although this appellation refers only to the liberty of her movement, dismissing her constructions of beauty in stage pictures. For Akarova and for Wigman in her choreographic, ensemble creations with fabric-­draped women, beauty is in the eye of the deceiver: it is fashioned and constructed by the metteur en scène. (In Tseëlon’s Fashion as Masquerade, Inna Arzumanova discusses ‘faking femininity’.)53 The choreographic work of lesser disguised Wigman students Gret Palucca and Harald Kreutzberg inspired visual artists at the Bauhaus. With faces revealed, their gestural masking matched Wigman’s image construction with only arm skin and feet revealed.54 A Bauhaus photograph of three masked men, Gesture Dance III (1927) with Oskar Schlemmer, Werner Siedhoff and Walter Kaminsky, displays another bubbling-­with-­humanity genre of beauty in performance.55 Das Trio-­Komische is an example of disguise work for a Bauhaus party like the fêtes of Beards, Noses and Hearts (1928). The photograph of the trio by Erich Consemüller shows three pudgy-­stuffed, standing men with glossy oval masks, round, empty eyeglasses and moustaches. The middle man is turned upstage with his mask on the back of his head. Similarly, a trio of Bauhaus women (1924), wearing tall, shiny top hats, stand in profile as a one-­unit being with four legs and three heads. The middle woman is absent; a masked head represents her. Their horizontal body-­section is like two stacked rocket parts about to blast in the direction of offstage right, just as the two-­armed masquerade unit takes one last glance at the photographer. Finally, the László Moholy-­ Nagy photo Transformation/Cauchemar (Der Alptraum, presumably) displays a male trio pushing their thirty fingers and wide-­stretched palms in a uniform mime-­imagined-­wall fashion directly facing Moholy-­Nagy’s camera lens. Two of the three faces have photomontaged false eyes and foreheads. The figure on the left is shadowed in dark, nightmarish light. A dark, distorted globe object floats above the figure on the right, obscuring one corner of his head. The three silent men in suits (the middle-­man not disguised) shout in gesture: ‘Stop’ or ‘Wow’ with fixed, closed mouths. An odd silence prevails in this white-­background void. These animated Bauhaus trios recall Picasso’s trio of masked men with moustaches in Les Trois Musiciens aux masques (1921), noted earlier. The social aspect of the trio is an important contrast to the silent soloist, immediately opening access to a comedic circumstance. Half-­masked dancers in the Tanztheater of German choreographer Kurt Jooss, particularly The Green Table (1932), featured more disguising in modern dance, influencing, perhaps, his student Pina Bausch. In another disguising context, René Magritte painted a series of images of a woman and man in love (1928). The quartet of canvases begins with Les Amants (National Gallery of Australia, Canberra), which is followed by Les 135

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Amants II (Museum of Modern Art, New York). These two portraits of the same couple display faces covered with opaque, fabric veils. The first image, an exterior landscape scene, shows the couple standing closely side-­by-­side; in the second they embrace and kiss. In Les Amants III and Les Amants IV, both less frequently reproduced and lesser known, the figures’ heads are not concealed with masking. However, in these images the man’s head floats bodiless in the air near the head of the full-­bodied woman. In both instances, the man is represented by a cleanly severed head with full face visible; each oval head serenely hovers close to the head of the woman. In the Lovers III painting, the setting is a semi-­interior veranda with a landscape background (heads cheek-­to-­cheek); in the final image-­scene, Lovers IV, the pair of lovers is placed dramatically before a landscape of mountains, embracing and kissing. In verbal description, the suggestion of a human head without its body, in intimate contact with its fully intact lover, sounds strange and images the bizarre. Both versions of this display of affection clearly detail the faces of a conventional-­looking, interwar European woman and man. In the mountains both kiss with eyes closed, as odd clouds hover above the peaks; on the veranda, the wide-­eyed woman looks offstage right as the head above her right shoulder brings its cheek and chin to her right temple, with eyes closed. The woman’s gaze is the only one seen in Magritte’s four treatments of woman and man. Les Amants III and IV, with their finely coiffed couples, suggest enigmatic narratives, unexplained but quickly read. These two images stand as painted versions of minimalist photomontage projects where a random, cut-­out male head is introduced into a woman’s soothing thoughts: intriguing, but not gripping. The draped face, on the other hand, wraps itself around the viewer’s gaze and attaches itself to the viewer’s memory. The disguise is far more intimate. The absent face is sensed but not seen in Les Amants and Les Amants II. The viewer implants facial identities on to the body frames which are dressed in semi-­formal streetwear; the couple need not remain Belgian or even European. Their eyes and mouths reveal nothing specific in the shoulder-­to-­shoulder stasis or in the private embrace. Both men and both women present statures of prominence and stability; they are untroubled and not overtly mysterious. It is difficult to label them secretive or furtive when their public presence has such authority. The fabric skin of the four hidden faces brushes the real skin in a gentle massage; the second skin erases the imperfections of the first and soothes the eye. These masks of perfection in warm cloth are the reverse of death masks; in their smeared neutrality they call to the surface those who have died, as if magical, oneiric shrouds. Magritte’s veils of concealment are actually screens of revelation. Like the Outerbridge head discussed earlier, the veiled heads are hyper-­humanised. The sense of touch is absent in Magritte’s other fabric-­swathed and cloaked 136

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bodies. In L’Histoire centrale (1927), a woman with hefty, mannish hands and arms stands behind a table which holds a tuba and a valise. She clutches her hidden throat, unseen as white fabric covers her head. The effect is peculiar as one feels that a story is being told and not all the characters in the tale are present. The offbeat combination of subject and objects invites the viewer to imagine the circumstance which provoked the melodramatic gesture of arm to neck. The viewer has many questions, but thoughts revolve around all that is missing rather than all that is present. The woman is very much alone with her things or the things of a departed other. In a second enthralling image, L’Invention de la vie (1928), a woman fully revealed stands a few feet away from a figure completely sheltered in fabric from head to below the waist, where the image frame ends. The woman neither looks at nor touches the covered figure; there is no active, haptic text. A sequence of landscape layers in green shades leads to distant hills, accentuating the horizontal. The standing woman looks directly out to the viewer with little expression; her mood and her attire are sombre. The shrouded figure to her left is a cascade of white dimmed by the evening or early morning light. This painting, enveloped in silence, does not allow the subjects to breathe as they do in the Lovers paintings. The full-­body dissimulation is too weighty to appear ghostly and slightly too human to evince a draped sculpture. The figures reside in an uncomfortable suspension, caught at the peak of an inhalation which is forever held within. The viewer interrupts or seriously ruptures the quiet of the previous moment; the viewer is an intruder in an isolated landscape where dialogue seems at its dead end. The spectator drops into and is clouded by an invisible atmosphere which drifts in from Belgian Symbolism. The image disturbs because there is a secret and there is no hope of uncovering its explanation. As a death mask without form, the masked figure is an unknown living or at least once-­living person. It is either actually present or it is a presence dreamed or sensed or self-­ materialised on to the surface of the painting. It ‘was’, but it is not certain that it ‘is’. The shape of the shadowy form is repeated by a tree of similar form but of greater proportion which pushes forward into the stage space. The veiled one is as out-­of-­place as a fading, costume-­soiled Pierrot or Fool, abandoned on a ghostly heath of dense undergrowth. On the subject of post-­ event residue, Giorgio de Chirico explores the effacement of the head in many of his modernist paintings. When bodies are not decapitated, as in his toppled statues, they often manifest as mannequins. This is the case in de Chirico’s The Painter’s Family, completed in 1926. Like Magritte, de Chirico was working in Paris in the late 1920s. The Greek-­born Italian had previously studied in Munich; his inspirations were international. De Chirico’s work references literary, art historical and architectural imagery; the Mediterranean landscapes and cityscapes are often crowded with object dregs and stone pieces of past monuments and figures. De Chirico’s mannequin 137

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faces are not all etched in stone; some have leather-­like seams and some have features that are not completely eroded. The man and woman in The Painter’s Family are marked with lines which symmetrically split their heads and suggest eye placement on their smooth, oblong skull shapes. The mother’s lines form a cross at their juncture between implied eyes; she holds a child enveloped in fabric and marked with vague curving lines on its sheathed head. This Christian family is in transition; the head-­seams are weakening as if the surreal is birthing the real. Perhaps the adult torsos, laden with ancient building pieces, could provide the necessary parts to make the armless whole. There is an emotional warmth present here that resembles that of Magritte’s veiled Lovers. The squinted, downward-­inclined gazes of the parents whisper concern regarding the child swaddled in stillness. The bronze-­toned mother’s and the grey-­toned father’s body-­object forms lean forward with dis-­ease, their legs, knees and feet covered with the folds of draped fabric wraps. De Chirico constructs a crèche in sepia, posed precariously in an artist’s studio, before things fall. De Chirico appears reluctant to efface this family. He does not follow the example of some European carnival masqueraders where all semblance of facial nuance is deleted. In this peculiar instance, the mannequin-­like figures exude humanity. They are, in a sense, covered but not fully disguised; there is something surfacing behind each façade. Perhaps its stylistic inconsistency needles its capacity to hold attention. The non-­dead objects possess a history more recent than many of the de Chirico stones. The Two Masks of the same year displays more camouflaged identities, strategically placed at the meeting of a blue sky with clouds and an oblique yellow-­mass pyramid. Viewed with the memory of The Painter’s Family, the two figures connote a woman in the foreground and a man in the background. The pair of torso-­busts, amid artist and architect tools, lean horizontally in opposite directions: she leans to her right and he leans to his left. Their ‘empty gazes’ from eyehole cut-­outs are unique. The dark-­bronze she, coiffed in a row of dark, tight curls, has two vertically placed, elongated eye openings, while white-­ish he exhibits tiny, round and closely set eyeholes with thick threads emerging and encircling his bald oval head. The waiting Two Masks have nothing to conceal as their interiors are vacant. She and he are hollowed-­out mannequin tools found in artists’ studios, perceived as human-­sized dressmakers’ dummies. They charm to some extent, but offer only absence. Each body-­mask, as well as the terrain, is uninhabited. Pierrot’s Passing Gertrude Stein, in Everybody’s Autobiography, recounts how Pablo Picasso and Francis Picabia, sometimes referred to as the two ‘Pics’ or the ‘deux Pica’, were the same size and wore the same kind of shoes, but did not resemble each other, ‘not at all’, as she emphasised in 1937. Daphné Bétard names the 138

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‘famous twins’ the ‘ogre’ and the ‘histrionic’ without emphatically designating who is the more ogre and who the more histrionic: the Spanish-­Cuban-­French painter or the Catalan-­Spanish painter.56 Had Guillaume Apollinaire (friend and admirer of both painters’ work) lived beyond 1918, the twins of ill-­repute may have transitioned to the trolling triplets. It was not to be, however. The Picasso–Picabia rivalry was explored at Aix-­en-­Provence’s Musée Granet in 2018. The exhibition introduced Picabia’s image-­layering paintings, which he termed ‘transparencies’ in 1928.57 These paintings have three images painted one atop the other as if each exists in its own parallel plane. Picabia’s transparencies on Spanish themes such as Barcelone (1927–28), Picasso’s home territory, and his Sotileza (Subtlety) present overlaid images of women and men. In Barcelone, for instance, a standing bearded man with arm raised is covered by an outwardly gazing seated woman who is covered by a full-­ frame sketch of a woman’s head in profile. The male figure is deepest in the space; the woman’s profile is nearest the viewer, gazing out of the frame. Five eyes are visible, plus the two bare feet of the man. Subtlety (National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 1928) simultaneously features a Madonna, a costumed matador and, the most prominent, a Spanish lady in a lace mantilla. There are a total of seven human eyes gazing outwards at the viewer. The transparencies can suggest a narrative with three separate personages, or they can be interpreted as three aspects of one identity: one reality and two masquerades. Spanish Picasso and half-­Spanish Picabia, ever competitive, mirrored each other’s work during the interwar years. The image displayed in Edinburgh combines three heads to create one multifaceted icon of Spanishness as image-­ identity (rendered even more complex by one hand and a horse sketched on a nearby poster). Picabia entered uninvited into Spanish territory and Picasso’s Catalan domain. From Picasso’s point of view, this was an act of disguising, plain and simple, by a part-­time New Yorker in Paris. Not unfamiliar with disguising, Picasso preferred a real-­ life version: dressing up for others to contemplate, rather than camouflaging surreptitiously. In the 1930s, the years leading up to Guernica, Picasso painted the Head of a Woman series, including the 1937 Crying Woman. While in a tumultuous relationship with the painter and photographer Dora Maar, Picasso shocked the world with his distortions of the female head and face. The apparent misogyny of the images, their engagement with the grotesque and the assumed ugly aggression illustrated in these portraits, immediately dismayed and disoriented viewers. Meanwhile, at play, Maar shot Picasso, in photographs, on the beach in the south of France, where he masked his head with a sizeable, bullish, found object: an abandoned, bovine skull. In a second pose, Maar captured Picasso holding the skull and mystically positioning himself in a seated position with his eyes closed. Soon after a swim, Roland Penrose photographed Maar and Picasso 139

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together, emerging from the sea like non-­identical twins, both standing tall and both projecting an aura of drenched, affectionate complicity. Picabia painted Trois Clowns, a trio of clown figures (not overtly layered) positioned side-­by-­side in 1936. The image lucidly suggests three aspects of a single subject, as one head looks directly to the viewer while the three visible eyes of the adjacent heads gaze thoughtfully, or sentimentally, elsewhere. These painted-­face disguises appear as Picabia’s rehearsal for his Pierrot (1932/1937), which shows a clown-­personage with sober gaze who finger gesticulates as if in anxious dialogue. The Pierrot, dressed in an intricately patterned white shirt and black-­coned hat, retains elements of the Trois Clowns painted faces; the Pierrot, however, has a red-­painted nose and red-­lined lips. Behind his left ear, a dimly painted man with an enormous ear stares at the back of Pierrot’s lean head. This nervy, twice-­looked-­upon Pierrot fidgets as he senses the judgement of viewers before and behind him. It is as if the Pierrot disguise is under review, as is Picabia’s feigned identification with the Pierrot ‘mask’. In 1941 Picabia painted Pierrot pendu, where Pierrot hangs­– o ­ pen-­eyed and tongue exposed­ – ­from a large tree in an outdoor space, above and behind a closed-­eyed, modern-­dressed woman. This is the Picabia of the 1913 Armory Show and that of the later Picabia described, by the New York Times in 2016, as ‘the Playboy Prankster of Modernism’.58 If intended as a moment of sharing with Pierrot (the past), Picabia’s stressed portrait of 1937 looks to the future when Picabia pictures the morbid passing of Pierrot. Picasso moved on, also, to more overt imagery of death, skulls and terror when he initiated his toro images and identifications with the matador and the picador. Bypassing the glum, First World War-­era Pierrot with a toreador in Harlequin dress, Picasso also remains complicit with Pulcinella, who rarely abandoned the killing fields of play. In the imminent Second World War era and after, Picasso abstracts the centaur in sculpture and masquerades himself as minotaur-­ in-­ straw in the south of France. He combines the half-­ horse and the half-­bull, plus a Harlequin disguise, in the disturbing and ominous Minotaur with Dead Mare in Front of a Cave (1936). Notes  1. Paris années folles, pp. 57, 59, 76.   2. Guitemie Maldonado, ‘Le rappel à l’ordre’, in Lemoine (ed.), L’art moderne et contemporain, pp. 108–9.  3. Aktion! Art and Revolution in Germany, posted text at exhibition.  4. Isabelle Ewig, ‘Après l’expressionnisme’, in Lemoine (ed.), L’art moderne et contemporain, pp. 104–5.   5. See Rössler, Bauhaus Mädels, ‘Introduction’, p. 6.   6. Films, television series, exhibitions and publications celebrated the Bauhaus and Bauhaus women during the 2019 centenary celebration.   7. Ute Ackermann, ‘Les fêtes de Bauhaus’, in Fiedler and Feierabend (eds), Bauhaus, p. 126.

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 8. Faucherau, Avant-­gardes du XXième siècle, p. 395.  9. Rössler, Bauhaus Mädels, pp. 144–7. 10. Ackermann, ‘Les fêtes de Bauhaus’, in Fiedler and Feierabend (eds), Bauhaus, p. 135. 11. Ibid., p. 135. 12. Schlemmer quoted in Paul Monty Paret, ‘Schlemmer’, in Hughes and Blom (eds), Nothing but the Clouds Unchanged, p. 174. 13. Andrea Gleiniger, ‘Marcel Breuer’, in Fiedler and Feierabend (eds), Bauhaus, p. 325. 14. Foster, Compulsive Beauty, p. 20. 15. Olaf Arndt, ‘L’Atelier du métal’, in Fiedler and Feierabend (eds), Bauhaus, p. 427. 16. Arndt Weseman, ‘La Scène du Bauhaus’, in Fiedler and Feierabend (eds), Bauhaus, pp. 534–5. 17. Pénélope Driant, ‘Maurice Farina (1883–1943): mime, archiviste et collectionneur’, in Garcia, Arts du mime, pp. 7–8. 18. Ibid., p. 10. 19. Bazon Brock, ‘Le Bauhaus, un biscuit’, in Fiedler and Feierabend (eds), Bauhaus, pp. 582–3. 20. Ibid., p. 583. 21. Weseman, ‘La Scène du Bauhaus’, in Fiedler and Feierabend (eds), Bauhaus, p. 534. 22. Brock, ‘Le Bauhaus, un biscuit’, in Fiedler and Feierabend (eds), Bauhaus, p. 580. 23. Plassard, L’Acteur en effigie, p. 12. 24. Ibid., p. 18. 25. Ibid., p. 12. 26. Ibid. 27. Dirk Scheper, ‘Le théâtre experimental d’Oskar Schlemmer’, in Rousier (ed.), Oskar Schlemmer, p. 51. 28. Rousier (ed.), Oskar Schlemmer, p. ii, photo no. 2. 29. See Rössler, Bauhaus Mädels, pp. 222–31. 30. See ‘Gertrude Arndt: Photo Pioneer of Female “Self-­disguise”’. 31. Jeannine Fiedler, ‘L’autoportrait’, in Fiedler and Feierabend (eds), Bauhaus, p. 158. 32. Welby-­Everard, ‘Imaging the Actor’, p. 4. 33. Ibid. 34. Berenice Abbot’s 1925 portrait-­photo of journalist Janet Flanner features Flanner costumed in trousers and loup-­mask-­decorated top hat and jacket. Abbot’s image plays with the notion of masquerading with unassuming disguise. 35. See ‘The Met Collection’, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, available at (last accessed 20 April 2020). 36. Ibid. 37. See Fauchereau, Avant-­gardes du XXième siècle, p. 403. 38. See Taylor and Christie, The Film Factory, p. 93, Vertov’s emphasis. 39. See Finch, Looking at Looking, p. 24. 40. Ibid., p. 6. 41. Ibid., p. 21. 42. Ibid., pp. 14–15. 43. Olivier Cinqualbre, ‘A Modern Adventure’, in Union des artistes modernes, pp. 18–19. 44. Ibid., pp. 2–6. 45. Alexandrian, Surrealist Art, pp. 140–50.

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46. Ibid. 47. See Van Loo (ed.), Akarova. 48. Giovanni Lista, ‘Akarova and the Avant-­Garde from Syncretism to Autarchy’, in Van Loo (ed.), Akarova, pp. 249–86. 49. See Union des artistes modernes, p. 15. 50. See Anne Van Loo, ‘Akarova by Herself’, in Van Loo (ed.), Akarova, pp. 97–152. 51. Andrew, ‘Living Art’, pp. 26-­49 52. See Tseëlon et al. (eds), Fashion as Masquerade, pp. 3–9. 53. Inna Arzumanova, ‘Faking Femininity’, in Tseëlon et al. (eds), Fashion as Masquerade, pp. 117–30. 54. Arndt Weseman, ‘Les Masques du Bauhaus’, in Fiedler and Feierabend (eds), Bauhaus, p. 548. 55. Weseman, ‘La Scène du Bauhaus’, in Fiedler and Feierabend (eds), Bauhaus, p. 544. 56. Daphné Bétard, ‘L’Ogre et l’histrion’, in Picasso/Picabia, p. 9. 57. Picasso/Picabia: la peinture au défi, exhibition, 2018. 58. Smith, ‘Francis Picabia’.

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FIGURES

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Figure 5.1  Full-face mask, Eskimo dance performance, Alaska, North America. South-west, Inuit Peoples, possibly Aleutian Islands. Symmetrical and harmonious mask. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, B-31-811 144

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Figure 5.2  Carnival mask and masquerade, District of Stara Zabora, Bulgaria. Kazanla˘k Region, Pavel Banja. Social life: dance. Kukeri, masks of spring. (Don du Comité d’Amitié et de Relations culturelles avec l’étranger de Sophia.) © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, E-69-2087

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Figure 5.3  Helmet mask, woman’s ritual mask and masquerade, Sierra Leone. Masquerade expressing beauty, Sende and Humei peoples. Mende wooden mask for priestess of Bindo, worn by and for women, costumed with camouflaging, draping raffia. Social life: secret initiation for young women, secluded in the bush. Height 42 cm. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, C-65-2354-493 146

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Figure 5.4  Botanical full-body masquerade, theatre in gallery, New South Wales, Australia. Moss figures. Contemporary installation art and performance, Garden Palace Promenade. Powerhouse Museum, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney. © Renata Popenhagen 147

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Figure 5.5  Full-face mask, Dhaulagari Zone, Dolpo-Tarakot District, Nepal. Religious dance mask, ‘gin’ or ‘kin’. Pulp painted white, representing dead person. Forehead death-head skulls with cranial ‘sutures’, sculpted by a monk. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, D-69-3006-493 148

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Figure 5.6  Pierrot-derivative masking, theatre context; fictional scenographic space is Siberia, Russia. Camouflage masquerade non-verbal performance. Winter season hunting mise en scène. © University Theatre, Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Kansas

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Figure 5.7  Nose armour/throat defence device, nineteenth-century warrior mask, Japan. Lacquered iron, gilded brass, with silk braids. Mask and statue: modern Samurai war masks. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Col. R. Pasquine, Paris, C-63-599-493 150

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Figure 5.8  Hopi helmet mask, soft-form cagoule, Kachina, south-west [Arizona] North America. Painted hide (animal skin) and horse hair. Outdoor performance representation. Intermediary figure possibly representing bird, place, animal, plant or ancestor. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, Col. Le Corneur-Roudillon, C-68-2495-493 151

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Figure 5.9  Articulated face mask, Buddhist dance ritual performance, China. Lamaist. Blue-painted moulded cardboard with white marks and hair. Three-part articulation. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, Col. R. Pasquino, C-62-676-493 152

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Figure 5.10  Half-mask, theatre and dance performance, Java, Indonesia. Social life: theatre. Wayang topeng face masks, traditional gestural performance. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris. Don. C. # 1, 38-2328 153

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Figure 5.11  Full-face mask, dance performance, West Bengal, Purulia, India. Social life: dance, Chhau dance mask, India. Peacock-god Kartikya dance ritual. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, Col. M. Salvini: 1969-70, C-72-2976-786

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Figure 5.12  Half-mask, Italian comedy figure, theatre context; fictional scenographic space is France. Clown and commedia dell’arte in contemporary theatre. French circus arena context. © University Theatre, Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Kansas

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Figure 5.13  Plank mask on crown of head, ritual masking, Mali (Sudan). Dogon performance mask, Mali (Sudan). Masque du Dama, timmu (cross). Mopti region, Cercle de Bandiagara, Sanga du Haut-Ogul du Bas. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, Collection Griaule, No 241, D-36-1599-41

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Figure 5.14  Half-mask, comedy figure, theatre context; fictional scenographic space is Iowa, USA. Commedia dell’arte popular performance tradition, Arts Midwest Touring Theatre. © Barb Cech

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Figure 5.15  Articulated transformation mask, Kwakiutl, British Columbia, Canada. Painted wood mask, ritual performance. Closed-form presents beak of large raven or crow. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, C-79-265-493

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Figure 5.16  Full-body painting, ritual dance performance, Northern Territory, Australia. Social life: dance. Body paint, body decoration, ritual adornment. Rosewood, NT. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, Collection Australian News, C-49-59-574

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Figure 5.17  Swiss full-face carnival mask, theatre context; fictional scenographic space is Lithuania. Carnival de Bâle character mask adaptation, Switzerland. Non-verbal mise en scène. © University Theatre, Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Kansas

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Figure 5.18  Crown of head mask, full-body masquerade, Dahomey, Benin. Social life: secret society, Benin. Mask of the Kere Society, South Department, Ouidah. © Collection musée de l’Homme, Paris, C-34-5975

6

FRACTURED AND EFFACED FAÇADES

Disfigured Bodies In late Modernism the face of Pierrot is replaced. Painted and photographed portraits of solo Harlequins and Pierrots, many with mask object in hand, endure. The Pierrots in particular are lonely images that do not defer or repel morbid associations: deathly face holds death-­like mask. Photographs of Pierrots, in particular, haunt with Roland Barthes’s ‘return of the dead’.1 The actor-­face painted white, as described in ‘The Face of Garbo’ as a ‘face-­ object’, emphasises Barthes’s concern about ‘becoming a specter’ when photographed.2 The face-­object of a Pierrot, with its ‘snowy thickness of a mask’ or its ‘flour-­white complexion of Charlie Chaplin’,3 is wiped away, resurfaces, dissolves and fades away again. The mask as fixed form abruptly arrives and departs decisively. Lee Miller illustrates­– i­ n two contrasting photographs­– ­an ageing, grey-­haired, naked head with a young, vibrant, helmet-­masked head. The serious head and the curious head of Max Ernst in Nailing the Floor (1946) and in Nailing the Floor in a Mask (1946) hit the nail on the head.4 In these images, the body changes and is actually less solitary and secluded when masked. Ernst’s appropriation of the Kachina helmet, kneeling shirtless and costumed in short pants, is a surreal image in a modern interior. The spirit has not descended, but then neither has death. The decorated, cylindrical skull-­case with reaching feathers is light and ascendant. Maskless Ernst with hammer is pedestrian, almost ghostly. As Gertrude Stein would say, 162

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and as Tommy Orange repeated, there is no There There in this undressed head. Pigeonholed as incomplete, materially formless, labelled ignoble, branded conventional and dismissed by Isadora Duncan as ‘desperately sterile’,5 Pierrot has an unstable floor on which to stand and extend. Pierrot is almost (like Barthes’s ‘Total-­Image’) the mask-­role of ‘Death in person’.6 An André Girard painting of Le Mime Farina from 1926 accentuates the shadow of Pierrot’s profile behind the actor; the shadow quadruples the size of the actual actor-­ head. It also generalises the image and adjusts, or invents, a protruding chin that signals defiance. Girard, a Resistance fighter in the Second World War, positions Pierrot leaning away and to one side as he squints offstage left at someone or something. Angle-­imaged like Jean-­Charles Deburau listening, as in the Adrien Tournachon Pierrot écoutant photograph (1854–55), his arms mimic that celebrated physical attitude; however, Farina looks more than he listens. His costume is an accurate simulacrum of Deburau’s long, wide and capacious chemise and pantaloons. This Pierrot’s unusually apparent tight red lips and terse expression, coupled with the emphatic shadow, direct the viewer’s attention to the offstage, deep unknown. Farina, né Jules-­ Maurice Chevalier, battled to rescue vanishing Pierrot from disappearance. The pantomime playwright Albert Keim characterised Farina as lively and naïve in motion but sporting the tormented, ravaged and emaciated façade of a Beethoven.7 Photographed in 1914, prior to his subsequent respiratory injuries in the war, Maurice Farina en Pierrot stands startled­– ­mid-­whisper­– ­with three fingers plugging his mouth: lean, mischievous and boyish in a black skullcap and wide-­brimmed hat. By the 1930s Farina was sidelined and working as a scholar rather than a performer; the Parisian Pierrot slipped away until revived by Jean-­Louis Barrault during the German Occupation in the 1940s: a vital figure for Les Enfants du Paradis in the cinema (1945). The Deburau Pierrot in the mid-­nineteenth century, and in its restoration in film in the mid-­twentieth century, was never a solo performance event. Commedia dell’arte players themselves were social actors who integrated with others in daily life and in performance; the tradition is interactive and based upon interplay. The evolution of the solo-­mime Pierrot, a modernist, individualised invention, is, by definition, solitary and incomplete. The something missing in the role is a ‘someone’ else missing in the play. Disguised and alone in an Other Place, the actor arrives at a site of solitary confinement and voluntary distancing. Erwin Blumenfeld, in a counter-­ balancing image of death, doctored a portrait of Hitler with photomontage by overlaying a skull-­as-­mask upon Hitler’s face. This image differed substantially from Chaplin as the Great Dictator. Blumenfeld’s cadaverous Hitler-­head with one skull-­like eyehole, and a contrasting watchful, open-­ eyed Nazi eyeball, blasted the innocent 163

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face far, far away. The artist’s head-­shot (1934) documented Blumenfeld’s act of unmasking the horrible truth with a masquerade of horror, which was ultimately more truthful. (The portrait did not go unnoticed.) In a brief essay on Walter Benjamin, ‘Art: Death Mask of Mass Wars’, theorist Florent Perrier discusses Benjamin’s thoughts on the politicisation of art.8 Perrier elaborates upon Benjamin’s warning that a politics of the image may imperil an engagement with ideas. Benjamin, as German cultural critic, recognised that a modernist aesthetic could serve a fascist ideology, whether naïvely or intentionally. Benjamin the philosopher, as Perrier recounts, carried a gas mask with him on his travels through France, as a Jew in voluntary exile. Perrier notes that Benjamin considered the gas mask the most emblematic modern object, fully representing twentieth-­century wars that kill civilians as well as soldiers. Benjamin, travelling westward with his gas mask­– ­a defence-­disguise to combat the atmosphere­– ­packed the emblem-­object at close reach in his minimalist baggage, as migrant refugee. (His luggage contained a now-­lost manuscript which he stated was ‘more important than I am’.)9 The mask was insufficient protection against the dilemma he faced in the Pyrenees and at the French-­Catalan border; the frontier at Portbou was closed. After this attempt to escape the advance of the Wehrmacht, Benjamin died by suicide. Overwhelmed with fatigue and frustration, he succumbed, unaware that the border would reopen the following day. Perrier, picturing the philosopher in flight with mask and manuscript in tow, laments that Benjamin did not live long enough to learn of the US Army’s intention to contract mass production of Mickey Mouse gas masks for the young and the youthful. The prospect of head-­protectors with fixed smiles would not have altered Benjamin’s fatal course of action. He might have been captivated, however, by the hidden tensions of modernity inherent in such a disguise, and the facility of its reproduction and distribution. Neither Pierrot nor Harlequin feature in the politicised photomontage images of Hannah Höch, John Heartfield and Raoul Hausmann. Neither is there any commedia dell’arte imagery in Pablo Picasso’s Guernica of 1937. The Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and its aftermath hit close to home in troubled Barcelona; the Manifeste des intellectuels catalan was declared on 18 July 1936, signed by Picasso as ‘Pau R. Picasso’ and published in November 1936.10 Picasso’s hands-­off approach to politics gave way after the bombing of the Basque village of Guernica on 26 April 1937. His awareness of and reaction to the rise of fascism in Europe is detailed in Picasso et la guerre, summed up as shifting ‘From the inaudible to the inexpressible’.11 The operation, designed to assist General Franco’s hold on Spain, was primarily a test-­fire of new bombing technology: twenty-­four German and three Italian bombers took part, aided by nineteen German and thirteen Italian fighter planes. The bombardment of Guernica, under the direction of commanders Wolfram 164

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von Richthofen and Vincenzo Velardi, produced 1,654 confirmed deaths, a number that is still fiercely contested.12 Dora Maar (Henriette Theodora Markovitch), ‘passionate militant’ muse and inspirational model for Picasso’s mourning women, photo-documented Picasso’s new-­found activism. The Crying Woman of 1937, a study completed in preparation for Guernica, abstracts Maar’s profile and wraps the heads of all Spanish women victims in its sharp-­edged veil. Picasso’s contorted Mask of Woman’s Suffering, a tragic mask, no doubt contains an empathic element, albeit oddly disguised or packaged. Maar, intimately immersed in Picasso’s emotional province, shared his rage; she understood his visual language and spoke his mother language. Maar had grown up in Buenos Aires, so was Spanish-­speaking, as the daughter of French and Croatian parents. She, too, had lived in Barcelona and had worked there as a photographer. Picasso’s shrieking mother image, which dominates Guernica, now holds a child; she bellows with the same terror as the horse in the painting. Other men and women scream; teeth and animal tongues project from mouths wide opened. Light-­producing objects and a window illuminate the fragmented, claustrophobic interior, as if powered by a photo-­flash which radiates from above. Skin surfaces are line-­marked; finger-­paws reach, necks stretch, and heads detach and extend; reaching paw-­fingers, stretched necks, detached heads and feet-­hooves are scattered on the floor or lean against walls. Fourteen ecstatic eyes announce the sudden flash; the semi-­circle eyes of the dead child do not respond to the light; they are blank. Skin, as the ultimate body-­disguising material, is on the verge of disintegration. In a crowded, catastrophic composition, victims are stacked, as they rise, fall or suspend in mid-­air within a dark, enclosed terrarium. All is abruptly fixed and exposed like a wide horizontal X-­ray­– ­another wonder of modernist technology. Picasso’s painted photomontage exposes developing tropes, like the horned bovine, whose façade is drawn on paper, and even enacted in masquerade, in late Modernism. Among the drawings completed as studies for Guernica, Picasso created a series of engravings printed for fundraising which included images of Franco ‘metamorphosed into a tubercle form’;13 Picasso’s sketch of a fleshy, hirsute, twisted nodule of a body of tissue has a head with open mouth and yam-­like protrusions on its face. The grotesque façade represents Alfred Jarry’s King Ubu. Not to be outdone, Maar’s King Ubu is a photograph; it displays a close-­up shot of a bald-­headed baby armadillo with praying mantis paws. This modernist icon is celebrated as one of the most beautiful, repugnance-­inciting images of photographic Surrealism. Both Maar and Picasso were aware of the World Anti-­fascist Congress which took place in Barcelona in July 1937, one year after the Guernica slaughter. Guernica, the painting itself, was present at the Conference for Aid to Spain in London in 1938. An Illustrated Press-­ London photograph displays a seated panel and one speaker whose bald head 165

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perfectly mirrors the head-­profiles in the painting, as well as that of Picasso’s wailing horse, another modernist icon. During the Occupation in the early 1940s, Picasso painted fewer and fewer human heads. Animal skulls appear, as in Skull of a Sheep, painted in 1939. Human figures with visible skin façades are rare in the era of German-­ controlled Paris. One of the exceptions is Child with Doves (1943); it presents a plump-­faced toddler sitting on the floor of a narrow room only co-­occupied by a pair of doves on a chair. The two crooked eyes of the baby’s old-­man face gape wide open; one of the tiny-­headed doves nearby gawks­– ­in echo­– ­with a miniature version of the charred, but rose-­tinted, face of the toddler. This adult-­looking child is caged with avian wardens, awaiting rescue it seems. The theatrical scene presented inverses the terror of Guernica by staging a setting of tranquillity with an atmosphere of calm waiting. The child, housed within a protective room-­mask, plays awkwardly and stares blankly. The work does not self-­identify as a Picasso self-­portrait masquerade. The same eerie calm of an isolated interior is present in Brassaï’s photo of Picasso seated in his Grand-­Augustins atelier during the Nazi occupation. Picasso and Stove (1944) captures Picasso in a dark-­eyed stare as he gazes blankly to his right and avoids direct contact with the camera. His gaze follows the direction indicated by his burning, long-­ashed cigarette.14 Nothing moves. Behind Picasso is a tall shadow like that of a gigantic Chinese lantern connected to a wide furnace pipe. The towering wood or coal-­burning stove, with a silhouette worthy of placement in Brancuşi’s sculpture studio, dwarfs Picasso and the chair. The imposing mechanomorphic furnace-­ figure, as scorched and severed ‘endless column’, dominates this photographic still life. Pablo Picasso as subject-­object is present with face and hands in arrest; pale and uncharred, the face surrounding his probing gaze is a negative space of totally absent text. Brassaï (Gyula Halász), a Parisian of Hungarian-­ Romanian heritage and language, presents the opposing forces of two empty containers in this photograph; one is French-­Spanish and officially labelled ‘degenerate’, while the other is a functional urban, somewhat surreal effigy with a practical purpose. It is not clear what Brassaï is suggesting by his elevation of stove object to domestic partner. The heater’s triangular openings, designed to improve warm-­air circulation, allow transparency directly through the object’s torso; the holes become the open eyes of a face, below a top-­hat-­like exhaust-­pipe chimney. This confident, and confidant, modernist effigy is part golem and part dressed-­up automaton. More permanent than a Dada costume, or even a Bauhaus kiln, the nine-­eyed, salvaged container is as silent and solitary as Picasso himself in occupied Paris.

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Veiled and Displaced Faces Edward Gordon Craig visited Paris in 1945 to observe the collaborative work of actor-­mime Étienne Decroux (student of Jacques Copeau) and Jean-­Louis Barrault (student of Charles Dullin, a Copeau protégé). Decroux was in the process of developing his ‘corporeal mime’, in which, as Jean Dorcy noted in 1958, ‘nothing exists, but everything must appear’.15 When Craig came a second time to see Decroux’s work in 1947, photographer Étienne Bertrand Weill was a participant in the movement-­training course offered by Decroux. Weill was startled by a conceptual complicity between mime and photography, which was already apparent with Les Nadar in the previous century. Craig, thinking back, perhaps, on his ephemeral Übermarionette, was intrigued by the body-­ object in rehearsal at Decroux’s studio. Weill was primarily concerned with documenting this performance research. In Cosimo Chiarelli’s discussion on mime and photography, he reasserts the contention that mime (another troublesome, polysemous word) was challenged, or under attack, from modernity.16 It would probably be more accurate to state that the challenge came specifically from the theatre community itself. Post-­war initiatives engaged with physicality, but were also committed to the word, as in Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel’s theatre, for instance. The affirmed marginality of silent acting, which Weill and Chiarelli equate with the marginality of photography as an art form, is clear. Both attest that mime’s raison d’être is particular because it requires a defensive mode in order to protect its fragility; it takes a ‘revolutionary’ stance by necessity. Jacques Lecoq’s point of view, as repeated in many discussions, is that miming, in whatever stylistic manifestation, is a transitional performance form and, as such, inherently shifting and unstable. It is not surprising that physical imbalance or ‘déséquilibre’ is so apparent in photographic images and in mime-­training parlance, as evidenced by decades of weight-­on-­one-­foot images of Pierrots. Assertions that photography and mime are linked with a special rapport can, I believe, be further nuanced. The Étienne Bertrand Weill image samples provided in Art du mime (2012) blend photos of sparsely dressed bodies with those of partially disguised bodies. Easily three-­quarters of the photographs feature the face masked in one way or another. All the human forms are gesture-­active, but this is not, in my view, what draws the eyes (or the camera) to them. The magnetism­– ­the luring action­– i­s a pull towards the disguised head or body fragments. Attraction is less from what the body does, gesturally, and more from what the body is, formally and sartorially. The near-­naked body neutralises, to a degree, trace affectations introduced by dress and accessories, but it­– ­nudity­– ­does not necessarily attire the eye to the corps. From one man’s point of view, that of Nikolai Evreinov, ‘full expression of any emotion or condition of the soul can transpire only through the nude body’, as Colleen McQuillen notes.17 167

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Souls were certainly partially bared in the experimentation that emerged from Étienne Decroux’s atelier. Weill’s photographic documentation of the miming female body, rare in Pierrot-­focused pantomime, is present in a select few instances in mime corporel. In the Bibliothèque nationale de France collection, twelve photos of Éliane Guyon document her work in La Statue (1948). Her head masked with a close-­fitting, fixed-­form, full-­faced covering, Guyon poses before a black, neutral background. In the black-­and-­white photographs her entire body is white, including hair and cap plus brief shorts. She performs torse-­nu, which is only perceived with a studied regard. Very much like a malleable Rodin sculpture, Guyon has one other accessory: a white fabric-­piece which she sometimes sits upon. The cloth is of the same colour as her skin, the mask and her clothing. In the sequence of standing, gesturing and sitting positions, the smoothed-­out, uniform aspect of the face masked gradually becomes the site of attention for these full-­body images. The face exhibits an actual heightened form, while the strong, highly trained, skin-­visible arms, legs and torso strive to ‘present’ with a similar gusto. This mime-­body in action bears no resemblance to any Pierrot or to Marceau; no narrative partner is sought and no absent objects are seen or gesture-­illusioned. The body is a human-­sized form objectified by minimalist skin decoration and dancer-­like, muscle-­applied body tension. Éliane Guyon is depersonalised. The viewer thinks very little about her­– ­the actor person­– ­when reading her image. She, the actor, is well hidden. She, the image, is perceived as if a self-­idealised persona of her own body. Guyon-­ doubled is self-­objectified and is surface prepared for, as it happens, a mostly male-­gazing circumstance. Her façade is a construction; she is a part-­nude image played by a semi-­naked actor­– a­ complex fragmentation, mediated as a body-­form masquerade, presented as a group of heavy-­material sculptures. As solo tableau vivant, Guyon is eye-­ catching. Her series of impersonal, dead-­material images reads like a scrapbook of moderately emotional forms. The work is dignified, mostly absent of narrative significance and seriously attempting to avoid the clichéd and the sentimental. The sculpting feels lonely, nonetheless. The solo performer gains momentum in the second half of the twentieth century. Marcel Marceau may be the finest example of going it alone without talking. Like Jean-­ Louis Barrault, Marceau was a temporary student of Decroux who moved on to more audience-­friendly entertainment with greater celebrity potential. Any disguised personage without a lesser disguised (or more disguised) stage partner (or two) inevitably faces many challenges. There is no one to react to; there is no one to act for or act against. There is only the spectator, who is not technically even an ‘audience’ for the silent performer. Playing for the viewer, while adjacently dialoguing with oneself, is, geometrically, alarmingly simple. Serve and return, then comment. Serve and return, 168

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then comment again. This does not approach a triangular structure, like that of a Fratellini circus clown trio, which provides the possibility of numerous dramatic complications. The non-­speaking solo performer, unlike a speech-­ machine, stand-­up comic, is a visual artist. Pierrot is in performance often posed and played as if by painter artists. Marcel Marceau, in fact, actually was a painter. Like a Guyon photographic image, a successful mime soloist can become an icon­– ­created and fashioned in one moment of time and displayed in another­– ­a body as artwork. Solitary and uncontested, the tableau vivant figure announces itself as image, as person in disguise. For the viewer the persona is fused with the person, so the disguise is almost not a separate skin-­ form. The persona already lives as a photograph, a recurrence and reimaging of something-­someone who has already passed. The disguise as persona fuses with the self so fully that it appears the disguise is irremovable, already fixed like a photographic representation. It is the body-­disguising element of the masquerade-­in-­performance which links so directly to photography; it is body in motion while partially hidden which, historically, has fascinated image makers with cameras. During and after the wave of European exiles and refugees, a group of surrealist women artists gathered in Mexico City. The artists were already familiar with the work of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera from Mexican artists’ sojourns in Paris; poet-­ theorist and theatre artist-­ actor Antonin Artaud, discussed later in this chapter, visited Mexico in 1935, and his published commentaries about his experiences may have been familiar to some of the new arrivals. Mexico was imagined as a dreamland­– ­a tabula rasa­ – ­where it would be possible to materialise a reverie of liberty, life fantastic and free thinking. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art celebrated the image-­work of these visionary painters with the exhibition In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States in 2012. As a stark and vivid contrast and complement to sobering visual evocations of the Second World War, Bridget Bate Tichenor’s Self-­Portrait (undated) crams over thirty head-­selves into a crowded frame of cheek-­to-­cheek faces and inquisitive eyes. The stacked faces in flesh-­tones of tan, pink and off-­whites layer one upon another, animated by prominent eyes of amber, grey-­blue, hazel, navy, chestnut-­brown and aquamarine. Only two of the sixty-­odd eyes are closed. The image celebrates life, pushing death and dying away. All gaze curiously, but never calmly. The exterior setting, with partial views of a blue sky, is composed in a manner which allows many of the neckless figures to regard the blue expanse. Tichenor’s mass of alternate faces simmers with the excitement of the new, as if stimulated by a fresh sense of place. Tichenor was born in Paris and worked as a model for Coco Chanel. The British expatriate (and fellow Parisian) Leonora Carrington also became a resident of Mexico City. Carrington was a central figure in French Surrealism and 169

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a professional and personal partner of Max Ernst while in Europe. Mexican culture, spiritualism and ‘magic realism’ infused the artist’s paintings, sculptures and writing in a manner that directly linked her work with Mexico City colleagues: Hungarian Kati Horna, French Alice Rahon and Spanish Remedios Varo. Modernist internationalism successfully transferred to the Mexican capital. In The Artist Traveling Incognito (1949), Carrington portrays a fantastic, finely draped woman with three heads. The tallest is multi-­eyed and framed by wild, horizontal-­flowing hair; the shortest head is a glowing feline with pointed ears and one large eye. The central head is a transparent globe containing an owl and a green parrot with a dazzling eye. If Carrington is the traveller represented, she is well disguised as a mythical folk-­figure; there are no evident signs of the stylishly modern English painter. The widely caped figure in gold, white and burgundy fabrics, with umbrella suspended on a string, radiates and emanates a quality of all-­seeing awareness. The deity is assisted by an alert, almost ecstatic white cat near a hanging feather on her costume. Poised with long, narrow ballet feet in second position, the traveller seems capable of flight; at any moment she might lift off the brown earth and commune with the blue beyond. This imminent ascension of masquerading traveller is lighthearted and uplifting, while packed with heavyweight significance. Carrington’s La Artista Viaja de Incognito is a departure narrative­– ­a free-­flowing avian fantasy. Expatriate Parisian Louise Bourgeois, while working in New York, illustrates or pictures migration differently in her Woman House series (Femmes-­ Maisons) of 1945–47. Bourgeois presents a nude woman whose upper torso and head are a house; the head of the household has windows, but no eyes. It is, in a sense a remaking and reshaping of Chagall’s Belorussian porter: the displaced person with shtetl on his back. The woman, however, is not burdened or weighted down with excess baggage. The woman is herself a house-­refuge, complete and wanting nothing. She waves an arm while the other hangs from within her containing, mobile, architectural structure. The Bourgeois maison as body-­mask and visual metaphor recurs in masquerades of many cultures, where mask disguises architecturally mirror a masquerader’s actual, built site of residence. The home of the itinerant or the exile is, figuratively, in the head or of the head (as well as where the heart is). Other European expatriate experiences were documented at the Los Angeles gallery fifteen years previously with the exhibition Exiles and Emigrés: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler (1997). For those artists in Paris and elsewhere, there were limited survival options: resistance, submission or migration. Marcel Marceau and his colleague, photographer Étienne Bertrand Weill, were active in the Resistance. Leaving Europe was possible for a fortunate few with financial means and good fortune. Curator Stephanie Barron’s expatriate display catalogues the outcomes for individual writers, painters, theatre 170

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artists, musicians, sculptors, dancers, film-­makers and composers who arrived in the United States. Not all migrations to Hollywood had happy endings, as a purposeful sense of place for some could not be found in California. The artist-­subject often ended as displaced object: as outsider. Well established as modernist iconic figures in expressionist drama from the First World War era, the blank stares of the isolated and the dismayed preoccupied playwrights Georg Kaiser, Walter Hasenclever and Ernst Toller, as well as librettist Marie Pappenheim, for Schönberg’s opera Expectation (Erwartung). Migrants fleeing European wars and mandatory military conscription since the Franco-­Prussian War had departed for the unknown from ports in Danzig (Gdańsk), Lübeck, Marseilles and Riga. Urban cosmopolitan communities and subcultures thrived on the energy and challenge provided by migrating artists. The artists in Mexico City confirmed this with their productivity. Helene Weigel and Bertolt Brecht’s wandering from city to city in Scandinavia and subsequently to Santa Monica, California, ended abruptly, however, with a much-­anticipated return to East Berlin in 1949. In Prague, picturing America took another form. Jindřich Štyrský’s engraving The Statue of Liberty from his Cabinet of Vanities series shows a towering iron-­frame head under construction.18 An enormous, eye breast-­pendant is attached to Liberty’s draped torso. The Prague surrealist painter, poet and photographer created the image in 1934; the unfinished statue shows Liberty with her arm under construction as well as her pumpkin-­shaped, unfinished skull, where the skin of a face has not yet been applied. Skin is mostly absent from the massive human figure. A crane-­ like frame supports construction workers suspended on ropes; they are positioned like mountain climbers with pulley systems, as if carving a bust on Mount Rushmore. Despite the exaggerated eye on her chest, Liberty has no gaze. She is incomplete; the half-­finished head has no outer surface. Her head is merely a curved armature façade without features; the white, hyper-­ real eye takes focus. The skyscraping, overblown and unfinished Statue of Liberty is comical in its proportions and in its evocation of an oversized Karel Čapek R.U.R. robot under construction. Liberty is hollow and faceless in Štyrský’s image, an example of a Czech surrealist fantasy-monument with hypertrophic eye of Kafka on its trunk. Wols, the pseudonym of the German painter and photographer Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze, spent years in French internment camps during the Second World War. At the Camp des Milles near Aix-­en-­Provence, he worked alongside Hans Bellmer and Max Ernst. Writers Lion Feuchtwanger and Walter Hasenclaver were also at Les Milles; Hasenclaver killed himself there in 1940. Wols created a performance group called Circus Wols at the camp. As a German army deserter, he was constantly hiding from the authorities once he escaped incarceration in the camp. While interned his artwork transitioned from photography to drawing, etching and painting. An early image 171

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from 1940, Le Petit bar du camp, exhibits his obsession with alcohol as he senses his body metamorphosing into an animal or monster; Wols imagines his body interior burning away,19 referencing, perhaps, Gaston Bachelard’s Psychoanalysis of Fire (1938) with his imagery; Bachelard pictures alcohol as fire in liquid form. Body skin is present as a significant text in many of the Wols images. In Le Petit bar du camp his own skin is attacked from the inside by liquids from scores of bottles. Peinture (Painting) from 1946–47 represents a square head of off-­white colour that is stained and corroded by layers of ink and paint, dripped, brushed, rubbed and scraped on to the canvas.20 The square face outlined with a red line is defined by circle eyes, a black circle nose and a large smeared black cave of a mouth, with red circular throat. The gestural spattering of the image suggests liquid splashed on to the flat face, as the mask stares in awe at the viewer. The face-­mask is framed by a shifting, black-­brown fog that deepens the remote calling-­out of the figure. The summoning push of this head illustrates Wols’s cataclysmic Paris years when he developed new modernist painting techniques. Françoise Le Gris states that Wols ‘pursued a slow suicide by alcohol resulting from a life of misery and exclusion’.21 Outsider Wols painted his own death mask while not fully deceased. Pablo Picasso imaged unpeopled spaces and his Nature mortes with skulls as the liberation of Paris approached.22 Heads without identities­– ­without flesh and without skin­– ­stare vacantly outwards at the viewer. In Tête de mort (1943), a thin, two-­dimensional skull is torn from paper, then marked and stained by hand and nicotine.23 This lightweight, fragile skull representation affirms the face as temporary membrane, as ephemeral skin-­mask. Gone is the innocent open gaze of the cardboard Masque of 1919, which Picasso painted with bold horizontal stripes.24 By 1945 Picasso had abandoned the skin-­based face. Commentary in the exhibition Picasso primitif explains that a new emphasis on drawing through unconscious expression predominated. Curators classify this period of drawing and painting as driven by the Id, allowing the disfigured and the monstrous to spill on to the canvas.25 Picasso’s Skulls of 1945 are flat, teeth-­baring, profile heads with a circle eye, no more detailed than animation sketches. There is no body with these isolated, Ubu-­ like, distorted-­skull, paper Crânes. Their distance from the Picasso masks displayed at the Museo Picasso in Barcelona at the Cubism and War: The Crystal in the Flame exhibition in 2016 mark a journey from fire to ashes. Actors’ Empty Gazes Following travels to Mexico and quests for a spiritual past in Dublin and on the west coast of Ireland, Antonin Artaud spent the 1940s interned in hospitals for the psychologically troubled in Rodez and Ivry. He struggled with illness as a child in Marseilles, the son of Greek parents from Smyrna in present-­day Izmir, Turkey. Throughout his career as actor, poet, playwright 172

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and theorist, he allowed himself all the benefits of an unbridled imagination. His ‘mental nomadism’26 knew no boundaries, and his drawings, paintings and self-­portraits from 1946 to 1948 concretely exhibit this liberty on paper. While at Rodez, an institution that provided refuge to many victims of Nazi pursuit, Artaud received over fifty electroshock therapy treatments. He considered these treatments torture; they drove him to despair. They took away his memory, he wrote, and numbed his thought. He felt ‘absent like a dead person beside a live self that was no longer him’.27 Artaud’s drawings on paper with text notes, created in the final years of his life, feature portraits of friends alongside scores of gesturing forms, masks and bodies in distress. His Blue Head (La Tête bleue) of 1946, for instance, is a traumatised head with scratched lines, blotched skin and a dreadful stare; the dissimilar eyes and the wide-­stretched mouth alarm the viewer with an intense gaze and its implied vision-­awareness of the unknown and the unimaginable.28 Artaud’s late self-­portraits, in stark contrast to his self-­portrait drawings made as a young man, display his personal suffering and the damage that resulted from his incarceration. Artaud was a working professional actor in Paris; he was engaging and photogenic and benefited from his training with actor-­pedagogue Charles Dullin. Schooled in the tradition of Jacques Copeau, he was introduced to both Copeau’s and Dullin’s interest in Japanese and subsequently Chinese theatre traditions. Artaud mixed with the leading theatre artists of his day, including the Cartel des Quatre of theatre directors including Dullin, as well as Gaston Baty, Louis Jouvet and Georges and Ludmilla Pitoëff. Artaud remained a close friend of actor-­directors Roger Blin and Jean-­Louis Barrault, both of whom also studied with Dullin. The Antonin Artaud of the late self-­portraits is an altered Artaud. The fetching persona of early film stills and photos is gone; the look of vivacity and clarity in the face is replaced by a skin-­mask covering that veils the transparency of the original. He is, quite literally, only a shadow of himself. Alongside the complete loss of a vibrant skin surface and the arrival of a leathered, worn covering, the attentive, concentrated Artaud gaze has vanished. It is clear that the eyes are framed by an ‘other’ material, but, in addition, the imaginative gaze of the actor is absent. The late self-­portraits display a non-­actor, a gaze that is not rich and evocative. This gaze is not the gaze of the no-­presence, minimally inspired actor; it is the gaze of the actor lost: the absent one. An actor gaze is a gaze that sees things and registers the seeing; it is not a blank stare. The actor way of looking sees people, places and things even if they are not present within the immediate space of the gaze. It is a gaze of the material imagination. In some self-­portraits such a gaze makes the viewer feel present and seen while in the act of looking­– s­ pectating. The early Artaud self-­portraits and the photographs taken by luminaries such as Man Ray exhibit this quality of liveness. Artaud had this ability to appear as-­if-­seeing-­all-­present in his 173

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surroundings stripped away by electroshock treatments. His gaze converted to a disturbing, uncanny, empty way of looking. Jean-­Luc Nancy describes the look of Artaud in the late self-­portraits as an ‘emblem and symbol’ of suffering; Nancy sees this face as representative of all the wounded, disfigured faces of the twentieth century, more haggard and more lost than is possible from the pain experienced by a single person.29 For Nancy, in these final self-­presentations Artaud is absent: ‘He is not presented, nor represented, nor imaged. He is exposed as one condemned …’ Nancy sees this laying bare of Artaud by Artaud as ‘an invasive spectacle’ for the viewer, writing primarily in reaction to Artaud’s self-­portrait from December 1947.30 This image is not the final self-­portrait, however. Artaud died in March 1948. There are noteworthy differences among the many self-­images created during the last two years of his life. The gaze of Artaud changes in every self-­portrait from 1946 onwards. His regard was at its most vacant in May of that year when he returned to drawing under the guidance of a doctor; in a rage of gesture and sound Artaud pictured himself as a coiffed skull with shaggy hair. His split gaze with a hyper-­open eye and a tired eye remains vacuous; his marked skin, with smeared ink blot, signals involuntary jolts of the hand. Still, the familiar face emerges with detailed eyes and mouth. The picture, according to Dr Dequeker, surfaced without the artist’s use of a mirror.31 Seven months later, in December, Artaud is less dishevelled and tempestuous; his countenance is calm despite the strain to resurrect the memory and to retrieve perception. Artaud struggles to bring his mind’s eye forward to meet his actual, anatomical eyes. He, Antonin Artaud, remains slightly below the skin of his face and still moderately behind his staring open eyes. One imagines a struggle to manage the ransacked interior and to align fragments into a proper order. The series of 1947 self-­portraits shows Artaud much closer to the physical surface of his own being. His gaze is more ordered and his respiration is less gagged and halted in appearance. The series of photographs of Artaud taken by Madame Denise Colomb in 1947, published in Claude Schumacher’s Artaud on Theatre, confirm the reappearance of a present-­focus gaze.32 With a partial return to order, Artaud looks outwards in three of the eight portraits. He does not fix upon the camera lens, however, as his right eye engages with the present as ‘return backwards’, while the left eye gaze trails in the ‘amnesia provoked by the power of the imagination’, terms coined by Georges Banu.33 Artaud drew portraits of friends during this period as well. Roger Blin, who continued to visit him during his internment, was sketched in November 1946. This drawing is a clear-­cut representation of Blin the actor, whose gaze is unambiguously alive. Artaud shapes the eyes with confidence; Blin’s unkempt hair does not disrupt the clarity of his focus. He gazes directly at Artaud and brings the image of his friend into the viewer’s imagination.34 This is the gaze 174

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of the actor which, I believe, Antonin Artaud wrestled within to reclaim. The self-­portraits in the last four months of his life waver between almost being there and slipping back from a now-­present face into the capacious interior beyond. The once-­empty gaze improved after Artaud’s departure from Rodez. The mask of emptiness softened and a more natural face returned. Artaud’s cavern of detached memories may have regained some order as his gaze quickened. Perhaps he recalled the Balinese dancers in Paris, the Michel Serres vivid, large-­scale, body-­strewn, cityscape painting of victims of the 1720 plague in Marseilles (Artaud’s childhood home), Inca masks, Celtic deities and torturers in his production of The Cenci. Artaud’s imagined theatre of gesture, text, visual metaphor, indigenous ritual, sounds, screams and rites of transformation partially returned in his final notebook illustrations with words. His mises en scène on paper are, in Guillaume Fau’s analysis, inventions of a modern theatre in graphic art.35 Artaud’s theory that theatre performance is always ‘an art of space’36 was achieved most fully in his pencil drawings. With respect to scenographic space where ‘Manikins, enormous masks, [and] objects of strange proportions will appear with the same sanction as verbal images’,37 the Artaud vision did not fully materialise; the ‘The Theater of Cruelty’ was staged in images with the bodies he presented on sheets of paper. The verbal images, the drawing ‘doubles’, are aptly supplied by boldly reciting selections from most any page of Le Théâtre et son double. Artaud enacted and embodied his theory, reinforcing French Modernism’s commitment to words and to constructed body images, like masquerades. Mimes and Silent Figures In a celebration of music and dance in North America, painter Marc Chagall draped and encased performers in transformative costumes with unorthodox shapes and vivid colour. In exile and distanced from Europe, Chagall created scenographic fantasies for ballet from 1941 to 1945. He rejuvenated his interest in theatre design in the 1940s after his enthusiastic experiments in Soviet Russia in the 1920s, this time on an even grander scale. With body coverings as canvas, rather than actor skin itself, Chagall brought the world of his paintings to life on the stage, accompanied by new atypical choreographies. Like many European musicians and composers (Alma Mahler-­Werfel, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Darius Milhaud, Arnold Schönberg and Kurt Weill, for example), Chagall made stops in both New York and Los Angeles. The American Ballet Theatre (then called the Ballet Theatre of New York) invited Chagall to create costumes and scenery for the Léonide Massine choreography of Aleko. Based on a Pushkin poem set to music by Tchaikovsky, the production team brought their knowledge of the Ballet Russes, Russian culture and spirited masquerades to this collaborative project in New York. 175

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Aleko was designed, rehearsed and debuted in Mexico City, however. Bella Chagall assisted her painter partner with the costumes, which featured the fanciful and the fantastic from Chagall’s repertoire of unusual human-­animal hybrids. In order to portray the visually rich atmosphere of Roma culture in Pushkin’s poem, Chagall incorporated images from the popular cultures of both Russia and Mexico. An aura of lightness is achieved in the Chagall duo’s use of soft pastels and silky, thin fabrics. Backdrop settings quote the object-­ animated skies of Chagall’s early paintings, complementing the movements of the dancers. Aleko moved on to play in New York in 1942 and toured to the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles in 1943. Following the success of Aleko, Chagall pushed the envelope further with three-­dimensional disguising of the dancer body for the celebrated Firebird of Igor Stravinsky, an iconic element of the Ballet Russes repertoire from 1910. Chagall and his daughter Ida invented a new look for the Ballet Theatre of New York for this 1945 production at the Metropolitan Opera House. Chagall peopled the stage with stuffed and padded monsters and animals in multi-­ hued morph suits and masks. He also created a set design and backdrop in blue with a wide-­spread, whimsical, white-­winged, bird-­angel figure that holds a bouquet of red flowers and foliage. The Chagall designs were recreated, revised and restaged for the 1970 revival choreographed by George Balanchine. The costumes were rebuilt by Barbara Karinska for this production and were recently exhibited in Los Angeles. Chagall: Fantasies for the Stage at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s exhibition in 2017 displayed Chagall’s designs on paper, a selection of his paintings, performance film clips and painted costumes in a immersive, multimedia format. Costumed mannequins on platform stages presented personages from Aleko and The Firebird, as well as from the 1959 Paris Ballet production of Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe. Chagall’s scenography for opera was represented by the 1967 Metropolitan Opera production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Some of the costumes displayed had been painted by Chagall while worn by the dancers and singers in the cast. Chagall’s flair for the theatrical was present in the spatial design for Fantasies for the Stage. The exhibition included simulated performances by costumed mannequins, frozen in action, but sufficiently implying gesture and displacement to instil them with a degree of life. This visual culture display performance was a gala for unpeopled masquerades. Like pencil-­ thin, scorched phoenixes, Alberto Giacometti’s Tall Figure of a woman and his Man Pointing (both 1947) push skyward as if through atomic fallout residue. Heads perched high above the ashes, each human face is an insignificant ridge along a descending bodyscape on rocky terrain. The grotto eyeholes of the figures are fully camouflaged. The woman and man stand as fragile figures capable of only a dim regard from eyes unseen. Theirs is the ultimate disguise because the guise itself is undistinguished; the face is 176

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incorporated into an almost whole, precariously narrow form. These new bodies nearly succumb to the space around them; the air presses against their torsos with a will to collapse the rib-­cage. They may soon disappear. The man indicates with a wide gesture his concern as airflow threatens further erosion of the neck, the arms and the legs. The eroding heads sense the air pressure. The corrosion is palpable, one’s survival improbable. Each is a figure that is ‘between a Being and a Non-­being’, Giacometti notes; they are beings ‘that are simultaneously alive and dead’.38 In the darkest hour, Les Enfants du Paradis appeared in cinemas on all the boulevards du crime in Paris. Marcel Carné’s film, written by Jacques Prévert, reintroduced Jean-­Gaspard Deburau’s Baptiste within a romantic narrative set in the popular theatre and circus milieu of early nineteenth-­century Paris. Intertwining stage scenes of melodrama and Pierrot tales of love lost, a city vibrant with passionate and carnivalesque crowds of theatregoers is represented in black and white. Jean-­Louis Barrault, a classmate of Artaud, brings Baptiste to life in the final months of the Second World War. Deburau, the Pierrot actor who died in Paris nearly a century earlier, reappears, as if summoned by the city’s Czech-­expatriate surrealists. The apparition of ‘The Man in White’, as Part Two of the film is titled, displays the temporary triumphs of the outsider, an atypical hero, in the midst of Crowds and Power, in the words of Elias Canetti. A modern, finely edged design of Baptiste Pierrot signalled stylish naïvety during the Occupation; it represented youthfulness and hope for fatigued spectators in the 1940s. While out-­of-­time and out-­of-­place, this disguise was local; it contrasted with the raucous challenges to convention offered by the Marx Brothers and Chaplin, sourced from elsewhere. The anomaly of Pierrot’s white façade may have shocked with its wartime incongruity, but it served as a welcome change of scene. The faces of the departed and the displaced could be projected on to this smoothly covered mask; Pierrot retrieved briefly the role of distraction and the gentle salve of repair. This face is the opposite of the face of Artaud, who remained hospitalised as an actor dis-­guised and dis-­played. The Barrault-­Pierrot was alive and well on film while the Artaud-­Pierrot at Rodez was immersed in silence. If French actors are capable only of talking and talking more, in Artaud’s words, silent acting was reentering. Also steeped in silence at his Boulogne-­ Billancourt studio, actor-­ mime Étienne Decroux experimented with his own way of managing the expressive face. Decroux focused his work on building a body-­text with technical movement capabilities beyond those that he experienced with theatre master Jacques Copeau. From accumulated ‘incorporated knowledge’39 of the physical communication associated with verbal acting, mask performance and miming, Decroux searched for something new: unpretentious, transparent expressivity. This honourable search, however, collided with something old 177

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as obstacle: the human face. Already denuded of the voice, Decroux’s mime departed from the Copeau tradition, which assumed an engagement with the actor-­face; the face rarely stops speaking. Even when Decroux actors achieved the desired ‘noble face’, which was ‘an inexpressive, mask-­like face’,40 the face as skin-­mask remained a barrier which blocked total actor effacement. When the theatre practitioner reflects back upon Copeau’s conversations with Edward Gordon Craig and Craig’s assertion that ‘One can do nothing artistic with the human face’,41 it is apparent that theatrical objects are waiting in the wings to become performative. In a sense, Decroux, in 1947, was complicit with Craig’s flamboyant provocation, in contrast to many of his colleagues. Decroux ceased working with expressive masks and sought a negation of the interference proposed by the human face. (His student Éliane Guyon, discussed earlier in this chapter, chose to use a fixed-­form mask.) The first result of Decroux’s experimentation was the incorporation of the veiled face which softened facial features and greatly restricted access or completely eliminated the visibility of actors’ eyes. Étienne Bertrand Weill also documented this work in photographs. Decroux utilised veils in his 1946 creation Les arbres (The Trees). Actors wore transparent head coverings which muffled the spectator’s ability to perceive details of the performers’ heads. The amorphous masking devices are like gauze sacks gathered at the back of the head in order to pull the fabric tightly around the face.42 Marco De Marinis proposes that Decroux’s mime attempted to create a ‘headless’ body that resembled Rodin sculptures or decapitated figures abandoned on the landscapes of Giorgio de Chirico paintings.43 The de Chirico bodies are broken, non-­bending form-­chunks which, in this circumstance, do not properly represent the elasticity of the Decroux-­trained actor-­body, particularly with regard to the stretching neck-­connecter which tends to be absent in most decapitation imagery. Weill’s images of Étienne Decroux in performance, La Méditation (1957) and an earlier image (1947), display the silk-­covered face of Decroux tightly wrapped with a dark fabric. The earlier image shows subtle white spots on the veil. All the facial features are discernible, but there is no gaze present; in all images, the eyes beneath the veiled head are closed in a voluntary ocular erasure.44 The crown of the head is not masked in the earlier photo, where one sees the skin of the feet, the hands and the head-­top. As the curved and tilted body does not gaze out but presents the terrain of a muted facial façade, the hands adopt the expressivity that the face is denied. De Marinis, in response to Decroux’s subjugating of the head, notes that Jacques Copeau discussed the visual imagery of the headless body; Copeau, he explains, did not find the de Chirico mannequins with faceless heads to be acephalous; he made an important distinction between the severed and missing head and the head that is present but effaced.45 Disfigurement or effacement, 178

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De Marinis argues, brings focus to the perception of headness that is faceless. In the photo of Decroux, the sight potential of the covered eyes is subdued, then mutated and dispersed to what Artaud would have termed ‘other organs’. A figure with eyes obscured, then, may actually be in possession of a suppressed gaze whose source or centre is dislocated and obscured. (Both German-­ language Fastnacht events and French-­language carnaval traditions feature masqueraders who parade in festival contexts as totally effaced figures.) However, the showing of, and ultimately the display of, the face provides purpose to the actor-­head. It is the eventual, visual presence of the head, especially when delayed, which completes the thought of the thinking body. For the post-­war live performer, tossed about in the immediate wake of human destruction, the retreat of the human face was primarily temporary; like a sojourn into the realm of silence, the face rebounds or forcefully ricochets and assumes an avant-­garde position. As with all facial masking, sensory deprivation informs and marks the alert and aware actor. Acting in silence and acting with mime techniques are training antidotes for the desensitised body of the actor. The return of the face with its altered and deeper ‘embodied knowledge’ is a pedagogical goal in actor-­training programmes. While not an end in itself, silence and facial dissimulation are passageways. The legacy of Jacques Copeau, as demonstrated by his most astute and disciplined followers, sustains and preserves his interest in the rehabilitation of the face and of the actor-­body. Decroux’s later work, always visually intriguing, investigates and revisits Copeau’s interest in the masking of the body and the actor’s ability to attain a state of being which is essentially present within a void. De Marinis and Leabhart demonstrate that Decroux’s research extends from Suzanne Bing and Jacques Copeau, particularly via Marie-­Hélène Dasté, Jean Dasté and Jean Dorcy. Charles Dullin continued his own interpretation of such work in his unique, individual manner, establishing an original actor-­ training 46 lexicon which suited his own needs. Later, also with unique and singular perspectives, Jacques Lecoq and Ariane Mnouchkine, one of Lecoq’s students, expanded and broadened such explorations with international and intercultural implications. Leabhart notes that Decroux often repeated a Charlie Chaplin remark that ‘Mime is immobility transported’.47 Decroux believed that he put this idiom into practice with his concept of the body-­mask in corporeal mime, which he considered a replacement of the face-­mask revered by his predecessors.48 Decroux’s L’enveloppe (1962) displays the human body totally hidden under a huge, light-­toned and opaque fabric piece. L’enveloppe is like a flashback to a Loïe Fuller performance image, without any glimpse of Loïe. The actor is totally curtained off and in motion, as if transitioning from an initial immobility, which is interrupted and recommenced as a passage to a subsequent 179

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i­ mmobility. The enclosure in movement is genderless and without identity. The gaze of the figure in tow is buried; the fabric image displaces like a body-­object, as if usurped from a Magritte painting and activated. Photographed in a black-­ box void, the amorphous white object is at rest in dark obscurity, endlessly fading into oblivion. In a discussion with Jacques Lecoq on body-­ masks and forms, Lecoq explained that Decroux was not concerned with the spatial context of body-­ object movement on the stage. Lecoq stated: ‘He used his body, as if he were a sculptor; he wasn’t a mime. We shouldn’t make that mistake; he was a sculptor of his own body.’49 The stretched envelope images from performances by Decroux’s student actors were designed, it appears, to feature other aspects of the body, rather than to conceal the body from spectators and bring focus to the object. In my analysis, Decroux’s use of masking was more about the body than about the masquerade. Lecoq added, with regard to Decroux in performance: ‘He was a great artist, a great artist, who unveiled in all senses of the word, and often it [the Decroux body in performance] was like a sculpture that he set in motion.’50 Lecoq distinguishes Decroux’s work from Bauhaus performance, or his own experiments with portable architecture in performance, by adding: ‘I don’t think he [Decroux] was preoccupied with space.’51 Decroux’s goal, as described by De Marinis, is to activate the human body as a mask that is abstract, non-­narrative, non-­figurative and non-­descriptive.52 However, more than half a century later, these photographs of the disguised actor are replete with narrative. The disguises do not deflect the gaze to the body-­form, they appropriate the gaze as a device that solicits the viewer to look at the object-­accessory and think about the face. The veils go even further with their pleading for attention; their abstractions of the human face increase interest in the face, which then transitions to interest in the identity of the wearer of the face. The identity of the masker, finally, becomes the subject of these subtle, amorphous, semi-­transparent­– ­but assertive­– ­masquerades. Circus performers utilise disguise to enhance and alter the body-­form, ameliorating and imposing a strong presence in the arena space. The Fratellini family of clowns inspired the ‘lost generation’ at the Médrano, the Cirque d’Hiver and the tent space of the Cirque de Paris for many decades of Modernism. From 1909 the contrasting stage figures of Le Trio Fratellini (François, Paul and Albert) cast as White Clown, Monsieur Loyal and Auguste, respectively, embarked on a lifelong journey which proved a commitment to ‘une cascade de catastrophes’.53 Like Italian actors of centuries past, the Fratellinis were the toast of Paris in the 1920s. The three character constructions, modernist noise-­ motion abstractions, elevated the circus arena to a roundhouse of combating masqueraders. The renowned trio criss-­crossed the circus floor in ever evolving love–hate triangles of competition and trickery. The Fratellinis’ sculptured 180

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costumes and distinct painted masks marked the memories of avant-­gardists, before and after Alexander Calder crafted his modernist Médrano in wire. Joan Littlewood and Theatre Workshop’s Oh What a Lovely War (1963), a satirical musical on the subject of the First World War, features clowns and Pierrots in parodic and burlesqued scenes. Actors disguised in popular performance attire play soldiers who lightheartedly confront the realities of war via citations from an earlier war rather the one that ended in 1945. Costume façades with warm and gentle associations allow serious commentary to sneak through the loose narrative seams. Littlewood incorporated body masking to distract and deflect while opening gaps for social and political messages. Her charm-­loaded agit-­prop had appeal and her Lovely War message filled theatre venues. Music doubled the disguise and permitted Littlewood to instruct as she made manifest her Brecht-­inspired ideologies to audiences fully charmed by nostalgic entertainment. In a conversation about physicality, masking and the delivery of text (Adelaide, Australia 1994), Littlewood emphasised the advantages of coating heightened language and formal gestural codes with an everyday cadence and an amenable demeanour. She advocated actors’ commitment to social and political action by utilising playful masquerade with a message. Jacques Lecoq’s work with mime as gestural acting included work with spatial dynamics, which was approached from an architectural perspective. The Laboratoire d’Étude du Mouvement (LEM), established concurrently with the appearance of the Centre Georges Pompidou, extends the mask-­play to form-­play in a variety of mask abstractions and the use of ‘portable architectures’, which sometimes conceal nothing with their open-­frame masking. The performance objects reveal themselves as constructivist objects, in the sense that without veil or mask object they disguise the pseudo-­puppeteer by absorbing the total focus of the spectator, as invisibly disguising shields. Terminology in French for the actor who engages in object manipulation and puppet-­like acting is varied; it has a history. Performers have used comédien-­marionnettiste (self-­explanatory), for instance. Acteur-­marionnette, a puppetised body, and corps marionnettisé have been incorporated by writer and Puck editor Brunella Eruli. In 1994 Annie Gilles established helpful parameters which distinguished actor and puppeteer with precision.54 An acteur does not employ marionettes; a hidden puppeteer, a manipulacteur dissimulé, works with marionettes but is not seen onstage while working; a manipulacteur visibly manipulates objects onstage and may also work unseen at particular moments. The general term marionnettiste may cover any of the above. In English, object animator or manipulator is utilised; puppet controller, manipulator or animator are also practicable as alternatives to puppeteer. The revealed-­face or part-­body-­visible manipulacteur proposed by Gilles works well in the ‘portable architecture’ context when the human body is not completely hidden. 181

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Some of the Jacques Lecoq and architect Krikor Belekian-­inspired objects are lightweight, wooden armatures animated by an actor-­manipulator. These late modernist dreamcatchers displace space itself, making the formless, invisible stage-­space an object. Space personalised and made ‘visible’ by scenographic objects becomes the subject­– ­the material ‘thing’ at play. Recalling modernist preoccupations with the marionette, Lecoq’s ‘abstract sequel to mask play’,55 les structures portables, are structures that are hand-­operated or worn but resist the anthropomorphic associations of many marionettes and puppet-­objects, ‘where one can imagine a figure with human eyes and a mouth’. Some of the aerated forms, those without closed-­off mask-­like surfaces, take air like design projects for flying machines, constructed, as they are, as air-­movers. In a 1984 LEM project at the Paris École Lecoq, the author (R. J. P.) constructed two independent, wing-­like forms which, when combined into one, extended to approximately five metres of three-­ dimensional space. These mirror-­image, avian effigies were set into motion by two actors enacting a choreography­– ­scenic writing­– ­adapted from a prose narrative about the drama-­dynamic components of a severe weather event in the American Midwest. Lecoq, in reference to his mime-­linked-­to-­architecture approach to objects and their plastic dynamic, strove to think differently about scenography. He explains in Le Théâtre du geste that without specific mime-­imagery, the portable architecture performance produced ‘a sensation of color, light and volume at play in the space. The body of the actor is written into the play-­ activity of the structure itself, in a complementary fashion, accompanying, sidestepping and freeing-­up the structure in order to fully highlight and serve it.’56 While rhythmically activating the choreography with a partner, my actor’s eye was directed to the object itself as my hands secured and manipulated the object for its attack, soaring, tight-­twisting, releasing, rocking and gradual dénouement to swinging and stillness. Actor respiration and actor arm-­to-­leg gesture breathed with the object’s push and flow of air in a personification of breeze and wind itself. The fragile, kinetic, wind-­borne frames acted in a silence voiced by human hands, supported by inhalations and exhalations imaging the ‘tornade sur un champ de maïs dans l’Iowa, aux États-­Unis’.57 This theatre of objects with actor-­accessories played in the former Central Boxing Club arena, presently the Grande Salle of the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq.58 Director Ariane Mnouchkine, who experienced actor atelier work with Lecoq, incorporates disguising to the fullest extent of its potential.59 In their work (as Béatrice Picon-­Vallin remarks about Meyerhold’s early modernist experiments), ‘the spirit of the mascarade permeates the stage and the audience hall; the spectator-­participants see themselves reflected in the onstage disguising [. . .]’60 Covering the face, elaborately costuming the body and flamboyantly extending the boundaries of the human form are unashamedly 182

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on parade. Under Mnouchkine’s direction, the Théâtre du Soleil broke new ground by exposing the backstage preparation and transition from actor to role­– ­the process of becoming a masked image­– t­o the public at the Cartoucherie in suburban Paris. This display of the mechanics of illusion creating made the progressive stages of actor concealment into a performative act. Viewed as a gradual transformation, the becoming is systematised; the dressing-­up is a polished replay of a much rougher process of trial and error in rehearsal which produces the fixed masquerade. The spectator as invited voyeur prepares, in advance, for the imminent moments of ‘willing suspension of disbelief’. The spectator is offered a concrete foreshadowing through observation of the actor face-­to-­face with herself: applying maquillage, donning a half-­mask and costuming the body with a distinctive form. Aoife Monks concludes that opening this process to the public ‘offers no further insights into the secrets of the actor’s work’. The purpose of this display, for Monks, is to ‘reconfigure the audience/actor relationship’, and increase awareness of the actor as someone at work, lessening the illusion effect of the transition to character.61 However, the masquerade, as I define it, is still not present in the completion of the reconstruction backstage. The transformation into masquerade only takes ‘place’ when the assemblage of body and things enters the stage performance space as ‘other’ identity. Notes  1. Barthes, Camera Lucida, p. 9.   2. Ibid., p. 14.   3. Barthes, ‘The Face of Garbo’, in Mythologies, p. 56.  4. See Surrealism: Revolution by Night, p. 320.   5. Duncan quoted by Driant, ‘Maurice Farina (1883–1943): mime, archiviste et collectionneur’, in Garcia (ed.), Arts du mime, p. 15.  6. Barthes, Camera Lucida, p. 14.   7. Keim quoted in Driant, ‘Maurice Farina (1883–1943): mime, archiviste et collectionneur’, in Garcia (ed.), Arts du mime, p. 7.  8. Florent Perrier, ‘Walter Benjamin’, in L’Art en guerre: France 1938–1947, pp. 298–9.   9. Quoted in Sayer, Prague: Capital of the Twentieth Century, p. 287. 10. See Picasso et la guerre, p. 118. 11. Ibid., pp. 110–41. 12. Xabier Ametzaga and Ana Monasterio, ‘Le Bombardement de Guernica’, in Picasso et la guerre, p. 112. 13. Ametzaga and Monasterio, ‘Le Bombardement de Guernica’, in Picasso et la guerre, p. 125. 14. L’Art en guerre, p. 142. 15. Dorcy quoted in Cosimo Chiarelli, ‘La matière du mouvement’, in Garcia (ed.), Arts du mime, p. 26. 16. Ibid., p. 25. 17. Evreinov quoted in McQuillen, The Modernist Masquerade, p. 197. 18. L’Art en guerre, p. 81. 19. Ibid., p. 37.

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20. Ibid., p. 251. 21. Françoise Le Gris, ‘Wols’, in L’Art en guerre, p. 444. 22. Caws (ed.), Surréalisme, p. 137. 23. Picasso et la guerre, p. 193. 24. Le Fur (ed.), Picasso primitif, p. 183. 25. Ibid., pp. 208–31. 26. Jean-­Jacques Lebel, ‘Antonin Artaud’, in L’Art en guerre, p. 286. 27. Artaud quoted in ibid., p. 286. 28. L’Art en guerre, p. 247. 29. Jean-­Luc Nancy, ‘Le visage plaqué sur la face d’Artaud’, in Fau (ed.), Antonin Artaud, p. 12. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., pp. 13–17. 32. See ‘Illustrations’, in Schumacher (ed.), Artaud on Theatre, pp. ix–x. 33. Banu, Mémoires du théâtre, pp. 66, 64. 34. Jean-­Michel Rey, ‘Une anatamie inachavée: Écrits et dessins de Rodez et d’Ivry’, in Fau (ed.), Antonin Artaud, pp. 78–9. 35. Fau (ed.), Antonin Artaud, p. 130. 36. Artaud in ibid., p. 127. 37. Artaud, The Theater and its Double, p. 97. 38. Alberto Giacometti quoted in Agnès de la Beaumelle, ‘Alberto Giacometti’, in L’Art en guerre, p. 356. 39. Thomas Leabhart (ed.), Mime Journal, title page. 40. Decroux paraphrased by Thomas Leabhart, ‘The Mask as Shamanic Tool in the Theatre Training of Jacques Copeau’, in Leabhart (ed.), Mime Journal, p. 85. 41. Ibid., p. 94. 42. Ibid., p. 84. 43. Marco De Marinis, ‘The Mask and Corporeal Expression in 20th-­ Century Theatre’, in Leabhart (ed.), Mime Journal, p. 28. 44. Leabhart, ‘The Mask as Shamanic Tool in the Theatre Training of Jacques Copeau’, in Leabhart (ed.), Mime Journal, p. 88. 45. De Marinis, ‘The Mask and Corporeal Expression in 20th-­Century Theatre’, in Leabhart (ed.), Mime Journal, p. 28. 46. Leabhart, ‘The Mask as Shamanic Tool in the Theatre Training of Jacques Copeau’, in Leabhart (ed.), Mime Journal, pp. 94–101. 47. Ibid., p. 85. 48. See Luda Popenhagen, ‘Decroux’, in Williams (ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Stage Actors and Acting, p. 147. 49. Popenhagen, unpublished interview with Jacques Lecoq, Paris, 1996, trans. Luda Popenhagen. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. De Marinis, ‘The Mask and Corporeal Expression in 20th-­Century Theatre’, in Leabhart (ed.), Mime Journal, p. 31, with images, pp. 21–4. 53. Levy, Trois Clowns légendaires, p. 22. 54. Gilles, ‘Des acteurs et des “manipulacteurs”’, p. 27. 55. Lecoq (ed.), Le Théâtre du geste, p. 121. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid. 58. See Lecoq, Jacques Lecoq, pp. 229–33. 59. See Luda Popenhagen, ‘Mnouchkine’, in Williams (ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Stage Actors and Acting, pp. 388–9.

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60. Béatrice Picon-­Vallin, ‘Les Années 10 à Petersbourg’, in Aslan and Bablet (eds), Le Masque, p. 158. 61. Monks, The Actor in Costume, pp. 18–19.

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7

OTHER PLACES

Facets of Contemporary Masquerade In the second half of the twentieth century and beyond, disguise became an element of everyday life, alongside its established role as featured activity in festival cultures. Masquerade’s visibility in museum galleries increased as centenary commemorations of early Modernism mask ‘discoveries’ were revisited. And, to the surprise of many, masquerade in performance proved not only commercially viable, but a subject of great interest to new millennium photographers documenting theatricality, as well as to visual artists investigating the performative. Perspectives on camouflaging the body increased in complexity, as attitudes to exposing and presenting the face in public diversified. The skin, as passing image, is hidden, highlighted, painted and tattooed; face and body alterations mark and identify while quotidian fashion distinguishes or dissembles. The border between protective head garb and fashionable cap narrows; even more than in the past, the balaclava shelters the face in ambiguity. Popular culture images of the casual and the criminal are ubiquitous and reproduced with unprecedented rapidity. Masquerade now thrives in an array of places and spaces; the hood, the veil and the hijab share the footpath in an urban, pluralist parade. Below, I propose a series of constructed and natural settings where masquerading figures are seen, formally or informally, intentionally or unexpectedly. The sites where masquerades play and display are more public than private; disguise in seclusion­– ­solo performance with no 186

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spectator­– ­is mostly pointless, unless mediated. Masquerading invites looking and requires sites where people congregate and interact. To disguise, in a sense, is to be seen. The discussion begins in the artist’s and photographer’s studio, an irregular space where rhythmic confusion and obstruction is not bothersome; it instructs through its improvisational character and redefining of order. Studios anticipate objects; things are collected, arranged and randomly displayed as if props waiting to be played. A mask-­maker studio foregrounds fragments and blocks of materials which may, once utilised, be enlivened and uniquely occupy space. The capacity to circle, confront and distance oneself from objects-­in-­the making is vital in the sculpting studio. It is not unusual to notice mask forms on walls or in cluttered corners of artist studios; children and pets may be allowed access, on occasion. Pablo Picasso preferred children to the inquisitive eyes of adult guests. While the optics of tools and inanimate things may appear haphazard to the outsider, the space is not chaotic for the artist-­denizen. The photography studio, where a disguise can be documented, is a laboratory of technology in black metal and glass. It is a space where light is added or subtracted, where it is multiplied and divided. Like the backstage of an elaborate puppet-­ stage where light itself is the subject, the photographer manipulates looking and imaging. Once captured and preserved, the residue from looking is ushered into an adjacent darkroom where the disguised one is resuscitated. The stages of this dialogue of appearance and disappearance are secretive and the spaces themselves are more private than public. When an image surfaces on paper, rather than digitally, the alchemy employed for the sequence of processes parallels the stages of a masquerade’s invention. The street, in contrast, is the site of public parading, characterised by brief encounters; the street is a milieu where people pass by others, move on and disappear. Carnival revellers, for example, move past their viewers without lingering. An approaching figure is noticed, gets closer, may pass in profile, transition to a back-­view and fade into the distance. The street is the site of glimpsing, not sustained gazing. Visual impact must be bold, direct and quickly understood in order to deliver an identity message. When one masked figure meets another masker, the dynamic can change. Chance moments of recognition and shared perspective can suspend the action temporarily, surpassing the street snapshot-­viewing and installing rapid-­portrait viewing. Urban scenes may also be peopled with masquerading activists, protesters and other hidden figures emboldened by disguise. Anonymous displays are acts of liberation or assertion. Of course, hidden figures can exhibit antisocial behaviour or criminal intent. The street as theatre presents both frivolity and terror. Professional presentation of the disguised human figure is also considered in street fashion and performance showcases. The performance site may be a gallery in a museum or library, arranged as a series of rooms. The ambulant 187

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spectator, in such instances, moves freely as subjects and objects remain, at least generally, in the same location. With the fashion runway­– t­ he ‘catwalk’ of old parlance­– ­the viewer is fixed while figures pass by, turn, return and pass by again. The runway is a spatial configuration which favours the photographer. Film and television studios are sites for showcasing theatrical activity which offer similar technical control to that of a theatre venue; the presenter–spectator relationship differs, however. Beyond indoor spaces, the outdoor showcase is a sectioned-­ off, technology-­ dominated space that disguises a ‘location’ in the outdoors. Masquerading figures pose for image making in ‘natural’ settings: near mountains, in the sea, in fields, under waterfalls and even in caverns. Imaginative combinations of figure and locale­– p ­ utting the already strange in a strange place­– m ­ ark the present-­day search for the traditional and indigenous curiosity­– ­the ‘new’ image. In On Photography, Susan Sontag discusses Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on collecting things and attempting to preserve the vanishing. The vanishing cannot be restored by remaking it as picture-­quotation, she asserts. This, Sontag notes, is the ‘quixotic aspect of the photographic enterprise’.1 Contemporary photography, however, is refashioning masquerade and making the images themselves the performative thing. The actor-­training atelier, a site of research and discovery, is primarily a private space. As studio for performance preparation, masking experimentation is conducted in a controlled environment where improvisation can be observed within architectural limitations. In ideal conditions, which are rare, the space is an open, flexible, rectangular room with indirect, natural light. In the finest work setting, one has a choice between medium-­distance or long-­range frontal viewing of the actor-­in-­training. An uncluttered space allows maximum imaginative discovery for the student. The atelier is an unnatural, austere, laboratory-­like space where ‘realness’, in Bert O. States’s term, is rehearsed. Preferably a space of high dynamic potential, it is best if the space is low on idiosyncratic, architectural character (which is also rare). A low-­ceilinged, claustrophobic space is antithetical to the ‘neutral’ atmosphere desired; with drama already written on the walls, floor and ceiling, the openness anticipated for effective mask-­play pedagogy is already imperilled. Preferably, the studio itself should present like a mask of ambiguous expression, latent in its emptiness. Masquerade in theatre venues­– i­ n stage and arena performance­– e­ ncompasses the creative work of acrobats, actors, athletes, dancers, directors, musicians and scenographers. The stage and the arena are sites of display which advantage the seeing of constructed disguises­– ­sites for privileged viewing. Figures change appearance in contrasting stage configurations; the stage–audience relationship alters perception and point of view. The frontal orientation of the proscenium stage silhouettes the three-­dimensional figure; theatre in the round and arena performance accentuates figure depth. One site highlights horizontal 188

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movement while the other encourages circular movement. Illusion is heightened in professionally controlled theatre sites. Masked figures are further mystified by the play of light and shadow. Choreographed figures surprise and fascinate fully when entering from stage wings, the backstage, fly space or floor traps in the proscenium or the thrust stage. Performance conditions are more challenging in the arena­– ­or in the alley or traverse stage­– ­where configurations expose rather than hide. The entirety of the figure is visually accessible to at least a few viewers at all times in, for example, sports ovals and circus spaces where the ‘front’ continually fluctuates. Artist’s and Photographer’s Studio The mask as theatrical object finds its way into many fine art studios. At home among other partially completed things, face disguises lie in wait as non-­ verbal, vital heads of secondary importance to the primary projects. Contrasting representations of the painter’s studio by Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso­– ­created by the artists themselves­– ­were exhibited at the 2019 Calder–Picasso exhibition at the Musée Picasso-­Paris. A clutter of objects and an ambience like that of a child’s playroom is shared by both depictions of the interior workspace. Calder has a painted mask hanging on the wall of his studio; Picasso’s studio, La Californie, includes a painted portrait, with a mask-­like head, of a seated female figure. These adjacent elements, significant and noteworthy components of the overall composition, mark these interior scenes. The studios are empty of people, but figures inhabit the space even during the artist’s absence. These workshops present theatrically like stage sets intricately composed to look absolutely ‘real’ for an atypically colourful production of The Lower Depths; the two studio images announce their constructions as sites of bricolage, examples of naturalism. Calder’s performance is in the developing stages; the artworks, as noted in the posted commentary, are unfinished, in rehearsal. Mon Atelier (1955) in Roxbury, Connecticut, features a large, brown stove with ascending pipe to heat the rustic space. The curator’s adjacent text describes the space as one would describe the mask hung there. The atelier is ‘veiled in mystery’; the space includes ‘a mobile in stasis’ and it exhibits ‘potential energy, ready for activation’. (The brown mask and the one-­ eyed stove maintain eye contact over the wooden clog which separates them.) Picasso’s studio is in a later stage of development; it is already in dress rehearsal. Made-­up and dressed to kill in Cannes, latency still dominates as it does in the Calder image. L’Atelier de la Californie (1956) puts a blank painter’s canvas centre stage. The white square, strategically placed in this designed arrangement of objects (including a small, green, decorative stove), is one element of the whole which ‘operates more as an inner, mental landscape, depicting a space of creations to come rather than of finished works’ (gallery text). The featured palm and plant patterns and the weighty furniture 189

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suggest that this performance will have a long run, also insinuated by the surfboard-­shaped painted panels and the calming, curved arches of the building architecture. In the 1950s Picasso disguised and masqueraded for the camera whenever an image-­maker was invited into his private workshop and performance atelier. The Picasso studio was an environment with open access to children; entry for adults was restricted to a select few playful friends, which included a number of photographers. In 1956 Lee Miller caught Picasso and Jaime Sabartés holding flat, cardboard Picasso cut-­out masks for a portrait at La Californie.2 André Villiers shot Picasso with false nose, false beard, round spectacles, sailor hat and pipe in front of a dishevelled, overflowing bureau with mirror (a small mask hanging on the wall nearby), dated in the same year.3 Edward Quinn’s 1959 portrait of Picasso in oversized wicker bullfighting mask is an iconic, late modernist image frequently reproduced and employed on book covers. Framed by a drawn-­figure sculpture on his right and a Mexican Teotihuacan mask hanging on the wall above and beyond his right shoulder, actor-­pretender Picasso stars in Picasso avec un masque de taureau initialement destiné à l’entraînement des toreros.4 The masquerading never ceased in the south of France. At Beaux-­ de-­ Provence, Picasso’s friend and photographer Lucien Clergue photographed Jean Cocteau on location and on the set of his film The Testament of Orpheus. Cocteau, taking the cue from Picasso, poses in eye disguises which exaggerate the whites of his eyes and their dark centres. These images from 1959 are surreal looks at ecstatic gazing: one shows Cocteau as Orpheus staring at smoke above, while supine on his deathbed; the other shows Cocteau standing­– i­n a state of shock­– b ­ eside a grand, mythical figure before a mountain landscape. Designer Janine Janet’s winged ‘female-­bodied sphynx with the face of Jean Marais’, bare-­breasted and about to take flight, animates the background in stark white. The false-­eye gaze of the standing Cocteau disturbs profoundly as the viewer is confronted with the blind stare of Cocteau in casual dress with black cravate, in a bizarre portrait-­composition.5 The layers of disguise, temporary death and revival are almost too complex to unravel. Among the many images of Picasso disguising, the mirroring gaze-­effect, self-­portrait photograph by Lee Miller is the most complex. Miller catches an image of herself beside Picasso, and hidden behind her camera, while Picasso masks himself with a blown-­up, partial-­face photo of himself, which presents a close-­up of his eyes and nose. Picasso’s rectangular paper mask is actually a cardboard copy of an exhibition invitation for his 1956 Picasso Himself exhibition. Ian Chance anchors this image with commentary, including his statement: ‘Lee Miller’s camera has become her mask, turning her into a Cyclops. Penrose had previously painted her portrait with her head in the form of a giant eye.’ Chance continues by adding that Penrose felt that Miller, 190

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as American modernist artist, perceived all through ‘the monocular lens of a camera’.6 The relationship between camera and disguise is illustrated clearly here by Miller’s image. Confronting the mirror, while the faces of her and Picasso are partially obscured, exhibits photographer Miller gazing at herself as subject disguised; all others in the stately room, with the exception of Picasso whose gaze is blocked by his paper shield, stand casually gazing at the gazing of the odd couple. Miller looks back and forth at herself in the role of observer and recorder. Miller’s capture of her ‘self’ transitioning to image documents her declaration of independence: ‘Remember me like this.’ Picasso’s accumulation of photos of his face in fun-­shop disguises provides many perspectives on self as masked subject. Disguising modifies self-­ perception and prompts self-­analysis by providing the opportunity to revise and rework self-­presentation. When photographers photograph themselves in the act of taking pictures, they peek out and gaze at their hidden selves; the hide-­and-­discover interplay, inherently theatrical like hooded photographers in the past, transfixes. Masking the body is photogenic, photo-­inviting and illuminating. In a gesture of recognition of sameness, the camera lens is drawn to masking devices as photographers eye masqueraders. Photographic icons of celebrities in disguise exhibit the last process step that proceeds from camera eye to mask object to masker subject to paper image ready for mass reproduction. Photo icons of the disguised, finally, link modernist identity play with modern technology. Photography participated in the making of the celebrity Picasso. With his death in 1973, La Comtesse de Castiglione’s closest rival for most-­photographed disguiser disappeared. The end of Picasso iconicity meant the end of Modernism, for some. Late modernist painters American Jean-­Michel Basquiat, Australian Sydney Nolan, French Jean Dubuffet and Afro-­Cuban-­Chinese Wifredo Lam portray masked and hybrid-­form figures in works that uniquely conceal or transform the human body. Basquiat, in response to Haitian and Puerto Rican cultures and African masks, painted boldly coloured skull-­heads, hood-­masks and effigy figures layered with identification and critique. Nolan further popularised the Aussie outlaw Ned Kelly, who wore metal armour and skull-­protecting hood-­helmet in his final gun battle with police in Victoria, Australia. Nolan represented the Kelly mask as a black square with a narrow, rectangular opening for vision; the viewing space is sometimes blank while at other times it houses wide-­open eyes. Fascinated by ‘Marionnettes et mascarades’, Dubuffet as ‘Un barbare en Europe’ embedded his L’Art Brut forms and images (Mucem, 2019) with body transformations and disguises.7 Lam’s impenetrable, undulating landscapes, peopled with plant-­human hybrids, fuse masks, foliage and bodies into tropical forests with tree-­arms and tree-­legs. The disguising of Joseph Beuys in Germany in the 1960s in performance art and installation work provides an alternative seriousness as ‘social sculpture’.8 In How to Explain 191

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Pictures to a Dead Hare, performed at the Galerie Schmela (Düsseldorf, 1965), Beuys with white-­plastered face sits holding a rabbit, costumed as a modern-­ dressed distortion of clown as Fluxus storyteller. Beuys’s amorphous masked head allies with other performance art disguisers such as Carolee Schneeman, Günter Brus, Gilbert & George, Fiona Tan and Shirin Neshat whose Rebellious Silence (1994) shows her in hijab with a gun barrel; Neshat’s face is covered with horizontal lines of Persian writing in thick black ink. American photographs of the masked figure include the masked family portraits by Ralph Meatyard of backyard scenes in the Midwest. This unsettling collection of work assembles adults and children in documentary-­like presentations of on-­location daily life in the 1960s. These displays of the grotesque are created with rubber Halloween masks that make strange the commonplace of post-­ war America. The casual placement of members of an otherwise unremarkable rural, small-­town family burst forward in photographs with figures, who stare at the viewer as partners in an awkward exchange of gazes. Ossian Brown’s recent Haunted Air assembles assorted anonymous, masked Halloween figures, also in photographs from the rural United States, in a David Lynch-­inspired volume of images. This slice-­of-­life collection of Modernism-­ era photographs parallels Meatyard’s work as photo-­artist; these images were produced without an aesthetic intent, however. While the style of posing is very similar, the atmosphere of Haunted Air is carnivalesque while simultaneously dead serious. British author Geoff Cox names these figures: ‘Monsters, exhausted in the aftermath of a frenzy of summoning. Frolicking before the abyss.’9 The tone is reminiscent of the photographs of masquerading children on the steps of a New York City apartment building made by Helen Levitt. The master of the photographic image of the disguised, however, is Diane Arbus with her documentation of children and adults in masks in outdoor settings, including groups of masqueraders from care institutions romping on the green as dusk approaches. Her unforgettable photographs from the 1960s seize and personalise the search for alternative identities through masking, theatrical dancing and fancy dress. The melancholy black-­and-­white portrait of ageing women and men in light-­coloured masks, chasing the moon in the evening, recalls lost Pierrots summoned to a gathering hosted by the inspiring Arbus. The Repairs, a slideshow juxtaposing black-­and-­white and colour images created by French-­Algerian Kader Attia, contrasts photographs of the damaged heads and faces of First World War soldiers with photographs of African masks of similar construction (Musée Quai Branly, 2017). The semi-­mended faces of exploded soldiers’ heads lurch the viewer into recoil, particularly when accompanied by images of actual masks in wood with metal ‘repair’ improvisations, which mirror the facial distortions or absences of the wounded flesh. The sequence of actual head and head-­object ‘double compositions’ produces an effect of layered transparency. As memory-­catalogue, the visual experi192

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ence recalls and critiques cubist-­ surrealist-­ expressionist experiments with ‘Primitivism’. Attia’s image assemblage is a scrapbook in motion­– ­a pictorial ‘rhetoric of disfigurement’, in Suzannah Biernoff’s words. In her discussion of ‘the anatomy of aversion’, referencing British First World War soldier heads, Biernoff quotes a soldier’s assertion that ‘Hideous is the only word for these smashed faces.’10 Attia’s creation unpacks and repacks this declaration by displaying re-­paired images of the human head, where the dis-­guised encounter alters disguises. Street Fashion and Performance Showcase Disguise in the street is a mise en scène of the body unframed. Without foregrounding for optimum contemplation, everyday contexts for identity creation battle against invisibility in public space. Time often prohibits long viewing. Therefore, the will to be seen and the need to be noticed, frequent motivations for alterations of self-­image, do not guarantee success, as focused attention on the street can never be assured. Beyond social masking events (festival culture and masquerade balls), display and representation of the self often blends in and disappears, absorbed into the indistinct crowd. An out-­of-­the-­ordinary costume or unique work-­uniform has the potential for visibility if it ruptures the standard silhouette of quotidian dress; protective head masking, for instance, stands out without any intent to take focus. Formal distortions of the human outline alarm and draw immediate attention; while shielding or curtaining-­off for safety, they ultimately attract the passerby with their non-­uniform shape. As unintended public statements of difference, protective, utilitarian workwear disallows the invisibility which may be preferred. Protective masking is an incursion of the armoured into the mass of fragile, unprotected bodies; such attire warrants its branding as ‘extreme fashion’, inspired by gear for life-­threatening sport. Contemporary museum displays­– ­Samurai at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2018, for example­– i­nspire masquerading with curious, body-­form armour fragments. Empty of human bodies, the shells reveal the underpinnings of disguise, as the gallery becomes a well-­supplied wardrobe and dressing room for the protection-­needy. Wilful invisibility on the street can backfire; extreme discretion can stand out rather than obfuscate, shifting the intent to disappear into overt display. Purdah, screening-­ off as the voluntary evasion of ‘being seen’, does not necessarily deflect the gaze. The material aspects of the screen (veil or burqa, for example) may conceal while simultaneously establishing visual appeal; a formal presentation of secrecy can grip attention aesthetically rather than disperse the regard. Fashion which structurally limits the viewer’s access to the eyes of the clothed one can, in a reversing of intent, direct attention to the secluded face. Viewing capacity from eyes sheltered by fabric or a mask is limited, particularly in the aspect of peripheral vision. (Restricted viewing from 193

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within is paramount in the one-­eye-­opening, monocular vision of the Cyclops burqa, which seriously distorts the view.) Even simple street veiling of the face is quickly noticed; dissimulation immediately intrigues as out-­of-­the-­ordinary and possibly ‘foreign’. Bold, cosmopolitan fashion discards prudence and avoids clothing and body-­masking choices which are too discreet. Designers seek to attract and inform, not conform. In a complete and curious contrast, a strong advocate of purdah, speaking during a television interview, explained that the viewer on the street (he, the speaker) has the capacity to impose an ‘invisible veil’ upon the uncovered face of a woman. He detailed his own capacity for projecting virtual veils over indiscreet, exposed eyes and mouths with his, it appears, almost material, policing gaze. Ominous, anonymous disguises approach invisibility from another angle. The balaclava (or cagoule) head cover signals danger when identity concealment overrides weather protection needs. Contemporary associations of the balaclava with crime, punishment and terrorist activity dominate the visual reception of stocking-­cap masks. The eye and mouth openings of these amorphous, soft helmets present confronting, unnamed faces; the military history of the balaclava’s use in the Crimean War is mostly unknown in fashion contexts. However, its origin in Tartar culture, as cold protection with full-­capacity eye movement and speaking ability, is now forgotten. On ski slopes or on the street, balaclava-­clad individuals disturb once darkness falls. The fully masked head is redefined and converted from sportswear to ‘beware’ as a visual culture text. Indexing anonymity and dumbed-­down confidence, the balaclava disquiets with its secrecy, an association which reaches back to the violence at the Munich Olympics of 1972, and the famous photograph at the Olympic Village by Kurt Strumpf. The danger associations of anonymity override the social liberty aspects in the visual imagination, as paramilitary and hostage-­taking groups haunt the memory. An increase in maskaphobia (the fear of masks) and masklaphobia (the fear of mascots, costumes and body masks) is not surprising. An escalation in coulrophobia (the fear of clowns) is also understandable given the proliferation of violent, anonymous, maquillage and fixed-­form clown faces during late Modernism and after. Since modernist black-­ and-­ white film ‘golems’ and ‘robots’ in Central European expressionist films, automatonophobia (the fear of human-­like figures) has also developed. Manifestations of technological disguise in popular culture parallel those presented in dramatic literature, as finely detailed by Olga Taxidou. Taxidou’s assertion that ‘modernist theatre finds an apt emblem in the puppet’11 includes elaborations on the mechanisation of the puppet and Lázló Moholy-­Nagy’s introduction of the ‘Mechanized Eccentric’. Contemporary phobias are certainly linked to modernity’s technology-­based anxieties surrounding transformations of the human body. Moholy-­Nagy’s Light Prop for an Electric Stage (1930) and his theories about ‘habitable space’ 194

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demonstrate an interdisciplinary interest in abstract, performative forms, constructed like sculptures. then mechanised. For Moholy-­Nagy and his ‘Shape of the Things to Come’, displayed at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 2015, spatial awareness and the experience of the human body in space ‘is not a privilege of gifted architects, but is a biological function of everyone’.12 Fears of figures in disguise or figures that are like machines result from the apparent lack of inhibition displayed and antisocial behaviours prompted by masking. Blatant spectacles of invincible confidence and unstoppable will accompany hidden identities, most notably with hoods and balaclavas. The message is: I am not responsible for my actions when unseen. The absence of discretion and the brain drained of self-­awareness, clarity and control demonstrate the darker side of masking devices displayed in a recent Rotterdam exhibition. POWERMASK­ – ­The Power of Masks (2018), curated by Walter Van Beirendonck, was a celebratory collage of masks and masking visual statements, which would not have pleased maskaphobic spectators.13 Photojournalists have recorded images of masking in wars, revolutions and public protests. James Nachtwey’s images on conflicts around the world in his Deeds of War (1989) includes the stopped-­action shot of balaclava-­clad young men, Rioters in Belfast, Northern Ireland (1981). Other photographic images of the Troubles are on display in Belfast’s Ulster Museum. Susan Meiselas, documenting rebels in her book Nicaragua (1981), photographed a young man, gun in hand, with the lower half of his face covered by a white handkerchief mouth-­and-­nose disguise in a moment of intense gaze and listening. Her image Traditional Indian rebel mask portrays the colour-­enhanced, wire-­mesh screen mask of a young fighter with his hand on a barbed wire fence; the painted eyes of the mask (masking the viewer’s ability to see the real eyes) gaze forlornly across the barrier in an otherwise blank facial expression with small, discreetly painted mouth and moustache. Army recruits in camouflage shows three soldiers in the Philippines draped from their helmets with tropical vine partial-­concealments in a ‘Dressed to Kill’ photo essay.14 Leah Gordon’s amazing photographs in Kanaval: Vodou, Politics and Revolution on the Streets of Haiti include images of the black skin disguise painted on the black skin of the ‘lansetkòd (Creole for rope-­throwers)’15 masqueraders who enact slave narratives in the street covered with ‘a mixture of cane syrup and charcoal applied to the skin’. Katherine M. Smith explains that Gordon’s photographs ‘present images behind which race, masculinity, power, and revolution are refracted through the looking glass of mimicry’.16 The collection of black-­and-­white images of Kanaval display a rich, vast and vibrant culture of disguises represented by head masks, hoods, cagoules, full-­body masquerades, horned animal heads, elaborate travesties and vegetal camouflages. All of the photographs communicate the liveness of Gordon’s participation while roaming the streets masked only by her camera. Miles away, Dana 195

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Gluckstein’s black-­and white photo Dancer (2010) records the ‘after-­mask’ contemplation of a masker holding a face-­mask in her Bhutan, Central Asia, series. The relaxed body contrasts markedly with her dynamic, startling performance image Dancers, animated, antlered, zoomorphic, helmet-­headdress masquerades from the book Dignity. The living art of Caribbean carnival, enacted in words and images in Falgayrettes-­Leveau’s Mascarades et carnavals, matches modernist avant-­ garde figures with its creative forms and performance intensity; this contemporary, collaborative improvisation in the street shocks with its bold invention. Eclipsing the fascinating work of Bread and Puppet Theatre of decades ago, Peter Schumann’s political theatre appears tentative in comparison to island carnivals. Disguising in the Caribbean, while dominated by men, allows more opportunities for women than most African masquerades. Phyllis Galembo’s portraits of children­– ­girls and boys­– ­masquerading in Burkina Faso, Haiti and at Ghana’s Winneba Fancy Dress Festival reclaim some territory for women in contemporary disguise; her documentation introduces examples of female masquerading for viewers who are confronted with the dominating presence of scores of male maskers in photograph collections.17 Galembo’s images of Agot masquerades, presented by the Ejagham people of the Cross River region of Nigeria, prove that there is no substantive reason for males to dominate masquerading, as gender in many images is not distinguishable. Often the masqueraders holding large baby-­dolls, like the Gelede ‘our mothers’ masqueraders in Benin, are assumed to be women actors; they are, however, like baby-­holders in Haiti, male. Galembo’s images from Mexico, Masks & Rituals (2019) include plant masquerades incorporating moss-­like body covering similar to that described in the ‘Stage and Arena Performance’ section of this chapter. Termed paxtles, these adults and children draped with long tresses of green lichens (plant-­like mosses) are living forest figures who represent old trees that enliven and enrich plant, animal and human life in the wooded regions of Chignautla, Xiutetelco, in Puebla State, Mexico.18 In masquerade and disguise, the showcase is a stage-­ managed display, composed and devised to make spectators remember new images of the human being. Generally, a showcase displays and highlights the best aspects of a product: an object or a fashion accessory, for example. It is often an event without a narrative. In many instances a showcase is constructed to suit the professional-­eye viewing of photographers; buyers, of course, are even more privileged viewers. The showcase stage configuration represents the dynamic of the street, technologically revisited and transformed into a site where the spectator’s point of view is framed; the showcase is not about improvisation. Events featuring fashion with disguises may incorporate a runway. Such elevated routes­– ­often with footlights­– ­work tirelessly to equate quality viewing of the feet with that of the head. Other sites of showcasing include 196

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exhibition halls, museums and public buildings where less disciplined ambulatory activities are allowed. The on-­site location­– ­a photographer’s studio on tour­– ­can showcase the dressed-­up human figure with a sensational backdrop. Showcasing disguise for design and art photographs employs actors, dancers, models, fashion designers, visual artists, scenographers, art photographers, wearable art creators, casting agents and cultural anthropologists. All prefer good lighting and not too much wind. The outdoors sidelines any attempt at surprise entrances, an important element of the runway site. On location, the mystery of hidden costume fitting and make-­up spaces is lessened; all is more exposed and temporary. Beyond buildings, the backstage spaces and sites of in-­between-­ness may be tents, vehicles or other almost ephemeral spaces. Photographing the showcased body in disguise makes masquerade the primary subject; the masquerader­– ­the wearer of the masquerade­– ­takes second place in importance. When viewing photographic outcomes, one can search for signs of internal expression from the actor that may surface in the disguise-­form image. The photo is a document of the once-­alive moment when the constructed masquerade was roused and animated from lifeless materials. The subject here is not the internal impulse responsible for the creation, however; the subject is the product of this process or invention. Iconic images of highly successful disguise constructions­– ­impressions in paper form­– ­do not typically name the object animator, manipulator or creator. The photograph of the costumed form is the subject (like the sculptor’s sculpture). As antidote to ephemeral performance, and the undressing, tear-­down and ‘strike’ of disassembly, all that remains of a fine masquerading event is the photograph which records it as a still image. Photographer Charles Fréger features stunning masks and costumes ‘performed’ in mostly outdoor settings. In his photo-­collection books between 2012 and 2020, he has staged images in Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America and Japan. Fréger shoots in colour and keeps the composition straightforward and uncluttered. The masquerade objects are the subject; the maskers remain anonymous. The books document festival culture and open the door to a consideration of the mystical; there is a respect for the drive to masquerade and for the potential of the act to result, for some, in a spiritual experience. An inherent investigation of what it means to be ‘human’ haunts Fréger’s work, as well as the commentaries which accompany the images. The masquerades­ – ­costumes, masks, headgear and painted skin­– ­are primarily pre-­established and traditional. The selected displays have not been specifically designed for these collections of photographs; rather, they are familiar to the local community and call out to be recorded. Fréger, in a sense, accommodates this call. Axel Hoedt works in a similar vein, but uses more studio shots of the masked head and body. His portraiture also focuses upon the masking device and sometimes frames only a portion of the full-­body ‘gestalt’ of the masker. 197

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Many of his photographs reveal no human skin. Some close-­up shots allow a partial view of an eye, part of a lip or a bare section of the neck. These glimpses are like accidental gaps that pull the viewer into a hidden, unknown interior: the human façade beneath the constructed one. While mostly wordless, Hoedt’s books leave space for imagining the relationship between place and masquerade, via accompanying images which suggest the importance of topographical location for image making. Fréger’s and Hoedt’s accumulation of male and sometimes female disguised bodies is like an alternative geography of the body, quite literally when one considers the Merriam-­Webster definition  of geography as a ‘science that deals with the description, distribution, and interaction of the diverse physical, biological, and cultural features of the earth’s [body’s] surface’. Viewing and theorising about the human body in performance, by looking at its barely visible fragments, changes perceptions; the often unnamed actor-­individual is seen in a new light. Sara Hannant’s photographs of British festival rites and disguises concentrate on celebration itself, by capturing images of community involvement in events. Her images are action-­filled snapshots that inform the viewer about the greater context of British masquerading. In Mummers, Maypoles and Milkmaids the interaction of people dominates, and while the structures and materials of disguise follow the lead of the maskers, the citizen-­actor is the subject. The dynamic silence of the work of Fréger and Hoedt is replaced by noisy, chaotic disruption in Hannant’s work. She manages to debunk the ­stereotype of England as a mask-­shy culture­– w ­ here individuals adroitly follow decorum and edit out the carnivalesque. Her images present festival participation shared by women and men, where disguising is in no way restricted by gender. The role of the Straw Jack or the Jack-­in-­the-­Green is not restricted to male Jacks; there are plenty of plant-­covered women in the mix. The portraits of the contemporary photographers noted here record present-­day recoveries of past rituals. Contemporary access to these playful, child-­like, non-­literary, minimalist narrative elements of visual culture is far greater today than it has been in any period of twentieth-­century Modernism. As a final example of image internationalism, I tabulated images­– ­specifically­– o ­ f botanical body-­masks collected by the photo-­documenters listed above. There are, in fact, too many to mention here; vegetal disguise is a universal impulse. Construction materials for botanomorphic disguise include burr branches, conifer tree branches, deciduous tree branches, hanging moss, leaves, tree moss, sticks and straw, to name a few.19 Traditionally sauvage, vegetal beings have emerged as male figures from snowy valleys or verdant glens. Their wildness made them Wilder Männer. There were few female equivalents. (Wilde Bauhaus Mädels, perhaps?) Contemporary practice fully challenges the actor-­as-­tree metaphor which is so easily imagined as male actor as male tree. Hannant exhibits women as Jack-­in-­the-­Green in Hastings, East 198

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Sussex20 and there are no doubt Green Women at London’s Twelfth Night festivities. Fréger displays the Scottish Burryman from Queensferry, covered from head to toe in green burrs and flowers. Hoedt features straw-­bears in Empfingen, Germany, including a tall straw structure with pointed head extension and extra-­long straw arms: Strohglonki from Leipferdingen in south-­west Germany. Fréger and Japanese photographer Hideo Haga both photographed straw-­covered masquerades in Miyagi Province, Japan. Galembo, as noted above, interacts with moss-­disguised figures­– ­paxtles­– ­in Mexico. There are further examples in Ireland, Portugal and Spain, as formal aspects vary according to the most accessible materials. Masquerade image makers are not only interested in disguises as imagined and practised in the past. Today masquerades in some formats parade as wearable art or as legitimate fashion statements; some masquerade images themselves have become commercially viable, potentially iconic subjects as still-­image portraits. But not all extreme art creations are destined to become exclusively photographic images. Some contemporary work is performative and only seen on the moving body. This contrasts significantly with the previous work which began as performance and finished as iconic image only, transitioning from a time-­based performance into a picture created in a later moment, and fixed at yet a later moment in time. Already in the year 2000, Tibor and Maira Kalman’s collection of images of dressing, (un)Fashion, established daily wear as a subject of immense novelty. This fascinating book is a runway of fashion tourism without words, music or movement. Its ‘Images of the Human Being’21 in quotidian and festival dress anticipates subsequent pictorial essays on theatrical reworkings of the body. New conceptions of disguising surpass tradition, break with the past and forge ahead with unconventional remakes and nonsensical inventions of costuming, masking, sculpting and the total deconstructing of the human form. Robert Klanten’s Doppelganger (2011) records twenty-­first-­century initiatives. The list of chapter titles emphatically marks out the terrain peopled by contemporary artists. The action-­declaring labels for seven sub-­terrains are ‘Embody. Dissolve. Perform. Reshape. Deform. Appeal. Escape.’22 Doppelganger shouts out its agenda like a manifesto in pictures, surprising on every page. In the work recorded, the human form is revisioned, reconstituted, reformed and repeated in Nick Cave-like images in two and three dimensions. The doppelgänger, defined as alter ego, evil twin, facsimile or mirror image,23 announces the affinity of the masquerade to its body of origin. The link to the masquerade’s creator, often its animator, is unclear and probably not the same from one figure to another. These contemporary forms are alterations of the human; they are designed to make statements. These statements, however, may be willed but may differ from the ‘effect’ anticipated or assigned. Viewers cannot be expected to interpret as instructed. The masquerade presents as it 199

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will; and it is read as the spectator reads it. Biographical information about development processes are intriguing­– ­creation stories with resumés, they inform but cannot reform. The viewer is most guided by what is seen. Not a Toy: Fashioning Radical Characters appeared in 2011. Narrower in scope and more theoretically focused, this collection of photographs addresses the adventure of contemporary fashion by naming masquerades as ‘characters on parade’.24 Zidianakis’s book of images embraces the word ‘masquerade’ as the best method of ‘branding’ new work in the fashion industry. Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox subtitle sections of their commentary with informative framing of what ‘invades the catwalk’. They comment on ‘Mascots as Models’ and ‘Masquerading as Avatars’, for instance. José Teunisssen considers ‘Fashion and Identity Research’, which resonates with avant-­garde practice in the previous century. Francesca Granata talks about ‘Recentering Fashion: Carnival Performance and the Grotesque Body’, and Valerie Steele analyses ‘The Exaggerated Body of Leigh Bowery’.25 The point of view of this book begins with fashion and branches out to performance art, the concept of wearable art and the acknowledgement that theatrically oriented photography can present itself as performative, humorous and progressive. Walter Van Beirendonck’s POWERMASK: The Power of Masks (2017) links contemporary photographic work on carnival masquerading with mask cultures of the past, masking in other cultures, modernist experiments, contemporary fashion and visual artists’ fascination with disguise. Reprinting many of the images created by the photographers noted above, Van Beirendonck, a designer himself, investigates the meanings of masks and masquerade for contemporary spectators and image makers. The collection includes short essays on African and Oceanic masking, as well as discussions on disguise and identity. Alexandra van Dongen, for instance, writes on ‘Wild Man: Perform the Other, Identify your Self’. This book complemented the exhibition POWERMASK, curated by Van Beirendonck with the assistance of Alexandra van Dongen, at the Wereldmuseum Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The museum display confronted, also, the concept of the ethnographic museum itself as statement of the Eurocentric point of view. Museum Interim Director Jan Willem Sieburgh explains that the exhibition attempted to re-­evaluate or reclaim ‘enchantment’ as a viable response to masks and masking in ethnographic and visual culture contexts.26 Scholarship on masking and social interplay is expanding. In the foreword to Efrat Tseëlon’s Masquerade and Identities (2001), Susan B. Kaiser notes that masquerade ‘challenges the hegemonic containment of others and unpicks the concept of authentic identities’.27 Such ‘interrogation of identities, partial identities, potential identities and non-­ identities’ is important to consider within the context of modernist performance and visual culture.28 In her Introduction, Tseëlon defines the terms utilised in her collection of essays, 200

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assembled following conferences on masquerade in Venice in the late 1990s. She states: ‘The mask is a partial covering; disguise is full covering; masquerade is deliberate covering.’29 Tseëlon argues, however, that such distinctions are ultimately ‘unhelpful’ to discussions on identities. She adds: ‘The mask hints; disguise erases from view; masquerade overstates. The mask is an accessory; disguise is a portrait; masquerade is a caricature.’30 Subsequently, in Fashion as Masquerade (2014), Tseëlon layers her definitions with Jean Baudrillard’s three orders of simulacra, resulting in these altered associations: mask (classical), disguise (modern), masquerade (postmodern).31 These added distinctions are most interesting when looking exclusively at masking in the context of fashion, but Tseëlon’s historical framing is useful. It is vital, however, to realise, as Van Beirendonck’s book illustrates, that contemporary analyses of disguise, masking and masquerade are continually evolving and even the words themselves are not fixed or stable. I employ the word ‘masquerade’ in the fullest sense, encompassing all masking and disguise within its reach. My interpretation supports Tseëlon’s placement of masquerade in the contemporary context, but does not link it specifically with a postmodern aesthetic. As noted earlier, masquerade, I believe, is the word that functions most effectively in interdisciplinary and intercultural milieux. While a simple act of statement in everyday circumstances, masquerading, when showcased, is materially and philosophically substantial. The masquerade as mise en scène of the individual body is a container with something to say. Capacious, hidden interiors take form in masquerades and communicate as images in public spaces. Performing the invisible is expansive; it offers a glimpse of the ‘withheld’ as image-­text and as temporary object. Actor-­training Atelier Explorations of mask performance remained central to the work of select theatre practitioners in the final decades of the twentieth century. For others, work with body masking was more a short-­term preoccupation, a passing stage as experiential workshop to supplement ‘real’, serious acting. When mask work is fundamental to actor training, the relationship between European theatre tradition and global performance training is strengthened; a commonality in acting methodologies and alternative physical engagements in performance bridges or links the separate cultures. Historically, pedagogical ties with Japanese training have been particularly strong, as demonstrated by French directors’ interest in Japanese acting techniques. Yoshi Oida’s collaborative training and his acting work in Peter Brook’s company at the Bouffes du Nord is an example; initiatives in France date back to Jacques Copeau, Charles Dullin, Jean Dasté and the international theatre exchanges put in place in Paris by Jean-­Louis Barrault. French performance practice in late Modernism incorporates masked acting 201

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to revive body awareness, deepen the actor’s sensibility and broaden performers’ gestural vocabulary. Jacques Lecoq extended such focus until the end of the century, awakening spontaneity and tuning-­in the actor to the immediate moment where the improvisational response resides. To fully live the onstage moment, the actor must achieve a state of readiness, Lecoq taught; this readiness, ‘la disponibilité’, is an open state of receptiveness and accessibility. Performance preparation which effectively utilises masking and disguising grounds the performer; it installs a centred calm which stabilises. Masked performance serves as an element of inner, experiential jolting and jarring which rouses the actor-­in-­training from reflection, whether recalling the past or inviting reverie on what is to come. With an emphasis upon the ‘now’, the modernist ‘new’ may surface and emerge when passivity is unsettled. Masking can shock and incite, as already noted in previous chapters. Disguise of the body or face can stir and galvanise impulse into structured gesture, as an external expression of internal movement. Covering and concealing can consolidate thought and contemplation and convert the invisible to gestural form. The lost and the buried, traces of Pierrot, may be re-­enlivened and reinvigorated­– ­not as vibrant energy only, but as communicative, material objectness muscled within the body. The will to masquerade is an impulse to reach out; like summoning, it is an appeal for social engagement. The return of masking and disguise­– ­fascinations from the early years of the century­ – ­was unanticipated in the 1950s. A strange recurrence for many, the mask invaded the stage uninvited, perceived by many as an unnecessary artefact of theatricality­– ­as throwback to an earlier time. In France, however, mask sympathy never died; it never entirely went out of fashion. Even in 1943, with Jean-­Paul Sartre’s The Flies, Charles Dullin, student and colleague of Jacques Copeau, premièred the play with some actors masked. In actor atelier sites around Paris, actor training with masks remained ongoing. Dullin had already incorporated masking in the production of a Jean Cocteau play, and he introduced masking concepts to actors such as Antonin Artaud and Jean-­Louis Barrault.32 Interest in bridging the gap between French and German culture resurfaced after Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel formed the Berliner Ensemble in 1949. Swiss multilingual theatre artists such as Benno Besson and Giorgio Strehler served as cultural diplomats, synthesising components of French, German and Italian performance traditions, including masking and its intimate relationship with the actor and the scenographer. Masking allied, in a sense, with aspects of Brecht’s theorising on the Verfremdungseffekt, the ‘making strange’ of actors and objects. As with the theatre proposed by Craig, Meyerhold and Reinhardt in the First World War era, interest in the Italian commedia dell’arte and popular performance re-­revived. The plays of Carlo Goldoni and Carlo Gozzi from the late eighteenth century attracted both French and German theatre 202

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practitioners. Besson, whose directing work linked Berlin, Geneva, Milan and Paris, is a vital figure as theatre-­maker who worked with both Brecht and Strehler, blending their innovations in his own mises en scène, such as for Gozzi’s The Green Bird in the 1970s, for instance. In a wider geography, interest in theatrical masking and disguise developed more slowly in post-­war American, British and Soviet cultures. In Milan, the collaborative work of Paolo Grassi, Giorgio Strehler, Dario Fo and Jacques Lecoq exemplified a persistent, modernist internationalism.33 In Padua, Lecoq’s partnership with Amleto Sartori advanced practical work with mask objects themselves, as did the brilliant display of masked acting in Strehler’s production of Goldoni’s Arlecchino, Servant of Two Masters, featuring Marcello Moretti’s Arlecchino. (Strehler also utilised masking devices in productions of the modernist playwrights Brecht and Pirandello.) Franca Rame’s subsequent input and practical applications of Italian performance tradition in partnership with Dario Fo added complexity to Italian theatre contributions to European theatre of the 1950s. Gestural acting techniques emerged as significant complements to speech; the Italian language and physical theatre revival, and multilingualism in general, assisted the establishment of collaborative interplay between French and German performance endeavours. Body masquerading was useful as a means to recover gestural expressivity. The scenario is quite basic: first, cover to discover; second, uncover and recover. While an oversimplification, the narrative sequence of mask-­training events follows a similar course. The modernist rediscovery of the body, an element of the historical avant-­garde, often masked the face, the head or the body in order to shift away from naturalist perceptions of the real, and to mechanise or puppetise the human form. In late Modernism’s process of recovery­– a­ rediscovery­– f­ull-­body training in awareness and skill techniques emerged in experimentation amid body rehabilitation and re-­education, including analyses of quotidian displacement and gestural expression itself. Jacques Lecoq’s work at his Paris conservatory in the twentieth century incorporated face and body masking within an actor-­training curriculum as an integral learning experience for stage performance. The following commentary is based upon professional interaction and training with Lecoq between 1977 and 1997, and particularly upon an unpublished interview which I recorded with Lecoq, as well as Fay Lees Lecoq, in 1996. The observations and clarifications on mask play and movement are my own. While many of my thoughts are prompted by interaction with Lecoq, the descriptive terminology utilised here is not necessarily that which he employed. I am writing from a personal perspective which has evolved and developed from both training and performance experiences. The commentary exhibits the intersection between Lecoq’s thinking and my own, phenomenologically recounted. I begin here with the full-­face mask object in play. Elements of Lecoq’s other work with different 203

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disguising objects and structures are not fully developed in this context: the personnage, the commedia dell’arte half-­mask, the clown and masquerading aspects of the bouffon. These additional statements in form could be similarly analysed, but I do include such discussions in this manuscript. Mask performance pedagogy in the practice of Jacques Lecoq asserts that the actor makes discoveries when thrust into an atelier-­workshop environment where non-­verbal communication predominates in the early stages of experimentation. This temporary indulgence within an alternative space, apart from speech-­governed activity, activates awareness; it stimulates better hearing of and attention to silence. The silence, then, motivates the actor to notice more and to observe with a greater capacity than that typically utilised in everyday life. The goal of acute awareness transitions, in the best of circumstances, to complete attentiveness: a state of actor readiness where the unexpected is relished and where improvisation is not feared. The actor moves from seeing, to noticing, to observing and finally to looking deeply. In actor-­ in-­ practice eventualities, the actor sees other actors. But this sighting of the other must be embodied. Seeing is not enough; to see deeply is more than making ‘eye contact’. Actually, eye contact is not made, it is experienced. It is quite easy to feign eye contact; it is common practice in daily activity­– a­ learned, optical disguising of social distancing. Actor looking can be nuanced and scaled into a delegation of ranges­– ­from glimpse to gaze to gape to gawk, perhaps. Pedagogically, the intent is to improve the quality of the actor’s seeing, to complicate and ultimately to ground it in the body-­core and not on the sappy surface of the eye. The truly-­present actor sees from a different range-­scale than the figure on the street; a fine actor, for either cinema or theatre, is a seeing-­capable machine­– p ­ art retractable camera lens and part binocular gazer. Looking­– ­with quality­– ­means, quite literally, to look deeply. Actor looking is not a fleeting thing, as in-­sight focus goes beyond a brief acknowledgement of the other. Focus, as an objective, does not exclude peripheral seeing. It prioritises viewing without installing virtual blinkers on the head, permitting mindful attention on the wider context, as well as featuring an eye-­to-­eye exchange. Spatial awareness and reading spaces are components of active looking. On the proscenium stage, for example, actor-­looking punctures the fourth wall whether communicated as such or not. The actor, at least discreetly, sees and acknowledges the presence of listener-­viewers. This wide-­angle lens provides greater awareness via vision which encompasses the whole while communicating as if focused only upon the immediate drama of the moment. The actor on the stage and in the atelier moves and circulates within a site designed for effective viewing. Seeing well includes partnering with a visceral acknowledgement of ‘being seen’ by the other. Masking and disguising assist the recognition of the ‘being seen’ and, also, the development of 204

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active-­looking skills. The actor anticipates the gaze of the spectator or the actor-­trainer, and assumes that this critical gaze is coming. The actor learns to accept the analytical gaze, a specialist gaze which instructs. To refuse the non-­ verbal dialogue of looking, from actor-­to-­actor and from instructor-­to-­actor, is to distrust and negate communicative exchange. The theatrical event is, by definition, about outgoing interchange and discourse. The subtle theatricality of non-­verbal dialogue rests in the pleasure of the high-­quality gaze which is embodied and lived. The gaze does not materialise in a fleeting moment, nor should its display be flaunted. Finesse and actor-­skill establish a performer’s ‘seeing’ and ‘being seen’ capacities, in whatever stage configuration. The ocular-­ savvy actor understands architecture and the dynamics of specific spaces. The actor’s encounter with mask performance provides an opportunity to view the surrounding world differently: natural environments, constructed environments and the inhabitants of these spaces. A keen actor-­trainer has the competence to unveil a student’s generalised viewing. The restricted view imposed by masking devices forces new ways of looking, dislodging old ways of seeing and sidestepping limited view, habitual observation that may be rooted in cultural tradition, regionalism or nationalist ways of seeing. Achieving an altered, more active seeing-­ability leads one to approach the difficulties of perceiving transnationally and across cultures; actor training with masks incites more panoramic viewing. Additionally, adjusted sight can instruct actor perception in a manner which may instigate an expanded and more nuanced spatial occupancy of the stage space. A goal, in this regard, could be to learn how to communicate expressions of the subtle and the intimate beyond close proximities: to project closeness when distant. The face-­to-­face encounter need not be nose-­to-­nose; haptic interaction, like actor eye contact, can be conveyed without actual hand-­to-­hand touch. The masked body imposes special rules of physical behaviour and other means of inhabiting spaces, which rest in the actor-­body when the masking is no longer employed. After the masking experience, the stage-­worthy actor cultivates an increased awareness of spatial relationships and develops the ability to adapt to varied performance settings without diminished presence or loss of effective interplay. The ‘neutral’ mask, a ‘noble’ mask or a mask of calm­– ­in the atelier­– ­is a facial disguise designed to de-­identify the face via a generalised face façade. The text of the individual countenance is erased and replaced by a form with features different from those of the wearer; it is not a mask form of the individual’s own face. A neutral mask is constructed of an alternate material in alternate dimensions; it is not a cast. When Lecoq was teaching he used a group of leather neutral masks which he co-­designed with Amleto Sartori in Padua; all were constructed by Sartori. The actor, engaged in looking while masked (le regard masqué), experiences a gaze through a new guise. The gaze 205

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can be experienced as privileged viewing in the sense that the actor sees without the self-­face being seen. This gaze from a hidden place allows discreet viewing which the actor may sense as the sight of a concealed identity, although in the familiar milieu of the atelier the identity has a name and a face. The actor is partially depersonalised, although the visible body remains identifiable. The actor is not dehumanised, as the mask actually humanises and accentuates individual characteristics: body-­ form and its movement idiosyncrasies. In training, the heightened humanity of the visible body with hidden face can achieve a state which is experienced as total presence in a dense, dynamised space; momentarily, the invisible, interior space of the actor becomes apparent and expands. Suddenly the body-­core, the skin-­mask of the extremities and the false-­face exhibit enhanced liveness. (This is an objective which is not immediately achieved.) The act of masking is an intensification of the actor’s work with the senses. Baiting the possibility of a sublime experience, masquerade stretches the limits of the body and mind while it tests the borders of the beautiful and the grotesque. It focuses attention upon seeing, hearing and touching and instructs the actor to activate the body instrument with greater concentration and efficiency. Masking restructures and renovates sensitivity itself. The neutral mask work, when successful, establishes a body-­memory of the self as an assertion in theatrical space. It is the self as vessel; it is the self as a container which holds within the potential of multiple identities. It­– ­the actor-­body­– ­contains other selves and withholds the surfacing of these alternate selves as a matter of choice. The masked persona, as outsider-­container, is unique, stable and complex; each masked individual activating a particular mask is depersonalised differently, but fixed uniquely in the space as an original manifestation of this specific ‘neutral’ mask. Individual masks are capable of a wide range of form-­transformations, which correspond to each unique actor who dons the mask and chooses to brush shoulders with its objectness. The Lecoq approach to actor training, perhaps without design or intent, can be distinguished as a pedagogy of disguising and unmasking; while it prepares the actor for a wide range of performance outcomes, it specifically prepares the individual actor very well for performance where masquerading of the body is a priority. Lecoq never spoke of his teaching and training in this way, however; nor did he ever employ the word ‘masquerade’ in reference to any of his varied engagements with masks in performance. The mask, for Jacques Lecoq, is a fixed-­form covering for the face, and in most instances it is either a full-­face or half-­mask object. The concept of fixed roles like those in the commedia dell’arte, nonetheless, still fits into Lecoq’s defining limits of what a mask as structured character-­form can be. Elaborate costumes and fabric or object masquerades are not masks from Lecoq’s perspective. They mask the body, but are not, in themselves, mask objects. 206

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As a post-­war modernist, an ‘essential’ identification with the natural world and its dynamic elements­– ­earth, fire, air and water­– ­was important to Lecoq’s preparation of Le Corps poétique. Likewise, a rhythmic and material understanding of plants, animals, materials, substances, objects and light served as a foundation for what Gaston Bachelard named the ‘material imagination’. For Lecoq, the actor needs to be guided and to develop as both a scenic writer and an actor-­playwright, although he did not use such terminology. The actor-­ playwright, as I theorised in a previous context, often writes rhythm, tempo and gesture, as well as words into a text. The physical, non-­verbal and visual writing is, in a sense, coded into the speech, suggesting a manner of play that would be suitable for enactment. The actor in a later time, who did not write the text, must excavate the words for the kinetic clues that an actor-­playwright such as Molière or Dario Fo may have implanted. In general, the pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq prepared an alternative actor: an actor-­playwright, as well as an actor-­interpreter. Lecoq perceived actor identifications with the material context in rhythmic and musical terms; he encouraged sensitivity and the incorporation of colours, weights and densities of natural and constructed things. Tout bouge, he insisted, and he meant quite seriously that ‘everything moves’ and everything moves in its own individual and its own material manner. This engagement proceeded from the precedent set by Jacques Copeau and the women and men who acted as partisans of his pedagogical endeavours. For Lecoq, such work was supplemented and enriched by an interest in architecture (as with Louis Jouvet) and by the concept of the body as form and humanised object. As an actor and director who theorised after an assortment of tangible experiences with masks and disguising, Lecoq approached the subjects of embodiment and incorporation with body-­memory and body-­knowledge that was substantial and conspicuous. He was aware that the profound gesture of lifting the veil of ordinary perception and revealing to the actor the underlying dynamics of people in spaces with things was like an unmasking of the nerves and muscles that hide below the surface of the human body. A new landscape of contractions, compressions and horizontal tensions can be exposed and revealed for, potentially, revelatory experience. The actor encounter with the mask is disruptive; it complicates the everyday and layers a foreign object on the body surface. The mask signals the arrival of a stranger who usurps the face and directs the seeing, firmly and abruptly. Jolted into the extremely present, the body is all ears, listening while suspended in a state of écoute or ultimate attentiveness. Awareness is oddly un-­ normalised; visual perception reshuffles as the ordinary fuses with the uncanny and the absurd. Time slows down and there is almost too much to process in the looking. Silence is amplified as the breath deepens and pushes against the volume once defined by the skin. While ultimately not an ecstatic experience, 207

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this transformation of the body mechanics implies a better-­than-­average state of ‘being’ that impresses and that does not rapidly subside. When the mask is removed from a ‘moved’ actor, there is a change. The ‘after-­mask’ experience, like a trace indentation on the face, resonates on the skin surface. Masking can make the skin feel ‘worn’, as if sensing a ‘something’ that still adheres to the face. The thing has been removed but something else has been added. Phenomenologically, the actor can imagine that the face-­flesh has shifted or even departed from its skull armature. Aftershocks and tremors of realisation accompany the levelling off and gradual acceptance that a temporary state of part-­object presence has passed. To remove the mask is to dis-­integrate. After the break, the new gaze is interrupted; peripheral vision returns and illusions dissipate. Removal of the mask prompts a departure which is experienced as a lurch back to a thinner, quotidian present; to un-­shoe the mask (to remove it) is to undo the vision. Lecoq often remarked on the ‘imprint’ on the face made by masking. This look of ‘after-­mask’, I suggest, is the result of skin still infused with sustained energy; this vibrant zing eases and transitions into flesh fatigued. Awestruck and dis-­regarded, the actor in the state of ‘after-­mask’ awaits the normalisation of breath and pulse.34 The memory of such an experience is a starting point; it is a transitory passage and a process of discovery. Departure, fully leaping like a metaphor to a different place, is not the definitive goal of disguising and performance making. Expanding levels of awareness, however, are beneficial because they challenge assumed limitations. Temporary otherness achieved, over time, demonstrates the pushing aside of the self-­editing process, allowing space for imaginative thinking and gestural invention. Grounding the actor in the atelier assures a stable foundation for character building; the mises en scène of other bodies­– ­new temporary identities­– r­equires solidity, calm, equilibrium and feet well placed. The state of readiness is only fully comprehended once the ‘after-­mask’ state has been embodied and incorporated. Stage and Arena Performance Stage performances with half-­ mask by playwright Dario Fo as storyteller exemplify a contemporary adaptation of commedia dell’arte principles. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997, Fo was a highly engaging, technically skilled improvisational actor, as demonstrated during Le Festival International de Commedia dell’Arte du Val de Marne at Le Théâtre Romain Rolland de Villejuif, with Histoire du tigre et gromelots (Paris, October 1983). Transformation to animal, monster, passion or concept was always within Fo’s grasp; he displayed, also, an ability to make word-­objects people the stage alongside his gestural images and masquerading. His objectness was packed with humanity, further exhibited in liquid material form by dripping sweat. Fo also celebrated gestural transformation and Italian comedy in his mises en 208

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scène of Molière at the Comédie Française (1991) with Le médecin malgré lui and Le médecin volant. Commedia masks were not employed in this double-­ bill production; however, my memory projects half-­masks upon the actor faces to match the physicality presented for the mask-­role typologies written by Molière. Fo sketched all the scenes of the plays prior to rehearsal, then worked with his actors to adapt, through improvisation, develop and arrive at the final mise en scène. In ‘Farcir la farce’, Jean-­Loup Rivière describes Fo’s research, drawing and collaboration with actors’ bodies as the making of a ‘tradition inventée’.35 Fo supplemented the words of the play text, wrote in the play of objects, semi-­composed the gestural and physical attitudes and imposed the tempo and rhythm. He metaphorically padded, by ‘stuffing’ (farcir) the actor bodies with the invisible stuffing of a masked actor’s silhouette: ‘To magnify and simultaneously give the essence of the character’.36 Masking the face, as one of the Tricks of the Trade in the English title of Fo’s book, was dismissed by many late modernist theatre directors as shallow, overtly theatrical overstatement. Disguise was frequently avoided because it was not perceived as multi-­layered; rather it signalled the outmoded and the retrograde. Faith in the naked face as truthful sign was widespread. Veiling or shielding facial expression, it seems, risked draining the interior aspects of the actor presence; direct access to the eye and facial skin was imperative for depth to be communicated. The alternative to fixed-­form face-­masks was to convert the face itself to almost opaque, semi-­fixed flesh on the skull surface. The skin-­face as mask is central to Jerzy Grotowski’s early actor training and his most celebrated mises en scène, exemplified by Apocalypsis cum figuris (1969). The appearance of Grotowski’s Towards a Poor Theatre in English (1968) and the virtually simultaneous publication of Peter Brook’s The Empty Space (1968) idealised the pared-­down body within an uncluttered, pared-­down space. The elimination of decoration or ornamentation in the architectural context harmonised with the simplified façade of the human face, worn as if a highly present, transparent object, an object not completely detached from the mystical or the spiritual. The Polish visual artist and theatre director Tadeusz Kantor, in an extension and modification of his compatriot Grotowski’s work, returned minimalist set pieces, incorporated found objects and constructed mannequins to people his stage, a site where the actor-­with-­object advances, retreats and then repeats. The life-­sized forms in Kantor’s Dead Classroom­ – ­actor double images­– a­ re dressed-­up, pliable Schaufensterpuppen, populating a concentrated playing space. The mixing of the living-­object actor with the dead-­appearing object as actor is a demonstration of Kantor’s conviction that in art one can only express life by depicting its absence. Elsewhere, on paper, Kantor assures us that he does not advocate totally replacing actors with wax figures or mannequins. He distances himself from both Kleist and Craig on this issue.37 Denis Bablet refers to Kantor’s 209

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treatment of the actor-­face as ‘masquage’,38 which is a slight variation on Philippe Invernel’s naming of the Brechtian actor in the Berliner Ensemble as incorporating ‘masquillage’.39 In English, the first is like a flesh-­mask, while the second is like an applicable, smearable and thick face-­paint; the second adds a bit of form or stiffness to the maquillage-­covered face. (As if Kantor’s masquage is an aged or hardened version of the Brechtian skin-­mask.) In his Dead Classroom, Kantor conducts the performance of the actors and the volume level of the Romantic music soundscape as if directing the play a second time, another doubling. Kantor haunts the narrow empty spaces of the classroom like Beethoven’s double, slicing the air with an invisible scythe to make space for more density. Herbert Blau wrote that Kantor inserts himself in his productions as a surrogate for the dead.40 In mainstream theatre on Broadway, the mask and body forms of the Swiss theatre company Mummenschantz were successful in the 1970s and 1980s, and the musical The Lion King displayed the inventiveness of Julie Taymor as designer and metteur en scène in 1997. Masquerade compositions include adaptations of face-­ masks and animated objects from African indigenous cultures. Ariane Mnouchkine, as noted in Chapter 6, perfected the masking of the actor in spectacles that borrowed from the commedia dell’arte and theatre traditions from Bali, India and Japan, often in collaboration with designer Erhard Stiefel. Mnouchkine also featured disguise in the cabaret context (Mephisto) and the clowning tradition (Les Clowns). The Swiss director Benno Besson, a frequent collaborator with mask designer Werner Strub, utilised innovative second-­skin masks for plays by Aristophanes, Brecht, Gozzi and Sophocles. Masquerade creations continued in modern dance as well. In France, contemporary French choreographer Maguy Marin, featured in the Paris Festival d’Automne in 2012, disguises her dancer-­actors with paints, mud-­like skin coverings, doll-­puppet figure-­form and full-­body masquerades. Choreographer Angelin Preljocaj has also experimented with face, head and body masks, including an updated version of Parade. Robert Wilson’s opera and theatre designs employ the disguising objects in motion as active scenography. In some circumstances the disguise is a body extension. Wilson’s work as actor, director, scenic writer and master-­creator of light-­as-­object complements that of Mnouchkine and Taymor, but opens the stage horizon differently. Interdisciplinarity, common to all three, shines with a different aspect in Wilson’s performance building. His stage is not heavily peopled. His choreography of actor-­dancer-­singer bodies, in which coloured light and beautiful things roll forward as in a film, is a tightly edited series of stage figure appearances and disappearances that breach the proscenium frame boundary. Wilson’s theatre is a painting in process; his palette of propelled and self-­ propelled objects includes anything that will fit backstage in the hidden corners of vast modern venues. Wilson’s recent work with the Berliner 210

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Ensemble company on The Threepenny Opera, the Brecht–Weill modernist music-­ theatre collaboration (1928), reforms the proscenium borders and removes spatial clichés, replacing interiors with streetways and a cityscape of Scandinavian design. (Wilson began his career as a designer of furniture.) Character-­ figures with distinct silhouettes stand, pivot and pass through avenues of light via ramped platforms of shifting colour; the spatial atmosphere accents the rhythm of the music, and sometimes the music appears to alter the spatial dynamic. Footlights anchor the stage and provide a visual citation of the 1920s, while most other historical references reside in the costumes and in selected body attitudes with meaning: the gestus. There is no decoration, as it has been eliminated and replaced by the actor form as scenery. Like models on a runway, the singing and speaking actors­– ­never de-­corps-­ated, always highlighted­– a­ re the story. They are painted as larger than life. The Opera fully disguises the play and masquerades as a showcase of figure and light. In Early Modern Theatricality, Henry S. Turner states: ‘[t]heatre parades its ideas around on stage before us by embedding them in substances, scattering them like seeds in speech’.41 These ‘substances’ implanted with thought are the personages created by the intersection of costume, disguise and the living actor, as ‘mise en scène of the body’. On the contemporary theatre stage, or in other performance arenas, masquerade events are documented, invented, preserved and reinvented by the framing provided by photography. In the visual context, the photograph parallels the frame of the proscenium stage where masquerade illusion is most fully manifested. Like the accumulation of photographic images noted as ‘Performance Showcase’ earlier in this chapter (representing carnival, ceremonial, fashion, festival, ritual and wearable art presentation), masks and masking in the theatre context are presently experiencing a resurgence. Evidence of the contemporary acceptance and revival of interest is provided by the very recent publication of Les enjeux du masque sur la scène contemporaine, issue 140 of the Brussels publication Alternatives théâtrales: revue des arts de la scène (March 2020), edited by Guy Freixe and Brigitte Prost. The presentation of fascinating pages of masking images partners well with those presented on Object Theatre in recent years. Also, a decade ago Guy Freixe published a fine book on masking in European theatre, Les Utopies du masque sur les scenes européenes du XXième siècle (2010), in which he discusses the work of Lecoq and Mnouchkine, as well as Claire Heggen and scores of other examples of masking in Modernism.42 Earlier still, Odette Aslan’s Le Corps en jeu (1993) and Eugenio Barba and Nicola Savarese’s The Secret Art of the Performer (1991) keenly documented masquerade with fine photographs of masquerade in dance, mime and theatre frameworks. In the most recent instance on the mask enjeux (issues or stakes with risks and rewards) in theatre today in Alternatives théâtrales, the ‘vitality of the mask’ in contemporary francophone work is emphasised.43 Performance 211

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mask usage in Belgium, Canada (Quebec), China, France, Holland, Germany, Romania, Spain and Switzerland is introduced, with reference to theatre masking in Brazil, Colombia, Greece, Italy, Senegal and particularly Japan. Contemporary directors such as Katrien van Beurden, Else Marquet-­Lieuhart and Claire Heggen, Satoshi Miyagi and Olivier Py are noted, alongside references to Andrei Şerban, Otomar Krejča and Ariane Mnouchkine. Dramatic literature produced or sourced for these recent creations includes many classical playwrights, as well as modern writers, such as Beckett, Büchner, Cixous, Dürrenmatt and Ionesco. An image of full-­body masquerade from 2016 showcases six tailed, fur-­ covered, snouted and upright moles, their hypertrophied paws expressively posed. The half-­dozen insectivores out of their burrow parade under the lights of a freeway tunnel. In a work titled La Nuit des taupes (The Night of the Moles), director-­creator Philippe Quesne proposes a contemporary version of the animal grotesque. The outdoor theatre events for the opening of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 1977 included animated, three-­dimensional representations of personages from Joan Miró paintings. Physical theatre actors performed as agile ‘giant marionettes’ created by the La Claca de Barcelone company. Circling in the street as oddly shaped, red-­accented clowns in motion, the insect-­animal hybrids moved as dancing masquerades.44 The circular or square plaza space is demanding because there are few sight obstructions; the performer must advance and recede in all directions, turn on the spot and activate long crosses to viewers on opposing sides. The masked wrestler in an arena is a popular, aggressive personality and tumbling superhero. These lord and lady figures of the ring sport an impressive repertoire of punches, falls, backward drops and forward rolls; their character names are no less impressive: La Llorona (The Crying Woman), El Samari, El Ultimo Dragon, Estrella Dorado, El Misterioso and Angel Azteca.45 As popular culture stars, Latin American wrestlers incorporate social activism as an extension of their battles; as prominent members of the community, some women battlers have achieved status as ‘feminist fighters’. In El Alto in Bolivia the Cholitas Luchadora Wrestlers ‘fight for show and wear traditional dress to reclaim their visibility’.46 The costumed women sometimes share the wrestling space with the luchadors masked men. As athletes and actors, some wrestlers expand their disguising beyond the arena and maintain their masking whenever they are in public places; some luchadors wear their masks in private settings as well. Family portraits often feature the masked wrestlers among extended family members who are not disguised. The facial identity of select, revered Mexican luchadors remains undisclosed. In these particular instances, the celebrity has an anonymous face but a famous façade. The body structure, too, is public information. Expressive disguise in Modernism presents people-­ and-­ thing encounters 212

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immediately, or eventually, displayed in public spaces. Intersections of the animate and the inanimate create boundaries of tension which cannot be disregarded; the points of transition from skin to other material disrupt the body’s calm and warrant attention. While not a feature of most representations of masking in paintings, the lines of demarcation are more stated, and worthy of study, in photographs. For the actor, as for the marionnettiste, awareness of  junctures of the humain–non-­humain tilts one’s balance; they affect and alter one’s physical and perceptual equilibrium. Didier Plassard, in Humain–Non humain, describes such moments and the resulting structured performances as ‘scenes of un-­tranquility’, underlining the fissure imposed by the encounter of material object and human flesh.47 His acknowledgement of the flux and the visual appeal of the imbalance imposed upon the actor-­body also recognises the theatricality of ruptured calm (itself a ‘passion’ in Jacques Lecoq’s analysis of ‘states of being’). The almost biological combat of forces experienced when the actor-­body meets ‘thing’ is palpable. A transition away from the totally human into the neighbouring domain of the partly object is a migration of sorts. In his discussion of puppetry, Plassard writes of ‘a figure of the threshold’ (une figure du seuil),48 which incorporates the Theatre of Objects. For the actor, approaching ‘thingness’ is the point of entry­– ­a beginning­– f­or adopting the mask object. The mask as form is the transitional, plastic thing which prepares the actor for imaginative departures from the quotidian real. Entry to the site of partial thingness passes through the portal where thought and gesture are structured in new ways (an Other Place). Plassard names this process chosification.49 Performance in the arena facilitates the immersion of a figure into what is experienced as an enclosure, a closed space. Installation artworks, often sculptures in motion, display effectively in such a configuration. Within a small circular space, all present become participants in an event with little formal division between performer and observer. A twenty-­ first-­ century example of such spatial intimacy was created for a gallery display at the Powerhouse Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney, Australia in 2004. In the Garden Palace Promenade, two biomorphic body masks were housed within a plant-­ covered, teepee-­ shaped gazebo, where they circulated in vegetal-­ decorated shoes, body-­suits and soft helmets. As living extensions of their place of habitation, the hanging-­moss-­covered actors were the sole residents of a moss-­and orchid-­decorated dome. The green woman and green man in masquerade (androgynous but gently gendered) rotated lyrically to a faint, distant accompaniment of soothing sounds. As botanical creatures from an ‘other’ world, the pair was voiceless, submersed in the prevailing silence of a contemplative environment.50 The Spanish moss or ‘grandpa’s beard’-­disguised actors in the installation were manifestations of a short-­lived presence. The prepared setting for their 213

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appearance invited spectators into an indoor space representing an outdoor setting. This constructed mini-­garden, within a symbolic larger garden, was far removed from the real; it was a peaceful site of strangeness and discomfort. Some passers-­by were ill at ease with the speechless anthropomorphic figures; some filled the hush with questions and commentary. The masqueraders became acute listeners whose gestural reactions proposed a dialogue between the verbal and the visual. Within this cone of quiet, the costumed auditors, skin hidden, gazed from within. Awareness of identities behind the plant illusions surfaced in the architectural construct of calm shared by spectator and player. The nostalgic dome of refuge stood as ‘a vertical garden and soundscape installation’,51 metaphorically linking with Sydney’s Botanic Gardens. Constructed at the end of a path of decorative plants and Victorian statues, the small-­scale palace referenced the International Exhibition of 1879–80.52 The plant figures as wearable art ‘gardenscape’ suggested a contemporary ambience in a nineteenth-­century construct.53 (See Figure 5.4, p. 147.) The Powerhouse performance placed the spectator in a territory of the unknown; the ‘being there’ prompted disorientation and bewilderment. However, an openness to something new surfaced as the spectator eventually arrived elsewhere. This affect, from Simon O’Sullivan’s point of view, is an example of art’s ability to ‘reconnect us with the world’.54 In ‘The Aesthetics of Affect: Thinking Art beyond Representation’, O’Sullivan explains his theory of affects: ‘Affects can be described as extra-­discursive and extra-­textual. Affects are moments of intensity, a reaction in/on the body at the level of matter.’55 While the writer had no knowledge of the masquerade performance described here, his perceptions are fitting. This is particularly true in his citations of Julia Kristeva on installation art and multi-­sensory experience at the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993. Kristeva states that through ‘the body in its entirety’ one can arrive at ‘a real experience’ where one is requested ‘not to contemplate images, but to communicate with beings’.56 This communication is not simply an intellectual exchange of concepts; it is also a visceral exchange of energies between bodies of difference. By extension, the spectator sensations may function as, from Jorella Andrews’s phenomenological perspective, a ‘lived experience of otherness’.57 O’Sullivan asserts, finally, that art can function as ‘a magical, an aesthetic function of transformation’.58 (A virtual transformation, it would seem.) It can even, he concludes, be ‘involved in exploring the possibilities of being­– o ­f becoming­– i­n the world’.59 Such thinking is particularly apt when theorising disguise and masquerade as a mise en scène of the body. When disguises are constructed as artistic expressions and finish as aesthetic objects built upon the body, they exhibit intensity in matter form which originates from an impulse within the creator-­displayer. The act of self-­recreating moves one to shift beyond the human familiar to ‘a kind of self-­overcoming’.60 O’Sullivan 214

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suggests that the viewer-­receiver (when contemplating the aesthetic object or examining art) can reposition the moment of reception ‘from a hermeneutic to a heuristic activity’,61 from analysis and interpretation into exploratory experience. The spectator as image explorer shares the pleasure of viewing a masked performer scarcely discernible in disguise. Georges Banu perceives the actor ‘derrière le personnage’ (or masked in a role) as one present in two separate places, living an ‘animated cohabition’,62 an in-­between-­ness. Bodies on the proscenium stage, for instance, are framed for contemplation by the spectator; whether masquerading or undisguised, the figure at play in contained space is an image writer for the audience. In reception, the mundane can be refigured as the magical. In 2018 choreographer Angelin Preljocaj reconstructed modernist Maurice Ravel’s Bolero in the Ballet Preljocaj’s Gravité. The progressive building of steps and stomps and accumulating instrumentation in the music took a pictorial turn as the wide-­spaced horizontal ensemble linked and bound as the centrifugal drum of a circling, sonorous machine. The band of figures in white concentrated as momentum fused gestural fragments into image-­object. With Bolero tossed to the wind, the emerging structure-­image built by the dancers, as if circularly descending within Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum, made visible this architectural, white spiral-­structure. Then suddenly, with a loss of suspension, the building collapsed in a downward glissando and final drumbeat. Silence followed, and the after-­mask effect embodied the stage. Ravel un-­ravelled, the mask over the familiar had been removed. With masqueraders unmasked, empty space replaced the Other Place. Notes  1. Sontag, On Photography, p. 76.   2. Chance and Penrose, Picasso at Play, p. 27.   3. Le Fur (ed.), Picasso primitif, p. 91.   4. Ibid., p. 87.  5. Clergue, Picasso, mon ami, pp. 5–6.   6. Chance and Penrose, Picasso at Play, p. 30.   7. See Bérénice Geoffroy-­Schneiter, ‘L’homme du commun’ and ‘L’Art brut’, in Jean Dubuffet: un barbare en Europe, pp. 3–11 and 28–31.  8. Goldberg, Performance Art, p. 151.  9. Brown, Haunted Air, n.p. 10. Private Best quoted in Biernoff, ‘The Rhetoric of Disfigurement in First World War Britain’, p. 671 11. Taxidou, Modernism and Performance, p. 16. 12. Moholy-­Nagy quoted by James Merle Thomas, ‘The Human Factor’, in Tsai (ed.), The Paintings of Moholy-­Nagy, p. 115. 13. See Van Beirendonck and Debo, POWERMASK. 14. Kalman and Kalman, (un)Fashion, n.p. 15. Katherine M. Smith, ‘Lansetkò: Memory, Mimicry, Masculinity’, in Gordon, Kanaval, p. 71. 16. Ibid.

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17. Galembo and Okeke-­Agulu, Maske, pp. 31, 53, 105, 119, 167. 18. George Otis, ‘Sección de Láminas’, in Galembo, Mexico, Masks & Rituals, pp. 30–44. 19. See Popenhagen, ‘A Masquerade Lexicon’. 20. Hannah, Mummers, pp. 46–7. 21. Klanten et al., Doppelganger, title page. 22. Ibid., p. 3. 23. Merriam-­Webster Thesaurus, (last accessed 12 June 2020). 24. Zidianakis (ed.), Not a Toy, pp. 8–9. 25. Ibid., pp. 8–31. 26. Jan Willem Sieburgh, ‘Preface’, in Van Beirendonck and Debo, POWERMASK, p. 11. 27. Susan B. Kaiser, ‘Foreword’, in Tseëlon (ed.), Masquerade and Identities, p. xv. 28. Ibid., p. xv. 29. Efrat Tseëlon, ‘Introduction’, in Tseëlon (ed.), Masquerade and Identities, p. 2. 30. Ibid. 31. Tseëlon, ‘Fashion and the Orders of Masking’, in Tseëlon et al. (eds), Fashion as Masquerade, p. 5. 32. See Freixe, Les Utopies du masque, and Smith, Masks in Modern Drama. 33. See Lecoq, Jacques Lecoq, p. 123. 34. In the essay ‘The Death of “The Puppet”?’, in Posner et al. (eds), The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance, p. 18, Margaret Williams discusses the onstage ‘after-­ life’ of a Pierrot marionette. The string puppet is animated and then disengaged to become a lifeless object that is carried away by its manipulacteur Philippe Genty, with lingering signs of life. 35. Jean-­ Loup Rivière, ‘Préambule, Farcir la farce’, in Molière and Dario Fo, Le médecin malgré lui, pp. 7–9. 36. Fo, The Tricks of the Trade, p. 35. 37. Tadeusz Kantor, ‘Umarła klasa [La classe morte, 1975]’, Alternatives théâtrales, 50, p. 46. 38. Denis Bablet, ‘Avant-­propos’, in Aslan and Bablet (eds), Le Masque, pp. 10–11. 39. Philippe Invernel, ‘De Brecht à Brecht’, in Aslan and Bablet (eds), Le Masque, p. 160. 40. Blau, The Audience, p. 70. 41. Turner, ‘Generalization’, in Turner (ed.), Early Modern Theatricality, p. 21. 42. Freixe, Les Utopies du masque, pp. 186–9. 43. Guy Freixe et al., ‘Vitalité du masque sur nos scènes actuelles: décloisonner les pratiques scéniques’, Alternatives théâtrales, 140, pp. 5–6. 44. Couty and Rey (eds), Le Théâtre en France, p. 118. 45. See Mack, Masks, p. 105, and Grobet, Luca Libre. 46. See Lufthansa Magazin, p. 14. 47. Didier Plassard, ‘Les scènes de l’intranquillité’, Puck, 20, p. 11. 48. Ibid., p. 16. 49. Ibid. 50. Ron Popenhagen, actor-­ director and Luda Popenhagen, actor, Garden Palace Promenade. 51. Powerhouse Museum, annual report, p. 9. 52. Ibid., p. 9. 53. Powerhouse Museum programme, p. 11. 54. Simon O’Sullivan, ‘The Aesthetics of Affect: Thinking Art Beyond Representation’, in Andrews and O’Sullivan, Objects and Affects, p. 16.

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55. Ibid., pp. 10–11. 56. Kristeva quoted in ibid., p. 19. 57. Janella Andrews, ‘Intending Objects and Signs “Which Have No Meaning”: Art, Intercorporeality, and Ethics’, in Andrews and O’Sullivan, Objects and Affects, p. 48. 58. O’Sullivan, ‘The Aesthetics of Affect: Thinking Art Beyond Representation’, in Andrews and O’Sullivan, Objects and Affects, p. 20. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid, pp. 20–1. 62. Banu, Amour et désamour du théâtre, p. 35.

217

EXHIBITIONS AND WEBSITES

Abstraction: Paths to Abstraction 1867–1917, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 26 June–19 September 2010. Aktion! Art and Revolution in Germany, 1918–1919, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 25 August 2015–10 January 2016. Arnold Schönberg: peindre l’âme, Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, Paris, 28 September 2016–29 January 2017. L’Art en guerre: France 1938–1947, Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris, 12 October 2012–17 February 2013. Attia, Kader, The Repair, La Réparation (2012), diptych of 80 colour slides, Musée Quai Branly, Paris, March 2017. Bauhaus: 100 Years of Bauhaus, (last accessed 29 April 2020). Calder and Abstraction from Avant-­Garde to Iconic, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 24 November 2013–27 July 2014. Calder–Picasso, Musée Picasso, Paris, 19 February–25 August 2019. Carnivals et fêtes d’hiver, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1 February–23 April 1984. Chagall: du noir et blanc à la couleur, Hôtel de Caumont-­Centre d’Art, Aix-­en-­ Provence, 1 November 2018–24 March 2019. Chagall: Fantasies for the Stage, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 31 July 2017–7 January 2018. Les collections modernes 1905–1965, une saison roumaine, Atelier Brancuşi, 218

exhibitions and websites

Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2019. The Color Line: les artistes africains-­américains et la segregation, Musée du Quai Bronly, Paris, 4 October 2016–15 January 2017. Critical Costume 2015, ‘New Costume Practices and Performances’, School of Arts, Design & Architecture, Helsinki, 25–27 March 2015. David Crooks, Tony Assness, Hugh Main and Ron Popenhagen, Garden Palace Promenade, installation, Sydney Powerhouse Museum, 25 September–10 October 2004. Le Cubisme: l’exposition, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 17 October 2018–25 February 2019. Cubisme I Guerra: el cristall dins la flama, Museu Picasso, Barcelona, 21 October 2016–29 February 2017. Dada Africa: sources et influence extra-­occidentales, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, 18 October 2017–19 February 2018. Dalí, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 21 November 2012–25 March 2013. Dora Maar, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 5 June–29 July 2019. Expressionism in Germany and France: From Van Gogh to Kandinsky, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 8 June–14 September 2014. Félix Fénéon (1861–1944): les arts lointains, Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac, Paris, 28 May–20 September 2019. Fernand Khnopff: le maître de l’énigme, Petit Palais, Paris, 11 December 2018–17 March 2019. Franz Marc & August Macke: l’aventure du Cavalier bleu, Musée de l’Orangerie/d’Orsay, Paris, 5 March–17 June 2019. Charles Fréger, Mardi Gras Indians, 2014, http://www.charlesfreger.com/fr/ portfolio/mardi-­gras-­indians/ (last accessed 11 June 2020). Charles Fréger, Cimarron, photographic series, 2014–18, https://www.charles​ freger.com/portfolio/cimarron-­part-­1/ (last accessed 11 June 2020). Golem: avatars d’une légende d’argile, Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, Paris, 8 March–16 July 2017. Jean Dubuffet, un barbare en Europe, Mucem, Marseille, 24 April–2 September 2019. Life Interrupted: Personal Diaries from WW I, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, 5 July–21 September, 2014. Looking Backward, Stepping Forward: 1917/1918, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 4 November 2017–1 April 2018. Magna Brava: Magnum’s Women Photographers, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, 5 November 1999–30 January 2000. Magritte: la trahison des images, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 21 September 2016–23 January 2017. 219

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Masques, Musée Dapper, Paris, 26 October 1995–30 September 1996. Matisse & Picasso: Celebrating Modern Art’s Most Famous Frenemies, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 13 December 2019–13 April 2020. ‘The Met Collection’, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, (last accessed 20 April 2020). Le modèle noir de Géricault à Matisse, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, 26 March–21 July 2019. Océanie, Musée du quai Branly, Paris, 12 March–7 July 2019. Orientalism: From Delacroix to Klee, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 6 December 1997–22 February 1998. The Paintings of Moholy-­Nagy: The Shape of Things to Come, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 5 July–27 September 2015. Paris–Berlin: 1900–1933, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 12 July–6 November 1978. Paris–Moscou: 1900–1930, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 31 May–5 November 1979. Paris–New York: 1908–1968, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1 June–19 September 1977. Paul Klee: l’ironie à l’œuvre, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 6 April 2016–1 August 2016. Persécutés/Persécuteurs, des Hommes du XX siècle, Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris, 8 March–15 November 2018. Picasso: The Last Decades, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 9 November 2002–16 February 2003. Picasso: Life with Dora Maar: Love and War 1935–1945, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 30 June–6 October 2006. Picasso et la guerre, Musée de l’Armé/Hôtel national des Invalides, Paris, 5 April–29 July 2019. Picasso–Giacometti, Musée national Picasso, Paris, 4 October 2016–5 February 2017. Picasso, obstinément méditerranéen, Musée Picasso, Paris, 4 June–6 October 2019. Picasso/Picabia: la peinture au défi, Musée Granet, Aix-­en-­Provence, 2018. Picasso primitif, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, 29 March–23 July 2017. Picasso & Rivera: Conversations Across Time, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 4 December 2016–7 May 2017. Picasso and the Vollard Suite, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 12 February–11 April 1999; National Gallery of Art, Canberra, 2018. Ron Popenhagen, Masquerade as Visual Culture, California State University Channel Islands, 2 May–30 September 2013. 220

exhibitions and websites

Prague 1900–1938: capitale secrète des avant-­gardes, Musée des Beaux-­Arts de Dijon, 15 June–13 October 1997. Samurai: Japanese Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-­ Mueller Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 19 October 2014–1 February 2015. Surrealism and After: The Gabrielle Keiller Collection, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 5 July–9 November 1997. ‘Le Talisman’ de Paul Sérusier: une prophétie de la couleur, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, 29 January–2 June 2019. Theatre of Dreams, Theatre of Play: Nō and Kyōgen in Japan, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 31 July–14 September 2014. Union des artistes modernes: une aventure moderne: l’exposition, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 30 May–27 August 2018. Van Gogh to Kandinsky, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 8 June–14 September 2014. Villers Picasso­– ­coup de soleil, Musée du Pavillion de Vendôme, Aix-­en-­ Provence, 15 June–30 September 2018. Voici Paris: modernités photographiques 1920–1950, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 17 October 2012–14 January 2013. William Kentridge, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2 September–28 November 2004. World War I: War of Images, Images of War, Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 18 November 2014–19 April 2015. World without End: Photography and the 20th Century, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2 December 2000–25 February 2001.

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239

INDEX

Abbott, Berenice, 130 Aboriginal Australian culture, 41, 47, 50, 132, 159 acting and actor, 11, 18–19, 20, 34, 37, 51, 61–2, 63, 64, 66–7, 68, 78, 98, 105, 108, 109, 110, 124, 126–7, 133–4, 167, 168, 179, 181, 204, 207 acteur-marionnette, 181 comédien-marionnettiste, 181 manipulacteur, 16–17, 181 Verfremdungseffekt, 202 Adomowicz, Eliza, 106 African art and culture, 4, 10, 17, 21, 41, 42–3, 44, 49–50, 54–5, 100, 107, 133, 162, 192, 196 Agier, Michel, 17 Akarova (Marguerite Acarin), 133–5 Akhmatova, Anna, 79 Alexandrian, Sarane, 133 Allan, Maud, 105 Althusser, Louis, 46 Andrew, Brook, 132 Andrews, Jarella, 65, 214 Antoine, André, 122 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 37, 42, 61, 72–3, 81, 89, 90–1, 93, 94, 139

240

Calligrammes, 94 Le Poète assassin, 90 Appia, Adolphe, 68–9, 82, 105 Arbus, Diane, 192 Armory Show, 84, 140 Arndt, Gertrud, 127–8 Arp, Jean, 80 Artaud, Antonin, 11, 25, 169, 172–5, 177, 179, 202 Le Théâtre et son double, 175 Arzumanova, Inna, 135 Asian art and culture, 43, 48, 69, 79, 98, 107, 153, 196 Aslan, Odette, 43, 211 Attia, Kader, 192–3 Bablet, Denis, 209–10 Bachelard, Gaston, 30, 172, 207 Psychoanalysis of Fire, 172 Baer, Nancy Van Norman, 101 Baker, Josephine, 105 Bakst, Léon, 57, 79 Balanchine, George, 176 Ball, Hugo, 80–1 Ballet Russes, 79, 91, 95, 97, 135, 175 Banu, Georges, 102, 174, 215 Barba, Eugenio and Nicola Savarese, 211

index

Barlach, Ernst, 83–4 Barnes, Djuna, 63 Barrault, Jean-Louis, 25, 107, 163, 167, 168, 173, 177, 201–2 Barris, Roann, 108 Barron, Stephanie, 170–1 Barth, Volker, 41 Barthes, Roland, 102, 162–3 Basquiat, Jean-Michel, 191 Baty, Gaston, 137 Baudelaire, Charles, 23 Baudrillard, Jean, 201 Baugniet, Marcel-Louis, 134 Bauhaus, 118–24, 126–8, 131, 135 Bausch, Pina, 135 Bayard, Hippolyte, 36 Bazon, Broch, 123 Becker, Annette, 90, 91 Beckett, Samuel, 25, 212 Beckett, Samuel Joshua, 54 Belekian, Krikor, 181–2 Bellmer, Hans, 171–2 Benjamin, Walter, 6, 72, 95, 164, 188 Benois, Alexandre, 79 Bergson, Henri, 96 Le Rire, 96 Bernhardt, Sarah, 8, 26, 28–9 Besson, Benno, 202–3, 210 Besson, Christine, 105 Bétard, Daphné, 138–9 van Beurden, Katrien, 212 Beuys, Joseph, 191–2 Beyer, Lis, 120 Biernoff, Suzannah, Bing, Ilse, 132 Bing, Suzanne, 106–7 Blau, Herbert, 210 Der Blaue Reiter, 83, 119 Blin, Roger, 25, 173, 174–5 Blok, Alexander, 56, 107 Blumenfeld, Erwin, 163–4 Böcklin, Arnold, 24 Börlin, Jean, 100, 107 Bouquet, Auguste, 18 Bourgois, Louise, 170 Boyer, Alain-Michel, 4 Brancuşi, Constantin, 46, 84, 166 Brandt, Marianne, 131 Braque, Georges, 40, 73, 76–7, 90, 92, 93 Brassaï (Gyula Halàsz), 166 Braun, Edward, 109

Brecht, Bertolt, 30, 112, 167, 171, 202, 211 Breton, André, 37, 63 Nadja, 63 Breuer, Marcel, 120 Brock, Brazon, 123 Brook, Peter, 60, 111, 201, 209 Brown, Ossian, 192 Brus, Günther, 192 Büchner, Georg, 212 Burlyuk, David, 80 Butler, Christopher, 7 Cadava, Eduardo, 6, 36 Cahun, Claude, 128–30 Calder, Alexander, 181, 189 Campendonk, Heinrich, 77–8 Canetti, Elias, 34, 177 Čapek, Karel, 171 Caribbean art and culture, 10, 16, 17 Carjat, Étienne, 23 Carné, Marcel, 25, 177 carnival (carnaval), 51, 52, 109, 179, 187, 195, 196 carnivalesque, 11, 16, 192, 198 Carrington, Leonora, 169–70 Cartel des Quatre, 173 Caruso, Enrico, 29–30 Casorti, Guiseppe, 53 Cazaux, Chantal, 15 Cendrars, Blaise, 61, 83, 90, 93–4, 100 Anthologie nègre, 100 J’ai tué (I Killed), 83 Le Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France, 93–4 Cercle Funambulesque, 28–9 Cézanne, Paul, 51 Chagall, Bella, 176 Chagall, Ida, 176 Chagall, Marc, 9, 93, 103, 175–6 Chance, Ian, 190–1 Chanel, Coco, 92, 169 Chaplin, Charlie (Charlot), 8, 111, 177, 179 Chekhov, Anton, 32 Chéret, Jules, 29 Chiarelli, Cosimo, 167 de Chirico, Giorgio, 137–8, 178 Čiurlionis, Mikalojus Konstantinas, 78 Cixous, Hélène, 212 Claudel, Paul, 67, 134 Clerge, Lucien, 190

241

modernist disguise

Cocteau, Jean, 68, 76–7, 91, 95, 96, 99–100, 122, 190, 202 Cole, Herbert M., 4 Collette, (Sidonie-Gabrielle), 122 Colomb, Denise, 174 commedia dell’arte, 3, 9, 22, 30, 75–6, 77–8, 95–6, 98, 105, 107, 108, 116, 127, 163, 202–3, 206, 208–9 Arlecchino (Arlequin, Harlequin), 75–7, 95–6, 111, 203 Brighella, 112 Capitano, 95–6, 98 Columbine (Columbina), 8, 53, 57, 95–6, 107, 111, 112 Gli innamorati, Zanni I and Zanni II, 112 Harlequin (Arlecchino, Arlequin), 8, 51, 53, 57, 72–5, 76–8, 90, 94, 99, 107, 116–17, 140 Petrushka, 57 Pulcinella (Polichinelle), 30–1, 57, 95–9, 109–10, 111, 116 See also Pierrot and marionettes Compagnie des Quinze, 107 Comtesse de Castiglione, 31–2, 191 Conrad, Peter, 15, 18, 68 Consemüller, Erich, 120, 123–4, 135 Constructivism, 108, 134 Copeau, Jacques, 25, 34, 68–9, 104–5, 106–7, 167, 173, 177–9, 201–2, 207 Corinth, Lovis, 38 Courbet, Gustave, 23–4 Coutin, Cécile, 88 Cox, Geoff, 192 Craig, Edward Gordon, 11, 34, 53, 56, 64–70, 96, 104–5, 106, 167, 178, 202, 209 On the Art of the Stage, 64 The Mask, 64, 68 Über Marions Berlin, 65 Cravan, Arthur, 89–90 Crémière, Léon, 21 Crommelynck, Fernand, 108 Cubism, 44, 51, 73, 76, 80, 91–2, 100, 115, 134, 172 Curtis, Edward Sheriff, 48–9 Dada, 79, 80–1, 83, 106 Daguerre, Louis, 18 Dahlerup, Vilhelm, 53 Dalí, Salvador, 121 dance choreography and performance

242

Aleko, 175–6 Chout, 134 Daphnis and Chloe, 176 Die Wunderblumen, 82–3 Le Bœuf sur la toit, 99–100 Le Carnival, 56–7 Gesture Dance III, 135 Gravité, 215 Hexentanz (Witch Dance), 82 La Création du monde, 100 Masked Dance, 134 Parade, 16, 81, 91–3, 95–7, 99, 100, 210 Pulcinella, 97 Sang an die Sonne, 82 Serpentine Dance, 54, 57 The Firebird, 134, 176 The Green Table, 135 Totentanz, 14 Triadic Ballet (Triadische Ballett or Ballet triadique), 121, 124–5, 126–7 Dasté, Jean, 105, 107, 179, 201 Dasté, Marie-Hélène, 105, 106–7, 179 De Marinis, Marco, 178–80 De Simone, Alessandro, 96 death masks, 10–11, 34–9 Giacomo, Leopardi, 39 Kean, Edmund, 37 L’inconnue de la Seine, 35–38 Sander, Erich, 39 Stalin, Joseph, 38 Wols, 172 Deburau, Deburau effect, 24 Jean-Charles, 19, 22, 28, 163 Jean-Gaspard (Baptiste, Deburau père), 18, 24–5, 51, 177 Debussy, Claude, 15, 32, 69, 122, 134 Claire de lune, 15 Suite bergamasque, 32 Decroux, Étienne, 107, 167, 177–180 Delauney, Robert, 134 Delauney, Sonia Turk, 16, 93–4, 133, 134 Depero, Fortunato, 92, 96–7 Dérain, André, 40, 42, 77, 90 Derouet, Christian, 91 Desmond, Olga, 105 Diaghilev, Serge, 79, 95 Dicker, Friedl, 119 Diderot, Denis, 67

index

Diguet, Léon, 48 disguise, 1, 5, 9, 12, 17, 34, 38, 39, 41, 49, 65, 68, 70, 72, 76, 80, 88–9, 101, 103–4, 105, 111, 119–20, 128, 131, 132, 133, 136–7, 140, 163, 164, 170, 181, 182–3, 190–1, 193, 195–201, 202–3, 214 camouflage, 11, 70–1, 73 costume, 91, 122 disfigurement, 72 être-objet, 121 phobias, 194 photographs, 192 spectacles ethnologiques, 69 street, 193 trompe-l’œil, 73 Dix, Otto, 72 van Dongen, Alexandra, 200 Dorcy, Jean, 167, 179 Dovgan, Borys Stepanovych, 113 drama, opera and performance Apocalypsis cum figuris, 209 Arlecchino, Servant of Two Masters, 203 Autour du tango, 55 Baal, 30, 112 Das Trio-Komische, 135 Expectation (Erwartung), 171 Faust, 95 Garden Palace Promenade, 213 I quattro Pulcinelli, 98 Jedermann (Everyman), 118 L’enveloppe, 179–80 L’Histoire du soldat (A Soldier’s Tale), 94–5, 134 L’Illusion, 106 L’Illusion comique, 107 La Méditation, 178 La Nuit des taupes (The Night of the Moles), 212 La Statue, 188 Le médecin malgré lui and Le médecin volant, 209 Les Arbres (The Trees), 178 Les Clowns, 210 Masquerade, 109–10 Mephisto, 210 Murderer the Woman’s Hope, 8 Oh What A Lovely War, 181 Pagliacci, 29–30 Pierrot assassin, 28 Pierrot assassin de sa femme, 28

R. U. R., 8, 171 Salomé, 94, 110 The Blue Bird, 50 The Cenci, 175 The Dead Classroom, 209 The Fairground Booth (Balagan), 56, 107 The Flies, 202 The Green Bird, 203 The Lion King, 210 The Lower Depths, 189 The Magic Flute, 176 The Magnanimous Cuckold, 108 The Old Woman, 3 The Seagull, 27 The Sorcerer, 103–4 The Threepenny Opera, 210–11 Tout bouge, 207 Turandot, 110 Ubu Roi, 60 Waiting for Godot, 25 When We Dead Awaken, 27 Why?, 111 Driant, Pénélope, 122–3 Druet, Eugène, 79 Dubuffet, Jean, 191 Duchamp, Marcel, 21, 89 Duchamp-Villon, Raymond, 72 Dufy, Raoul, 100 Duggan, Ginger Gregg and Judith Hoos Fox, 200 Dullin, Charles, 25, 105, 107, 167, 173, 179, 201–2 Duncan, Isadora, 54, 67, 69, 82, 105, 135, 163 Dürrenmatt, Friedrich, 212 Duse, Eleonora, 66–7 Eliade, Mircea, 63, 82 Ensor, James, 30, 39, 51–3, 68 Ernst, Max, 62, 162–3, 170, 171 Eruli, Brunella, 181 Evreinov, Nikolai, 167 Exhibitions Aktion! Art and Revolution in Germany, 1918–1919, 117 Âmes sauvages: le symbolism dans les pays baltes, 78 Calder-Picasso, 189 Chagall: Fantasies for the Stage, 176 Cubism and War: The Crystal in the Flame, 172

243

modernist disguise

Exhibitions (cont.) Exhibitions: l’invention du sauvage, 41–2 Exiles and Emigrés: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler, 170–1 In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the USA, 169 Masks Shock, 38 Peindre l’âme (To Paint the Soul), 74 Persécutés/Persécuteurs, 39 Picasso et la guerre, 73, 164 Picasso Himself, 190 Picasso obstinément méditerranéen, 98 Picasso primitif, 40, 42, 172 Picasso und das Theater, 99 Pierrot: Melancholie und Maske, 77 Samurai: Japanese Armor, 193 Theatre of Dreams, Theatre of Play, 102 Un barbare en Europe, 191 Voyages Imaginaire: Picasso et les Ballets russes, 113n Expressionism, 80, 171, 194 Exter, Alexandra, 110, 119 Eynat-Confino, Irène, 66–7 faces, 32, 35, 36, 66, 83, 102, 110, 173, 177–9, 209 draped, 136 face as mask, 172, 209 face-object, 162 Garbo, 162 icon-object, 20 painting, 15, 19, 52, 80, 102 Falassi, Alessandro, 3 Falgayrettes-Leveau, Christine, 11, 196 de Falla, Manuel, 134 Farina, Maurice (Jules-Maurice Chevalier), 122–3, 133, 163 Fau, Guillaume, 175 Fauchereau, Serge, 79, 80–1 Fauchery, Antoine, 47 Fauconnet, Guy Pierre, 100 Feininger, Lyonel, 118–19 Feininger, T. Lux, 122–3 Féral, Josette, 64 Feuchtwanger, Lion, 171 films Aélita, 119 Great Dictator, 163

244

Le P’tit Parigot, 134 Les Enfants du Paradis, 25, 163, 177 Man with a Movie Camera, 131 Shoulder Arms (Le rêve de Charlot soldat), 88–9 The Testament of Orpheus, 190 fin-de-siècle modernism, 10, 18, 23–4, 26–7, 30–2, 34, 40, 51, 53, 64–5 Finch, Maggie, 31, 131–2 Fo, Dario, 75, 203, 207, 208–9 Tricks of the Trade, 209 Fokine, Michel, 56–7 Foster, Hal, 37, 121 Foujita, Léonard, 115 Fratellinis (Le Trio Fratellini), 92, 100, 169, 179–80 Freeman, Judi, 100 Fréger, Charles, 197, 199 Freixe, Guy, 107, 211 Freud, Sigmund, 37, 72 Das Unheimliche (the uncanny), 37 l’inquiétante étrangeté (disquieting strangeness), 37 Freund, Gisèle, 39 Fuller, Loïe, 8, 16, 50, 54–5, 57, 69, 105, 179 Futurism, 79–80, 116, 134 Galembo, Phyllis, 196, 199 Gallo, Luigi, 92, 98–9 Garafola, Lynn, 100 Gargallo, Pablo, 72 Gauthard, Natalie, 11 gaze, 2, 6, 7, 8, 17, 23, 24, 37, 44, 55, 99, 106, 121, 128, 131–2, 133, 169, 173, 174, 204–6 Geffroy,Yannick, 7, 15–16 Geissler, Heike, 3 Gémier, Firmin, 61 Genet, Jean, 25 Gershwin, George, 134 de Ghelderode, Michel, 134 Giacometti, Alberto, 45, 83, 176–7 Gide, André, 39 Gilbert & George, 192 Gilles, Annie, 181 Girard, André, 163 Giraud, Albert, 30 Pierrot lunaire: Rondels bergamasques, 30 Giraudoux, Jean, 134

index

Glasier, Frederick, 54 Gleizes, Albert, 92, 134 Gluckstein, Dana, 195–6 Goldoni, Carlo, 202–3 Goll, Yvan, 80, 81 Le Surdrame, 81 Golovin, Alexander, 109–10 Goncharova, Natalia, 79 Gordon, Leah, 195 Gozzi, Carlo, 110, 202–3 Graham, Martha, 105 Granata, Francesca, 200 Granovsky, Aleksei, 99, 103–4 Grassi, Paolo, 203 Grayzel, Susan R., 71–2 Grigoriev, Boris, 110 Gris, Juan, 77, 93, 116 Gromaire, Marcel, 60 Gropius, Ise, 120 Gropius, Walter, 118, 120 Gross, Otto, 82 Grotowski, Jerzy, 209 Gsell, Émil, 48, 57 Guibert, Maurice, 30–1 Guillaume, Louis, 51 Guillaume, Paul, 42 de Guingand, Gilbert, 70 Günther, Carl, 41 Guyon, Éliane, 168, 178 Haga, Hideo, 199 Hamnett, Nina, 93 Hannant, Sara, 198 Haselstein, Ulla, 45 Hasenclever, Walter, 171 Hastings, Beatrice, 93 Hausmann, Raoul, 164 Haussmann, Georges-Eugène, 28 Heartfield, John, 164 Heggen, Claire, 211–12 Henneman, Nicholaas, 41 Hennings, Emmy, 80, 83 Hesse, Hermann, 82 Hindemith, Paul, 121 Höch, Hannah, 106, 164 Hodler, Ferdinand, 27–8 Hoedt, Axel, 197–8, 199 von Hofmannsthal, Hugo, 117–18 Honneger, Arthur, 134 Horna, Kati, 170 Huelsenbeck, Richard, 80, 81 Hughes, Robert, 68

Ibsen, Henrik, 27, 32 Ilinsky, Igor, 108 International Expositions Exposition Universelle (1855), Paris, 20 Great Exhibition (1851), London, 40 International Exhibition of 1879–80, Sydney, 213 International Exhibition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, Paris, 133 Ionesco, Eugène, 80, 212 Itten, Johannes, 118–19 Jacob, Max, 93 Janco, Marcel, 80, 81, 83 Janet, Janine, 190 Japonese art, culture and performance, 199, 201 Bunraku, 101–2 Japonisme, 53, 68 Kabuki, 57, 69, 107 koken, 101–2 Kyōgen, 102 Nō theatre, 67, 101–2, 107, 127 Sada Yakka, 69 samurai, 175, 193 Shite, 102 Jaques-Dalcroze, Émile, 69, 82, 105, 133–4 Jarry, Alfred, 11, 34, 60–3, 66, 93, 165 Johnson, Jack, 90 Jooss, Kurt, 135 Jouvet, Louis, 107, 173, 207 Jung, Carl, 82, 83 Kafka, Franz, 171 Kahlo, Frida, 169 Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henry, 91 Kaiser, Georg, 171 Kaiser, Susan B., 200 Kalman, Tibor and Maira, 199 Kaminsky, Walter, 135 Kandinsky, Wassily, 73, 74, 119 Kantor, Tadeusz, 209–10 Karinska, Barbara, 176 Karlstadt, Liesl, 95, 111–12, 123 Kayssler, Friedrich, 56 Keim, Albert, 163 Kellein, Thomas, 52 Kentridge, William, 9 Kertész, André, 115, 131–2

245

modernist disguise

Kharms, Daniil, 3 Khnopff, Fernand, 78, 105–6 Khnopff, Marguerite, 105–6 Khokhlova, Olga, 95 Kiki de Montparnasse, 133 Kikoïne, Michel, 93 Kisling, Moïse, 93 Klanten, Robert, 199 Klee, Lily, 83 Klee, Paul, 83, 93, 96, 119 von Kleist, Heinrich, 62, 96, 209 Klimt, Gustav, 64, 78 Kokoschka, Oskar, 8 Kolb, Annette, 83 Kollwitz, Käthe, 7, 31, 83 Korngold, Erich-Wolfgang, 175 Krejča, Otomar, 212 Kress and van Leeuwen, 5 Kreutzberg, Harald, 135 Kristeva, Julia, 214 Krull, Germaine, 132 Laban, Rudolf, 82–3, 105 Lam, Wifredo, 191 Larionov, Mikhail, 79 Lasker-Schüler, Else, 83 Laurel and Hardy, 112 Le Bœuf, Patrick, 66, 70 Le Gris, Françoise, 172 Le Somptier, René, 134 Leabhart, Thomas, 179 Leach, Robert, 79–80 Léal, Brigitte, 40, 72 Lecoq, Fay Lees, 203 Lecoq, Jacques, 11, 22, 107, 126, 167, 179, 180, 181–2, 202–8, 213 Le Corps poétique, 207 Le Théâtre du geste, 182 Léger, Fernand, 83, 92, 93, 100, 102, 103–4 Légert-Manochaya, Katia, 69 Legrand, Paul, 22, 25–6, 28 Lejart, Valérie, 45 Lemaître, Jules, 29 Lenin, Vladimir, 83 Leoncavallo, Ruggero, 29–30 Lermontov, Mikhail, 109 Levitt, Helen, 192 Lhote, André, 134 Limousin, Isabelle, 73 Lipchitz, Jacques, 72, 93 Lippi, Lorenzo, 105

246

Lista, Giovanni, 134 Littlewood, Joan, 180 Loy, Mina, 89–90 Lugné-Poe, Aurélien, 61 Maar, Dora (Henriette Theodora Markovitch), 62, 139, 165 McBurney, Simon, 9 Macke, August, 73–4, 96 Mackintosh, Margaret Macdonald, 50 McQuillen, Colleen, 10, 107–8, 167 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 50 Magritte, René, 135–7 Mahler-Werfel, Alma, 175 Malevich, Kazimir, 60, 110 Mallé, Marie-Pascale, 11 Mallermé, Stéphane, 123 Mallet, Félicia, 26, 28 Manet, Édouard, 7 Manghani, Sunil, 5 Marais, Jean, 190 Marc, Franz, 73, 91 Marceau, Marcel, 75, 107, 168–9, 170 Marcks, Gerhard, 119 de Maré, Rolf, 99–101 Margueritte, Paul and Victor, 28–9 Marin, Maguy, 210 marionettes and puppets, 61, 63, 67, 92, 97, 98, 213 automaton, 96–7 balagan (Russia), 107 Figurentheater, 56–7 glove puppet (marionnette à gaine), 70, 97 marionettist-accordionist, 56 mechanical figures, 119 pantin, 63, 67 Petrushka, 57, 111 pupi gesture (Italy), 96 Puppentheater (Figurentheater, Objecttheater), 56–7 sur-marionnette (super-marionette), 61–2, 66, 67 Übermarionette, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69–70, 167 Marquet-Lieuhart, Else, 212 Martel, Jan and Joël, 133 Masereel, Frans, 83 masks and masking, 9–10, 15, 16, 22, 25, 27, 37, 42–4, 46–7, 50, 61, 66, 68, 81, 88, 105, 109, 116, 120, 129–30, 190–1, 193

index

African, 42–3, 133, 156, 192, 196 after-mask, 77, 196, 208 articulated mask (China), 152 balaclava (cagoule), 41, 193 bauta, 16, 109 commedia dell’arte, 77–8, 108 dance masks, 148, 154 full-face mask, 43, 160 gag mask, 130 gas masks, 71–2, 164 half-masks and loups, 16, 77, 78, 98–9, 117, 128, 129, 135, 155, 157, 163, 208 hands and mask, 7, 28, 31, 81, 83, 132 Heimat, 130 Janco mask, 81 Native Americas, 151, 158, 162, 190, 196, 212 Ned Kelly mask, 191 neutral (noble, calm), 205–6 skull-as-mask, 163–4 speech-masks, 109 masquerade and masqueraders, 6–10, 11–12, 15–16, 17, 22, 38, 39–40, 47, 48–50, 54–5, 57, 89, 91–3, 102, 145, 159, 176, 179, 180, 186–7, 196, 197, 210 African, 4, 54–5, 146, 161, 196 balls (bals masqués), 16, 93, 107–8, 109, 125 botanical, 72, 82, 89, 147, 198–9, 198–9, 213–14 camouflage, 71, 149 event-object, 35 fashion, 193, 196, 199–200, 201 luchadors, 212 mascarade, 10, 17, 182 wearable art, 133 zoomorphic figures, 75–6, 109 Massanet, Jules, 29 Massine, Léonide, 92, 95, 97–8, 99, 175–6 Matisse, Henri, 42, 76–7, 93 Meatyard, Ralph, 192 Meiselas, Susan, 195 Metzinger, Jean, 92, 93 Meyerhold, Vsevolod, 34, 56–7, 69, 103–5, 107–9, 202 Michel, Louise, 31 Middle Eastern art and culture, 47, 49 Milhaud, Darius, 99–101, 134, 175 Miller, Lee, 162, 190–1

Miró, Joan, 212 Mirzoeff, Nicholas, 44 mise en scène, 34, 103. 108, 122, 208–10 body, 7, 9, 15–16, 20, 39–40, 47, 66, 193, 201, 208, 211, 214 Gesamtkunstwerken, 103 museums, 50, 214 photography, 39, 129, 133 Mitchell, W. J. T., 5 Miyagi, Satoshi, 212 Mnouchkine, Ariane, 9, 54, 101–2, 107, 179, 182–3, 210, 212 Modigliani, Amedeo, 93 Moholy-Nagy, Lázló, 119, 127, 131, 135, 194–5 Moilliet, Louis, 96 Moissi, Alexander, 118 Molière, 207, 209 Monks, Aoife, 36, 183 Monte Verità, 81–3 Moore, Marcel, 130 Moretti, Marcello, 203 Morgenstern, Christian, 56 Mulyutin, Yakov, 109 Munch, Edvard, 27 museums and exhibition sites Ballet Preljocaj, Grand Théâtre de Provence, Aix-en-Provence, 215 Bibliothèque national de France, Paris, 20, 67 British Museum, London, 40 Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 12, 81, 84, 181, 212 Galerie Schmela, Düsseldorf, 192 Gorki Leninskiya State Historical Museum-Estate, 38 Haus der Kunst, Munich, 77 Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), 117, 169, 176, 193 Magdeburg Cathedral, Magdeburg, 84 Musée Dapper, Paris 17 Musée d’art et d’histoire du Jadaïsme, Paris, 74 Musée d’Ethnologie du Trocadéro, Paris, 40 Musée d’Orsay, Paris, 78, 89 Musée de l’Armée, Paris, 73 Musée de l’Homme, Paris, 17, 40 Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, 40, 77 Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (Mucem), Marseille, 191

247

modernist disguise

museums and exhibition sites (cont.) Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac, Paris, 17, 40, 41, 42, 50, 93, 192 Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence, 139 Musée International du Carnaval et du Masque, Binche, 50 Musée Picasso-Paris, 42, 98, 189 Museo Picasso, Barcelona, 172 Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York, 40, 76–7, 84, 136 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 135 National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 139 National Museum of Art, Kaunas, 78 National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, 35 Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, 40 Powerhouse Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney, 213–14 Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Moscow, 51 Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, 195 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 214 State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, 74 Ulster Museum, Belfast, 195 Valentin-Museum, Munich, 112 Villa Vassilieff, Paris, 93 Nachtwey, James, 195 Nadar Félix, 20, 21, 23 Les Nadars, 26, 47, 167 Marthe, 20 Paul, 22, 29; see also Tournachon, Adrien Nagy, Joseph Falaky, 35 de Najac, Raoul, 28–9 Nancy, Jean-Luc, 36, 38, 174 Native American art and culture, 10, 21, 41, 47, 48, 49, 144, 151, 158, 162, 190, 195, 196 Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vladimir, 110 Neshat, Shirin, 192 Nijinsky, Vaslav, 79 Nolan, Sydney, 191 Nolde, Émil, 40

248

objects, 5, 7, 46, 65, 108–9, 121, 124, 164, 167 bandoneon, 55–6 camera, 132, 167, 169, 190–1 chosification, 213 effigy, 61, 124–6 head-skull (tête-crâne), 77 mannequins, 137–8, 178–9 Objekttheater, 56 people as objects, 42 phrenological heads, 34–5 poem-object, 133 portable architecture, 181–2 Schaufensterpuppen (mannequins), 209 structures portables, 182 skull, 27, 38, 72, 78, 91, 139–40, 172 théâtre d’objet (Theatre of Objects), 126, 213 things, 63, 64, 104, 213 vital heads, 35 Oceanic culture, 40, 74, 106, 200 Oida, Yoshi, 201 Orange, Tommy, 162 Orientalism, 68, 79 O’Sullivan, Simon, 214–15 Other Place, 2, 3, 6, 7, 12, 163, 215 Outerbridge, Paul, 130–1, 136 Pacquet, Claire, 94 paintings, drawings, lithographs, and prints Actor Placing a Mask Before his Face, 65 Allegorie de la simulation (La Femme au masque), 105 Arlequin et femme au collier, 77 Arlequin et Pierrot, 77 At the Lapin Agile, 76 Balli plastici, 92 Barcelone, 139 Berthe Morisot à l’évantail, 7 Black Square, 110 Blue Head (Tête bleu), 173 Blue Self Portrait, 74 Bohémien jouant l’accordéon, 116 Child with Doves, 166 Clown, caricatured self-portrait, 73 Crying Woman, 139, 165 Der Krieg (The War), 72 Deux Pulichinelles (Two Pulchinellas), 116

index

Die Nacht (The Night), 117 Funeral Symphony, 78 Guernica, 139, 164–6 Harlekin, 78 Head of a Woman, 139 Krieg, 84 L’Arlequin assis, 116 La Surmarionnette, 67 L’Atelier de la Californie, 189 Le Bal Bullier (Tango au Bal Bullier), 93 Le Désespéré, 23 Le désespoir de Pierrot, 52–3 Le Mime Farina, 163 Le Petit Bar du camp, 172 Le Repas de Pierrot (en Pierrot gourmande), 18 Les Amants (Lovers Kissing), 14, 135–6 and Les Amants II, 135–6 Les Amants III and Les Amants IV (Lovers III and Lovers IV), 135–6 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 44 Les Trois Musiciens aux masques, 116 L’Histoire central, 137 L’Invention de la vie, 137 Mardi Gras, 51 Mask Still Life II and III, 40 Maske Furcht (Masque peur), (Mask of Fear), 92–3 Masked Actor Holding Three Masks, 65 Masque, 172 Masquerade, 52 Meccanica di ballerina, 92 Melancholy, 27 Minotaur with Dead Mare in Front of a Cave, 140 Miss Ellen Terry as Ophelia, 70 Mon Atelier, 189 Mona Lisa (La Joconde), 36 Mort et les masques, 53 Nachdenkende Frau (Woman in Thought), 83 Nude Descending a Staircase, 21 Peinture (Painting), 172 Pierrot, 140 Pierrot aux masques, 52 Pierrot pendu, 140 Pierrot with Mask, 77–8 Pierrot (with Snake), 78 Pierrot with Sunflower, 77–8

Portrait de V. Meyerhold, 110 Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 44 Portrait of Meyerhold, 110 Pyramid of Skulls, 51 Ruhende Pferden (Horses in Repose), 73 Sadayakko, 69 Seated Harlequin, 76 Seated Pierrot, 77 Secret Reflection, 106 Self Portrait (Tichenor), 169 Self Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle, 24 Self-Portrait with Skeleton, 38–9 Skeletons Fighting Over a Pickled Herring, 52 Skull of a Sheep, 166 Skulls (Crânes), 172 Sotileza (Subtlety), 139 Squelette arrètant masques, 51 Tête de mort, 172 Tête noire, 45 The Artist Traveling Icognito (La Artista Viaja de Icognito), 170 The Disappointed Souls, 28 The Mysterious Garden, 50 The Painter’s Family, 137–8 The Statue of Liberty, 171 The Widow II, 83 Tired of Life, 28 Tragoedie, 64 Trois Clowns, 140 Two Masks, 138 Un masque sonne le glas funèbre, 27 Woman House (Femmes-Maisons), 170 Palucca, Gret, 135 Papet, Édouard, 19, 28, 37, 57 Pappenheim, Marie, 171 Paris, France Basilique du Sacré Cœur, 60 Boulevard du Crime, 18, 25, 28 Boulevard du Montparnasse, 115 Boulevard du Temple, 18, 20 Butte Montmartre, 60, 76 Centre Georges Pompidou, 12, 181 Cimetière du Père Lachaise, 15 La Ruche, 93 La Tour Eiffel, 12, 94 Place de Château d’Eau, 28 Place de la République, 18, 28 Paxton, Joseph, 41

249

modernist disguise

Paz, Octavio, 6 Pearson, Pierre-Louise, 32 Penrose, Roland, 139–40 Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista, 97–8 Pernet, Henry, 63 Perrier, Florent, 164 Pettolletti, Philippo, 53 photographs and photomontage, 2 Army recruits in camouflage, 195 Autoportrait à l’Icarette, 132 Autoportrait au Leica 132 Autoportrait en costume d’Esquimau, 21, 47 Autoportrait en douze poses, 21 Autoportrait en explorateur, 22, 47 Autoportrait en noyé, 36 Autoportraits en acteur, 22 Black and White, 133 Cavalier arabe, 47 Charles Deburau en costume de ville, 22 Cut with a Kitchen Knife, 106 Dancer and Dancers, 196 Danse siamoise image, 107 Ensor aux masques, 53 Étude publicitaire pour Paul Poiret, 132 German World War I Soldier, Posing with Wax Model of Original Wound, 72 Haschebaad, 49 Haschezhini, 49 Homme de la tribu Wurundjéri, 47 I Split your Gaze, 132 Isadora Duncan at the Portal of the Parthenon, 67 King Ubu, 165 Les Chefs des Touregs, 21 L’Inconnue de la Seine, 36 Maskenporträts, 128 Maurice Farina en Pierrot, 163 Moving Sculpture, 5 Nailing the Floor, 162 Nailing the Floor in a Mask, 162 Picasso and Stove, 166 Picasso avec un masque de taureau intialement destine à l’entraînement des toreros, 190 Pierrot écoutant, 163 Pierrot photographe, 19, 20 Portrait au boa, 31 Rebellious Silence, 192

250

Rioters in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 195 Self-Portrait, 131 Self-Portrait as a Woman, 131 Self-Portrait at the Beach, 131 Self-Portrait in Dada Pose, 131 Self-Portrait with Friends, 131–2 The Feminist, 131 The Repairs, 192 The Secret, 106 Tobadzischini, 49 Traditional Indian rebel mask, 195 Transformation/Cauchemar, 135 Vaslav Nijinsky, dans ‘La danse siamoise’ des Orientales, 79 Waiting in the Forest, 49 ‘Woman in Mask’, 117 Picabia, Francis, 89, 138–9 Picasso, Pablo, 9, 11, 16, 40, 42–3, 44, 69, 72–3, 76–7, 90, 91–2, 93, 95–7, 98, 116, 122, 135, 138–9, 164–5, 166, 172, 187, 189 Picon-Vallin, Béatrice, 182 Pierrot, 3, 5, 10, 15, 18–19, 22, 25–30, 51–4, 70, 73–4, 75, 76–78, 107, 110–113, 116–17, 122–3, 138–40, 162–4, 167, 168, 192, 202 Artaud-Pierrot, 177 Barrault-Pierrot, 177 Belgian Gilles, 52 Bernhardt Pierrot, 28–9 Corsican Pierrot, 28 Danish, 53–4 hanging Pierrot (pendu), 30, 140 Marceau Pierrot, 75 Marseilles, 26, 28 Russian, 56–7, 107–8 Vertinsky Pierrot, 112–13 women as Pierrot, 28, 68; see also Deburau Pinckney, Darrel, 3 Pitoëff, Georges and Ludmilla, 173 Plassard, Didier, 125–6, 213 Popova, Lyubov, 108–9 Poulenc, Francis, 134 Preljocaj, Angelin, 210, 215 Prévert, Jacques, 177 Price, James, 53 Primitivism, 40–5, 192–3, 200 Prokofiev, Sergei, 134 Prost, Brigitte, 211 Protozanov, Yacov, 119

index

Pushkin, Aleksandr, 175–6 Py, Olivier, 212 Quesne, Philippe, 212 Quinn, Edward, 190 Rachamimov, Alon, 89 Rahon, Alice, 170 Raich Muñoz, Llorenç, 6 Rame, Franca, 203 Ravel, Maurice, 134, 176, 215 Bolero, 215 Ray, Man, 5, 130, 133, 173 Redon, Odilon, 27 Reich, Zinaida, 108, 111 Reinelt, Janelle, 64 Reinhardt, Max, 34, 56, 103–5, 117–18, 202 Renaud, Madeleine, 25 Richepin, Jean, 28–9 Richter, Hans, 80, 83 Rimbaud, Arthur, 4 Rivera, Diego, 169 Rivière, Jean-Loup, 209 Rodin, Auguste, 69, 168 Rojas, Fernando de, 107 Rolland, Roman, 83 Roller, Alfred, 118 Romano, Carmine, 95–6 Rosenburg, Paul, 101 Rouffe, Louis, 26, 28 Rumez, C. F., 94 Sabartés, Jaime, 190 Saint-Denis, Michel, 106–7 St Denis, Ruth, 105 Sand, George, 21 Sander, August, 39 Sandqvist, Tom, 81 Sartori, Amleto, 203, 205 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 23, 202 Satie, Erik, 91, 134 scenographers and scenography, 16, 54, 57, 71, 79, 80–1, 92, 99–100, 108, 112, 119–20, 175, 176, 182 Akarova, 134 Chagall, 103, 175–6 Fuller, 54, 57 Léger, 100–4 Schlemmer, 122, 124–5 Wilson, 210–11 Schalk, Franz, 118

Schall and Rauch, Berlin, 56 Schawinsky, Xanti, 131 Schlemmer, Oskar, 118–120, 121–3, 126–7, 135 Schneeman, Carolee, 192 Schönberg, Arnold, 74, 81, 171, 175 Schreyer, Lothar, 121 Schumacher, Claude, 61, 174 Schumann, Peter, 196 Schumann, Robert, 56–7, 95 sculptures Der Schwebende (Suspended Angel), 84 Endless Column, 84 Gate of the Kiss, 84 How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, 191–2 Le Manager américain 92 Le Manager en habit noir, 92 Light Prop for an Electric Stage, 194–5 Man Pointing, 176–7 Masques, 111 Table of Silence, 84 Tall Figure, 176–7 The Avenger, 83 The Secret, 106 Segal, Arthur, 80, 83 Segel, Harold, 61 Şerban, Andrei, 212 Serres, Michel, 175 Sérusier, Paul, 61 Séverin, 26, 28 Severini, Gino, 115–16 Shaw, Martin, 56 Sherman, Cindy, 128 Sieburgh, Jan Willem, 200 Siedhoff, Werner, 135 Słodki, Marcel, 83 Smith, Katherine M., 195 Sontag, Susan, 188 Soutine, Chaïm, 93 Stanislavsky, Constantin, 34, 69, 103, 105, 110 States, Bert O., 62, 111, 188 Steele, Valerie, 200 Steichen, Edward, 67 Stein, Gertrude, 42, 44–5, 66, 73, 76–7, 90, 93, 162–3 A Completed Portrait of Picasso, 90 Everybody’s Autobiography, 138–9 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 45, 73 Stiefel, Erhard, 210

251

modernist disguise

Storr, Robert, 5 Straub, Karl, 131 Strauss, Richard, 118 Stravinsky, Igor, 94, 95, 97–9, 134, 176 Strehler, Giorgio, 202–3 Strub, Werner, 210 Strumpf, Kurt, 194 Štyrský, Jindřich, 171 Surrealism, 81, 91, 121, 137–8, 162, 165, 169–70, 171, 190 Swedish Ballet, 99–100 Symbolism, 54, 61, 137 Tairov, Alexander, 103, 110 Tan, Fiona, 192 Taüber, Sophie, 16, 82, 83 Taxidou, Olga, 61, 63, 66, 68, 69, 194 Taymor, Julie, 210 Terry, Ellen, 64, 66–67 Teunissen, José, 200 theatres and performance sites American Ballet Theatre, New York, 175 Bauhaus School (Theatre Atelier), Dessau, 118 Berliner Ensemble, Berlin, 202, 210–11 Cabaret Voltaire, Zürich, 80, 82, 83, 100 Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, 180 Cirque de Paris, Paris, 180 Cirque Médrano, Paris, 100, 180–1 Comédie Française, Paris, 209 Conservatoire Darius Milhaud (Auditorium Campra), Aix-enProvence, 56 Crystal Palace, London, 41 École International de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq (Grande Salle), Paris, 182 Festspielhaus Hellerau, Dresden, 69, 82 Foire Saint-Laurent, Paris, 18 Grosses Schauspielhaus (Zirkus Schumann), Berlin, 118 Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, 176 Jardin d’Acclimatation, Bois de Boulogne, Paris, 69 Kabarett Schall und Rauch, Berlin, 56 Laboratoire pour l’Étude du Mouvement (LEM), Paris, 126 Metropolitan Opera House, New York, 176 Opéra-Comique, Paris, 22

252

Pantomimeteatret, Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen, 53 Royal Opera Ballet, Stockholm, 107 Salzburg Cathedral, Salzburg Festspiele, Salzburg, 118 State Yiddish Chamber Theatre (GOSET), Moscow, 99, 103 Teatro dei Piccoli, Naples, 96 Teatro dei Piccoli, Rome, 96 Théâtre de l’Œuvre, Paris, 61 Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, Paris, 60, 111, 201 Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris, 100 Théâtre des Funambules, Paris, 18 Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, 91 Théâtre du Soleil (La Cartoucherie), Paris, 183 Théâtre du Vieux Colombier, Paris, 107 Théâtre Libre, Paris, 28–9 Théâtre Romain Rolland de Villejuif, Paris, 208 Theatre Workshop, London, 181 Vilna Troupe, Vilnius, 103 Tichenor, Bridget Bate, 169 Toklas, Alice B., 93 Toller, Ernst, 171 de Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri, 30–1, 54 Tournachon, Adrien, 19–20, 23, 25, 163; see also, Nadar jeune Tretiakov, Sergei, 109 Tseëlon, Efrat, 10, 134–5, 200–1 Turner, Henry S., 111, 211 Tzara, Tristan, 80, 81, 122 Ubu (King, Roi), 60–2, 70, 165 Umbo (Otto Umbehr), 131 Union des Artistes Modernes (UAM), 133 Vakhtangov, Yevgeny, 103, 110 Valentin, Karl, 95, 111–12, 123 Vallaton, Félix, 31 Van Beirendonck, Walter, 195, 200–1 Van Rees, Otto and Atya, 82 Varo, Remedios, 170 Vassilieff, Marie, 93, 112 Vellena, Victor, 55–6 Verlaine, Paul, 5, 27 Claire de lune, 27 Pierrot, 27, 38

index

Vertinsky, Alexander, 112–13 Vertov (David Kaufman), 131 Vilar, Jean, 25 Villiers, André, 190 visual culture, 2, 14–15, 31, 64 grammaire visuel, 32 image-text, 20 pictorial turn, 5 Vitez, Antoine, 2 de Vlaminck, Maurice, 42 Volkersen, Niels Henrik, 53–4 war and revolution Cold War, 75 Crimean War, 194 First World War, 28, 70–4, 79, 88–9, 103, 117, 120, 181, 192–3 German Occupation of Paris, 25, 163, 166, 177 Paris Commune, 17–18, 31–2 Russian Revolution, 79, 103 Second World War, 140, 163, 171–2, 177 Spanish Civil War, 164–5

Weber, Carl, 82 Weigel, Helene, 167, 171, 202 Weill, Étienne Bertrand, 167, 170, 178 Weill, Kurt, 175, 211 Welby-Everard, Miranda, 129–30 von Werefkin, Marianne, 82, 83 Weston, Richard, 9 Wigman, Mary, 14, 82–3, 105, 133–4 Wilde, Oscar, 69, 89, 110 Wilson, Robert, 3, 210 Wols (Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze), 171–2 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 215 Yakko, Sada, 69 Yeats, William Butler, 34, 69 Yuriev, Yuri, 109 Zadkine, Ossip, 93, 111 Zdanevich, Ilya, 80 Zickel, Martin, 56 Zidianakis, Vassilis, 200 Zweig, Stefan, 83

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