Darius Milhaud's "4 faces"

Smith's article reminded me of French composer Darius Milhaud's viola piece "the four faces." Milhaud was quite a bit earlier than Barthe and Sartre, so it might be stretch to impose the humanism ideas on him. This piece was supposedly written for a friend, each movement captures/portrays the face of a different woman from California, Paris, Wisconsin, and Brussel.

I am not sure where the eyes and the nose are in each movement, though I imagined Milhaud is perhaps portraying in a way that lines up with the Schopenhauerian concept of music representing the will and not the form, etc, etc. But I wonder if it is precisely because faces are thought of as representing some sort of underlying truth or character that allowed a composer to musically portray a face?

Some thoughts on Condo and how his work relates

When we were at the museum last week, I thought "Introvert" and the sequence containing Uncle Sam, the Screaming Priest, and "Client No.9" were particularly striking.

At that time, I thought "Introvert" was captivating mainly because I couldn't tell for sure what was going on. It's not quite abstract enough to just think "oh this is abstract art" but it was not definitive what was in the painting. And I couldn't stop thinking about the room that contained Uncle Sam, Client no.9, and the Screaming priest, because each painting had such cartoon-like characters in brightly colored fantasy lands that it seems like a screen shot from a Saturday morning cartoon show, but the subjects of the painting were disturbing enough to be R-rated. The blurb on the wall said that Condo is known for creating simultaneous multi-layers of contradicting emotions, and indeed paradoxes abound in many of the paintings we saw, but I thought for some reason the contrasts between happy bubbles (literally) and sinister scenarios in the Uncle Sam series was particularly jarring.

After we left the museum, as I looked up more of Condo's works and rethinking the ones in the museum, it occurred to me that the paintings that were particularly intriguing to me are the ones where the paintings sits on a mid-point between social critique through parody and irreverent dark humor. Paintings in the Melancholy series such as Jesus, the Secretary, and the Sitting Women were so effective in capturing the melancholy that I thought the paradoxically comical caricature faces was over-powered and thus did not create enough tension.

My two thoughts are that

1. I did not realize when I was at the museum, but the faces in each painting plays a really important role in maintaining this paradox that I found so compelling. For example, in Uncle Sam and Client No.9, my first response was that I was intrigued by the juxtaposition between the smiley-face bubbles and the bright colors with what the characters are doing. But later I realized that what the characters are doing is a little odd, but my immediate perception of sinister came large from their facial expressions. If these paintings had characters with smiley faces, the irony would be of a different sort. Similarly, I thought the melancholy paintings portrayed a particularly lugubrious atmosphere, but afterwards I realized that there wasn't really very much about what the characters were doing that was melancholic. Instead, their faces were all kind of bland, to the point where the cartoony caricature of their faces only seem like a mockery at their blandness/melancholy.

I thought a lot of what we've read in this class has to do with how we read faces and what faces is supposed to represent and what messages a face is supposed to send by making an expression, and it was interesting how much I couldn't help myself but to do exactly the reading into the faces that all these authors have been debating about. It also surprised me how easy it was to see past the exaggerated facial features, and the degree to which I responded to these faces without ever consciously thinking that I am going to read the facial expressions.

2. The other thought was that these faces are kind of becoming the face of Condo's artworks as they thread together the exhibition. I found that quite interesting-- as he obliterates a face he creates a face in another sense.

Kanye West and George Condo

So, on the latest Kanye West album, George Condo did the art work for it.
Apparently, the first cover was banned in several stores and they didn't use it in the final run, yet it was included with the album art work. This was the first cover:

source
This is the cover he ended up using, also created by George Condo:

source

Graffiti artist: Fafi

I have been trying to post graffiti artists that paint faces every week, and this graffiti artist Fafi, does paint faces but she also paints bodies as well, a lot. The photos here focus more on the face. I think most of the graffiti artists faces really correspond well to Condo's work that we saw in the New Museum. Most of these faces are portraits of imaginary people - and often they have interesting characteristics. What I think connects more with Condo, in Fafi's work, is that she usually, if not all of the time, paints these characters with acrylic paint and a paint brush - which is something that will separate her from other graffiti writers. She also deals with this specific archetypes at times!  Enjoy.

in Toulouse, France. Source

in Barcelona, Spain Source

Face as landscape

Second Life/ First Life

Watch this for what second life is.

And here are some juxtapositions of real life images and avatars. But I think my biggest question is-- is representation the same as mediation? Is the disorientation of wearing an avatar an issue of representation, of mediation, both, or something else?

....And here is an image of second life conference-- a face-to-face initiated, at first, by terminal-to-terminal.

Jaber profile

The only stuff I have seen on Jaber's were theses profile streaks - but after some research he also does some filled in characters as well. Enjoy!

(source)

 

(source)

Philadelphia Face!

I was in Philadelphia this past weekend and my boyfriend and I came across this gem:

So, you are thinking, 'ok, it is a face. i got it'. But, really - it is Lionel Richie's face and all of the pieces of paper you can rip off the bottom are the lyrics to "hello" by him. The lyrics speak a lot about the communication that goes on in between faces, "i can see it in your eyes..", "i can see it in your smile..". I am left to wonder, what are you seeing Mr. Richie?

Aural Face?

The readings this week seems to converge to a theme that faces represents not only the "coherent whole" but serves also as an interface through which power is negotiated. Calvino's piece in particular spoke to a dialogic relation between the way he sees IL Duce and his understand of the rise and fall of Mussolini's power.

I found The Kings Speech providing an interesting parallel in the auditory realm-- well, King George VI did, but it's more fun to watch an oscar-winning movie. The film also captures people's facial expressions upon hearing a stuttering Prince Albert-- a mixture of shame and embarrassment-- that portrays aptly how Albert's voice has made him, and by extension the England that he represented, lose face. Also the scene where King George V tells Albert that he could have been a much better king than his brother David, but simply can't be taken anywhere with his stutter.

Hitler in animated cartoon form.

How has the Hitler image been visually represented in different animated cartoons?

Hitler on The Simpsons "Revenge is a Dish Best Served Three Times" episode in 2007

Hitler and Eva attempt to commit suicide Season 4, Episode 8 on The Family Guy

Cartman as Hitler on South Park from the Passion of the Jew episode, Season 8, episode 4


Then, I also found Donald Duck as Hitler from a film titled "Der Fuehrer's Face" from 1943.

Radical Lying!

The opposite of Radical Honesty! Let Rita Bullshisky take you through a small introduction video to Radical Lying!

Portrait of the Politician as an Old Dog

Schmolders referring to Hitler as the "Holy Dogface" reminded me of

some great caricatures of today's politicians depicted as dogs,

that I came across recently.

I couldn't find them on the internet though, so instead I posted

some other pictures of politicians that -I hope- you will find funny:

Barrack Obama giving Gordon Brown a helping hand,

Vladimir Putin as the Russian Bear, Silvio Berlusconi following his instincts,

and a brief lesson on how to draw the face of Nicholas Sarkozy in four steps.