the well masked person: avoiding nature’s product

Face to face. Not satisfied with nature’s product? Unsympathetic to your reflection in the mirror? Looking for more than artistry or resemblance? How about a mask? A holy picture of your inner self, to better align that precise, albeit mistaken idea of what you look like. Put your best mask forward…

—Man Ray
“Juliet with Mask ‘Minuit a Montsouris'”
1948
Read More:http://mondo-blogo.blogspot.ca/2012/05/man-rays-masks.html

An unassuming man might settle for an idealized likeness of himself, a sublimation of ordinary features. A truly fastidious person might want to own an entire collection of masks, each suitable for a particular occasion, expressing optimism, indifference, sustained surprise, displeasure etc.,without jeopardizing their basic looks. A person who has been mistaken more than once for a celebrity whom he faintly resembles might unblushingly choose the illustrious face. No doubt, most people would want to look younger; a few perhaps older. But rare is the person who has never longed to encounter a different face in the mirror.

—Excerpt from Nadja
André Breton
1928
“Who am I? If this once I were to rely on a proverb, then perhaps everything would amount to knowing whom I ‘haunt.’ I must admit that this last word is misleading,tending to establish between certain beings and myself relations that are stranger, more inescapable, more disturbing than I intended. Such a word means much more than it says, makes me, still alive, play a ghostly part, evidently referring to what I must have ceased to be in order to be who I am. Hardly distorted in this sense, the word suggests that what I regard as the objective, more or less de liberate manifestations of my existence are merely the premises, within the limits of this existence, of an activity whose true extent is quite unknown to me. My image of the “ghost,” including everything conventional about its appearance as well as its blind submission to certain contingencies of time and place, is particularly significant for me as the finite representation of a torment that may be eternal. Perhaps my life is nothing but an image of this kind…Read More:http://web.ncf.ca/ek867/2011_02_16-28_archives.html

A mask permits anyone to put their best face forward. No baggy eyes, no wrinkles, no five o’clock shadow, all features permanently composed. Neurologists may want to prescribe therapeutic masks to help patients ease their real or imagined sufferings. At a board meeting a well-masked man will not hesitate to speak his mind freely, and the steady gaze of his fellow masks will fill him with pride and confidence.

Moreover, since few people in the public eye are graced with a handsome, beautiful or even cute and winsome face, a mask can alleviate the discomfort of having to look at them. It has been ascertained that much of the poor impression politicians make, results from their visual image. Henceforth, popularity votes and personal ratings will be based on a person’s compelling effigy; by wearing a mask, they will no longer have to show the world their true face. Sculptors, those least useful members of human society, will receive commissions that may decide a nation’s fate, and news will be made by the ten best-masked men and women, whether they wear clothes or not. …

—Sorcerer’s masks of Yunnan and Guizhou are masks worn by a group of people at a god welcoming or fortune praying ceremony as well as masks for soul southing at funerals. These masks are developed from the totem worshipping and sorcerer’ sacrificial rituals of ethnic minorities in Yunnan and Guizhou of China. Ethnic minorities currently using such masks include the Jinuo, Jingpo, Buyi, Wa, Bai, Dai and the Zhuang of Yunnan Province.—Read More:http://traditions.cultural-china.com/en/16T34T137.html

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