Face
The human face as likeness, mask and map of feeling, from ancient heads to close-up photography.
29 works · 10 related artists
About
The face carries identity and emotion, and artists have studied it as likeness, mask and landscape of feeling. The copper-alloy heads cast at Ife, in present-day Nigeria, between the 12th and 15th centuries are serene and closely observed, while Roman Republican busts record every wrinkle as a sign of experience. In 17th-century France Charles Le Brun codified the passions as a set of facial diagrams for painters, and in the 1770s and 1780s Franz Xaver Messerschmidt carved his grimacing Character Heads.
Modern artists magnified and distorted. Chuck Close's Big Self-Portrait (1967–68) renders pores and stubble on a canvas nearly three metres high, and Francis Bacon's heads smear and twist as if caught in motion. Marwan painted faces as vast, ridged terrains, Bruce Gilden photographs strangers at close range with harsh flash, and ORLAN has used cosmetic surgery as performance, reshaping her features after details from art history.
Related artists
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