Death Masks Research Articles

Too Close to Nature: On the Representational Problems of Death Masks and Life Casts

Abstract While historians of art have found death masks and life casts conceptually problematic, it is also noteworthy that these objects have received scant attention from philosophers of art. In this paper, I begin to redress this omission by offering examples of how the philosophy of art can help us understand these images. Two problems stand out: the problem of representation, for example, what type of representation a death mask is; and the problem of style and historicity, for example, whether images imprinted from nature can indicate styles, and whether these images can evolve and transform along art-historical lines. After considering these problems, I conclude that these images are constrained in what they can and cannot represent. While there is a long tradition of imprinting from nature, this practice shows little discernible change over time. An unchanging tradition cannot claim to exhibit a history, a least in a narrative sense familiar to art history. The following investigation opens a dialog between Arthur Danto’s philosophy of art and practitioners of theoretical art history, including Ernst Gombrich and Georges Didi-Huberman, both of whom offer differing views on how these images can be treated.

The RUSI Mask is an Authentic Replicate of the Original Death Mask of Napoléon

The RUSI Mask is an Authentic Replicate of the Original Death Mask of Napoléon

Facing Extinction

When we consider the preservation of the animal body in natural history displays, we primarily think of techniques such as taxidermy or the mounting of a skeletal anatomy. Animal death masks are, by contrast, almost completely unstudied. Although casting has been predominantly understood as a technique for preserving the human face, non-humans have also had their faces captured by the casting of a death mask, and the resultant plaster used for a variety of purposes, from the creation of an accurate taxidermy mount, to featuring as a display object in its own right. ‘Animal Death Masks’ examines three case studies in which death masks play an integral role, all of which feature male gorillas kept in city zoos who grew to be local celebrities and were preserved for display in their regional museum, and each of whom had a cast taken of their face after death. This article argues that animal death masks materialize the distorted boundaries present in museum primate narratives: between indexical representations and artistic portraits, endangered animals and celebrity, conservation and preservation.

“A Weapon to Change Modern Reality”: Action and Agitation in On Kawara's Thanatophanies, 1955–1956

In the context of 1950s Japanese aesthetic theory, On Kawara's Death Masks can be seen a tool of agitation and provocation. Through these drawings, Kawara resisted the destruction of individual thought and action in the harsh social conditions of postwar Japan, seeking to return agency to the viewer in two ways. First, by warping his human figures in a metaphor of “material” objectification, Kawara aimed to provoke anxiety and thus spur the audience to social action. Second, by creating “imaginary objects” in the process of drafting the Death Masks, Kawara refused the guide of historical reference and prompted viewers to invent associations between his figures and social conditions. This series can be seen as providing a prototype for a new form of art, the “Printed Paintings.” Kawara, critical of the institutional form of art museums and galleries, sought to create a system of art that would directly invite creative responses to the original work and thereby achieve a new actualization of individual subjects and of society at large.

Death Mask

”Death Mask” revolves around the death of the narrator’s father, and how an attenuated relationship with photography—as explored through her father’s own practice and Susan Sontag’s On Photography— provides access to understanding both him and their relationship.

Blood, sweat and plaster casts: Reviewing the history, composition, and scientific value of the Raymond A. Dart Collection of African Life and Death Masks

This paper addresses the history, composition and scientific value of one of the most comprehensive facemask collections in Africa, the Raymond A. Dart Collection of African Life and Death Masks. Housed within the School of Anatomical Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), it comprises 1110 masks (397 life, 487 death, 226 unknown). Life masks represent populations throughout Africa; death masks predominately southern Africa. Males preponderate by 75%. Recorded ages are error prone, but suggest most life masks are those of <35 year-olds, death masks of 36+ year-olds. A total of 241 masks have associated skeletons, 209 presenting a complete skull.Life masks date between 1927 and c.1980s, death masks 1933 and 1963. This historical collection presents uncanny associations with outmoded typological and evolutionary theories. Once perceived an essential scientific resource, performed craniofacial superimpositions identify the nose as the only stable feature maintained, with the remaining face best preserved in young individuals with minimal body fat. The facemask collection is most viable for teaching and research within the history of science, specifically physical anthropology, and presents some value to craniofacial identification. Future research will have to be conducted with appropriate ethical considerations to science and medicine.

The Floating Face: Garbo, Photography and Death Masks

A number of writers have noted the influence of Ernst Benkard’s 1927 book of death masks, Das Ewige Antlitz, on Modernist artists and writers of the inter-war period. This article links it specifically to the emergence in the late 1920s of a very particular way of photographing people, termed here “the floating face”, which is epitomised in publicity portraits of Greta Garbo. It is suggested that this photographic convention is linked to changing attitudes associated with war, to the techniques of cinema, and to surrealism, but also to the influence of Benkard’s book. The resemblance between the death mask image and movie star portrait is significant for an understanding of the origins and affective impact of a certain photographic style. This essay also suggests that the death mask as a figure in film and photography theory emerges out of this particular style of photography, and this specific social and cultural context, but then becomes applied to “the photograph” in general. It is argued that the idea of photographs as like death masks is overdetermined by the social and cultural context of 1920s Europe.

Roman Death Masks and the Metaphorics of the Negative

Roman Death Masks and the Metaphorics of the Negative

Ancient death masks and the prehistory of Hungarians. Lessons of a museum exhibition

From June to September 2013 I was organizing an exhibition entitled “Ancient Death Masks” in the Hungarian National Museum. The most important goal of the exhibition was to display for visitors an idea supported by scholarly research. According to this conclusion, silver and gold death masks observed in the graves of the 10th century Hungarians who settled in the Carpathian Basin originated from Magna Hungaria, the Uralian territory of the Hungarians. We displayed death masks found in three large regions of Eurasia: that of Tashtyk Culture in the Yenisei Valley (1st–5th cc.), 6th–11th century masks of the Ural Region, and 10th century masks from the Carpathian Basin (Fig. 1). Although the religious background of the masks in the three territories is similar, the forms of manifestation are different. From the shape of the masks we can clearly conclude that the 10th century Hungarians brought this burial custom from the Ural Region, Magna Hungaria. This can be cited among the few pieces of archaeological evidence (compeer to the historical evidence) attesting to the migration of the Hungarians from the east to the west.

Mortal Passages

Mortal Passages Bruce Bond (bio) Tallow In de la Tour's St. Joseph the carpenterleans over the awl in his hands, his sandalbraced against the block, against the stairthat leads us up the cross of the handle, up these arms exposed now to realizethe strength in them, up the tourniquetof his sleeve to the human horizonof his shoulders, his head, his silhouette bowed with power. His body stoops to harborthe meager candlelight his child holds,the red translucence of the child's fingersno less a shelter, their wild flame withheld from us, though we see it in the father'seye, the way he looks not at his own gripbut at the boy's, the danger there, the firethat smokes above the glowing fingertips. Always the missing thing to pull the oldgaze away, however slightly, displacedby fear that bathes a child's skin in gold,all things the orphan of some other place. Even the candle began inside the shadowof some barn, in the meat of the beastthat gave its life to those here, its tallowto their room, their labor, the air they breathe. [End Page 109] As for the man who dipped his paintbrushin the thickening shade—how little we knowof the nights he spent, the weary stretchof cloth he draped across the morning window. That he was the son of a baker, sure.That, as he aged, his canvases took onthe bread and earth tones of what was near,what lit the quiet of his meditation. Whatever the history, the painting fallssilent, and so bestows the living spaceto move, bemused, free, the way the awlmoves freely inside the myth it makes. Close your eyes and you see what stainsthe air against the back of the craftsmanas if he carries there his own gravestonewhere the dates lie down, where they remain. A shadowy lethargy encroacheson the boy, the cloistered universemade of blood and oil, of red that reachesthrough the char to warm the midnight in us. In each pupil a bead of black wax,as if sight began in dark, better to bindman to child, the fire to the wick,the blush of tallow to the living hand. [End Page 110] Memento Beneath your eyelid trembling with sleep,below the fire there, the burning leaveswhere they blindly gesture, move your lip, flare up beside the father, say, alivenow in the oak grove of your childhood;what you don't see is everything a life of exhaustion drains away like old blood,how dreaming is the color that takes outthe memory you cannot use, the burden of hours unredeemed by dread or want.Who wouldn't stare at the brighter phase,hardly breathing, gilded by the cold light? Not just the force of what these branches raise.Not the mere shine of leaves you see insidethe blighted clearing of a father's face. It's the appetite of flames you need,how it simplifies the kindling as it breaks,as it crackles like the nearing feet of an animal drawn out of the dark.To see your father now, you must give awaya piece of something, of you, of him, these oaks perhaps, the dying embers of the day.It could be grief, this thing that brings you closerto your beginnings. Even as you wake, it sheds something of its blaze, its power,something of the man who once stirred the graveof light with a stick. 'Til it too caught fire. [End Page 111] Death Mask And when a panic in them stilled the handthat reached to shroud the head of the composer,the living few who remained summoned the maker of the casts to lay a plasterover the deep sleep and bell shape of his face,his small face made smooth again, his pallor drained of character, of thunder and stress.The immortal beloved—that too died,the secret of his dedication we take less to heart than to a grave, where his odesang something universal, laid its bloom,and...

The Origins of a Miraculous Image: Notes on the Annunciation Fresco in SS. Annunziata in Florence

IN CONNECTION WITH the recent interest in the early modern cult image within the discipline of art history there have been considerable debates and confusion on how to treat the image, which was, o...

Wild men: Ishi and Kroeber in the wilderness of modern America

Prologue: One Small Step 1. The Yahi in Three 2. The Anthropologist in Three 3. Worlds of Stuff 4. Making Tracks 5. City Lights 6. Nature Walks in the City and the Sierras 7. The Call of the Wild 8. Death Mask Epilogue: The Hearth of Prometheus and the Wilderness of Ishi

:The True Face of William Shakespeare: The Poet's Death Mask and Likenesses from Three Periods of His Life

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Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel: The True Face of William Shakespeare. The Poet’s Death Mask and Likenesses from Three Periods of his Life

Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel: The True Face of William Shakespeare. The Poet’s Death Mask and Likenesses from Three Periods of his Life

On the Concept of Race in Chinese Biological Anthropology: Alive and Well

Previous articleNext article No AccessDiscussionOn the Concept of Race in Chinese Biological Anthropology: Alive and WellQianWang, Gorantrkalj, and LiSun QianWangSchool of Anatomical Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand Medical School, Parktown 2193, South Africa ([email protected]) (Wang and trkalj)/Department of Geosciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Tex. 75080, U.S.A. (Sun). 15 xi 02 Search for more articles by this author , GorantrkaljSchool of Anatomical Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand Medical School, Parktown 2193, South Africa ([email protected]) (Wang and trkalj)/Department of Geosciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Tex. 75080, U.S.A. (Sun). 15 xi 02 Search for more articles by this author , and LiSunSchool of Anatomical Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand Medical School, Parktown 2193, South Africa ([email protected]) (Wang and trkalj)/Department of Geosciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Tex. 75080, U.S.A. (Sun). 15 xi 02 Search for more articles by this author School of Anatomical Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand Medical School, Parktown 2193, South Africa ([email protected]) (Wang and trkalj)/Department of Geosciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Tex. 75080, U.S.A. (Sun). 15 xi 02PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Current Anthropology Volume 44, Number 3June 2003 Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/374899 Views: 215Total views on this site Citations: 8Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:David Ludwig How race travels: relating local and global ontologies of race, Philosophical Studies 176, no.1010 (Aug 2018): 2729–2750.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1148-xT.M.R. Houlton, B.K. Billings Blood, sweat and plaster casts: Reviewing the history, composition, and scientific value of the Raymond A. Dart Collection of African Life and Death Masks, HOMO 68, no.55 (Oct 2017): 362–377.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jchb.2017.08.004Peter Wade Race, 7 (Sep 2019).https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139524414Anthony Walsh, Ilhong Yun Race and Criminology in the Age of Genomic Science, Social Science Quarterly 36 (Oct 2011): n/a–n/a.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2011.00818.xNatalie Kerr, Christopher Rynn Race and Ancestry, (May 2011): 119–153.https://doi.org/10.1201/b10727-6Manisha R. Dayal, Anthony D.T. Kegley, Goran Štrkalj, Mubarak A. Bidmos, Kevin L. Kuykendall The history and composition of the Raymond A. Dart Collection of Human Skeletons at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 140, no.22 (Oct 2009): 324–335.https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.21072Goran Štrkalj, A. Wilkinson “Race” and biomedical research: An educational perspective, Education for Health: Change in Learning & Practice 19, no.11 (Feb 2006): 111–114.https://doi.org/10.1080/13576280500534719 References, (): 273–313.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822373070-013

Anthropologists’ Attitudes Towards the Concept of Race: The Polish Sample

Previous articleNext article No AccessReportsAnthropologists’ Attitudes Towards the Concept of Race: The Polish Sample1KatarzynaA.Kaszycka and GorantrkaljKatarzynaA.KaszyckaInstitute of Anthropology, Adam Mickiewicz University, 61701 Pozna, Poland ([email protected])/Department of Anatomical Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand Medical School, Parktown 2193, South Africa. 4 ix 01 Search for more articles by this author and GorantrkaljInstitute of Anthropology, Adam Mickiewicz University, 61701 Pozna, Poland ([email protected])/Department of Anatomical Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand Medical School, Parktown 2193, South Africa. 4 ix 01 Search for more articles by this author Institute of Anthropology, Adam Mickiewicz University, 61701 Pozna, Poland ([email protected])/Department of Anatomical Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand Medical School, Parktown 2193, South Africa. 4 ix 01Corrections to this articleErratumPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Current Anthropology Volume 43, Number 2April 2002 Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/339381 Views: 269Total views on this site Citations: 11Citations are reported from Crossref 2002 by The WennerGren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:T.M.R. Houlton, B.K. Billings Blood, sweat and plaster casts: Reviewing the history, composition, and scientific value of the Raymond A. Dart Collection of African Life and Death Masks, HOMO 68, no.55 (Oct 2017): 362–377.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jchb.2017.08.004Richard McMahon Race Classifiers and Anthropologists, (Nov 2016): 19–92.https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31846-6_2Richard McMahon How Classification Worked, (Nov 2016): 93–167.https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31846-6_3Goran Štrkalj, Muhammad A. Spocter, A. Tracey Wilkinson Anatomy, medical education, and human ancestral variation, Anatomical Sciences Education 4, no.66 (Oct 2011): 362–365.https://doi.org/10.1002/ase.258Natalie Kerr, Christopher Rynn Race and Ancestry, (May 2011): 119–153.https://doi.org/10.1201/b10727-6Manisha R. Dayal, Anthony D.T. Kegley, Goran Štrkalj, Mubarak A. Bidmos, Kevin L. Kuykendall The history and composition of the Raymond A. Dart Collection of Human Skeletons at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 140, no.22 (Oct 2009): 324–335.https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.21072Katarzyna A. Kaszycka, Goran Štrkalj, Jan Strzałko Current Views of European Anthropologists on Race: Influence of Educational and Ideological Background, American Anthropologist 111, no.11 (Mar 2009): 43–56.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01076.xNicollete P. Naidoo, Goran Štrkalj, Thomas J.M. Daly The alchemy of human variation: Race, ethnicity and Manoiloff’s blood reaction, Anthropological Review 70 (Dec 2007): 37–43.https://doi.org/10.2478/v10044-008-0002-8Gianfranco Biondi, Olga Rickards Race: The extinction of a paradigm, Annals of Human Biology 34, no.66 (Jul 2009): 588–592.https://doi.org/10.1080/03014460701497236Goran Štrkalj, A. Wilkinson “Race” and biomedical research: An educational perspective, Education for Health: Change in Learning & Practice 19, no.11 (Feb 2006): 111–114.https://doi.org/10.1080/13576280500534719Katarzyna A. Kaszycka, Jan Strziko "Race"Still an Issue for Physical Anthropology? Results of Polish Studies Seen in the Light of the U.S. Findings, American Anthropologist 105, no.11 (Mar 2003): 116–124.https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2003.105.1.116Related articlesErratum17 Jul 2015Current Anthropology

The masks of Keats: the endeavour of a poet

Key to Brief Titles Cited 1. The Two Masks 2. The Mask of Camelot 3. Life Mask and Death Mask 4. Aspects of the Mask of Hellas 5. The Too-Muchness of Keats: The Narrative Line 6. The Churning of Genius 7. The Great Achievement Index

The Death Mask of the Moderns: A Genealogy of New Sensibility Cinema in Israel

The Death Mask of the Moderns: A Genealogy of New Sensibility Cinema in Israel* Judd Ne’eman (bio) Cinematic Avant-garde Versus Political Avant-garde Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. “This is the Land,” poster (1935). Courtesy of the Steven Spielberg Film Archive, Jerusalem Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. From posters in the United States, advertising the film Sallah (1964) starring Topol. Of interest are two contrasting reviews: “We are rather dubious as to the wisdom of making films that could give the new Nation a black eye” (B’nai Brith Messenger); and, “It’s the kind of fun that convinces you that Israel is growing up, can laugh at itself and at its problems and bureaucracies” (California Jewish Voice). Courtesy of Palisades International Corporation Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Three Days and a Child (Oded Kotler, 1967), starring Uri Zohar. Courtesy of Judd Ne’eman Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 4. The Dress (Judd Ne’eman, 1969), starring Liora Rivlin. Courtesy of Judd Ne’eman Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 5. The Dream (Dan Wolman, 1970), starring Tuvia Tavi. Courtesy of Judd Ne’eman The art of the cinema, which draws on the multiple significance of moving images as well as on shifts between time and space, represents modernism more than any other form of art. Modernism in all its artistic manifestations “looks up to realism in its broader sense, . . . [it is] a new kind of realism . . . more realistic, more pure, more concise. . . . Its efforts are directed at exposing, destroying and eradicating all that is perceived by it as flawed and distorted in the normal realistic praxis.” 1 The great renovator of modernism in cinema, Jean Luc Godard, intentionally created in his films an atmosphere of distance and planted in the audience feelings of alienation and even inferiority. His films were made in the spirit of the avant-garde of Brecht, out of an aspiration, naively or not, to create “transformation from above—via spiritual, ethical, and intellectual constructs—rather than materialist transformation from below (via the proletariat or the id) [that] characterizes both modernism and the avant-gardes. . . . In both cases, the potentially anarchic forces down below in the mob or the psyche are carefully controlled and directed from above.” 2 Under the influence of the French New Wave, Israeli film makers adopted a similar mode of cinema in the 1960s. But, unlike Godard’s “transformation from above,” the alienation and emotional distance that characterized Israeli modernist cinema emanated from totally different cultural sources. This strategy of the avant-garde, as well as that of modernism, which also fostered social change from above, “associate[d] the artistic avant-garde with the Leninist avant-garde.” 3 The faith of the modernists in social [End Page 100] engineering implicated the artists time and again in an unholy alliance with political avant-gardes from left and right. Such was the collaboration of futuristic artists with the Italian fascists: “in all of Europe fascism cultivated the futuristic values: modernism, youth, violence, vigor and heroism.” 4 Another case was the strong involvement with the October revolution of modernist poets, artists and, most importantly, the Russian avant-garde cinema. Trotksy stipulated that “the art of this epoch will be entirely under the influence of revolution,” 5 and the famous agitprop cinema groups led by Lev Kuleshov, Dziga Vertov, and Sergei Eisenstein produced documentary films about the revolution and the civil war: “Penetrating the combat zones in agit-trains, film makers, poets and artists (among them Dziga Vertov, Eisenstein and Mayakovsky) set out to polemicize the war.” 6 In the 1930s, this route-sharing of the cinema with the “unprecedented new society” turned into coerced collaboration with an unprecedented tyrannical regime. In the 1940s, Andre Zhdanov, a senior member of the Politburo of the Russian communist party, stated that “the innovative act of the petit bourgeoisie brings with it detachment from true art, true science and true literature”7 [my emphasis, J. N.]. Thus, modernism, whose main drive was toward more innovation, gave birth in the revolutionary society to an avowed anti-modernist school—Socialist Realism. The...

Books in Brief

Langley, Walter, Walter Langley. Pioneer of the Newlyn Art ColonyIles, Chrissey, Yoko Ono: Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?Hamilton, Vivien, Joseph Crawhall 1961–1913: One of the Glasgow BoysHolladay, Joan, Illuminating the Epic. The Kassel Willehalm Codex and the Landgraves of Hesse in the Early Fourteenth CenturySimpson, Marianna Shreve, Manuscript from Sixteenth Century IranVogel, Susan M., Baule. African Art, Western EyesBorzello, Frances, Seeing Ourselves – Women's Self‐PortraitsCormack, Robin, Painting the Soul: Icons, Death Masks and ShroudsNicholas, Alain, Martin, Jean‐Hibert, Kerchache, Jacques et al., African Faces, African Figures: The Arman CollectionRoberts, Jane, Royal Landscape. The Gardens and Parks of Windsor

Life masks and death masks.

The death of a relative or anyone in a small, tightly knit community with closely shared cultural and religious values has great social impact. As part of the grieving process, people wish to preserve the memory of a loved one or a community leader. Life masks and death masks have been used as art forms to mark life passages, offering permanent reminders of family and continuity with the past. This article discusses the history and technique of life and death masks and their role in 19th-century American culture.