ARTISTS
Histories Of Faces: Belting Variations
According to the German art historian Hans Belting (born in 1935), the face is 鈥渢he first image鈥� and the vanishing point to which all images converge. Some of the oldest images depict faces; through them, we expose ourselves to others and establish our relational dynamics. The long, rich history of the representation of the face in the arts indicates an unceasing attempt to discover beneath this magical, animated surface 鈥渢he most enthralling surface on Earth鈥濃�攖he human self.
Its origins are intertwined with the rigid, unfathomable image of the archaic mask and the cultic, sacred dimensions that unfold and animate it; the death mask, anchored in the urge to preserve memories; or the mask of ancient drama, infused with expressiveness and life. Its connections with the portrait are sometimes rooted in an urge for similarity, for truth, for seizing a personality or an identity, and sometimes in a will to set in motion and to conduct the performative art of transmutation.
However, despite all the attempts to capture the essence of the human being in images through drawing, sculpture, photography, painting, and cinema, the face鈥攂etween the visible and the invisible, presence and withdrawal, rigidness and animation, exposure and erasure鈥攔emains a great mystery.
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According to the German art historian Hans Belting (born in 1935), the face is 鈥渢he first image鈥� and the vanishing point to which all images converge. Some of the oldest images depict faces; through them, we expose ourselves to others and establish our relational dynamics. The long, rich history of the representation of the face in the arts indicates an unceasing attempt to discover beneath this magical, animated surface 鈥渢he most enthralling surface on Earth鈥濃�攖he human self.
Its origins are intertwined with the rigid, unfathomable image of the archaic mask and the cultic, sacred dimensions that unfold and animate it; the death mask, anchored in the urge to preserve memories; or the mask of ancient drama, infused with expressiveness and life. Its connections with the portrait are sometimes rooted in an urge for similarity, for truth, for seizing a personality or an identity, and sometimes in a will to set in motion and to conduct the performative art of transmutation.
However, despite all the attempts to capture the essence of the human being in images through drawing, sculpture, photography, painting, and cinema, the face鈥攂etween the visible and the invisible, presence and withdrawal, rigidness and animation, exposure and erasure鈥攔emains a great mystery.
Artists on show
- Ana Mendieta
- André Martins de Barros
- Angelo de Sousa
- Antonio Soares dos Reis
- Armando Alves
- Cesare Lombroso
- Charles Darwin
- Charles Le Brun
- Christian Boltanski
- Cindy Sherman
- Constantin Brancusi
- Daniel Blaufuks
- Dennis Oppenheim
- Eduardo Nery
- Erik Oppenheim
- Erna Lendvai-Dircksen
- Fernando Lemos
- Francis Galton
- Francisco Tropa
- Giambattista della Porta
- Guillaume Benjamin Armand Duchenne de Boulogne
- Hieronymous Cock
- J. H. Santos David
- Jean-Étienne Esquirol
- João Glama Ströberle
- Johann Caspar Lavater
- Jorge Molder
- José de Almeida Furtado
- José Loureiro
- José Sobral de Almada Negreiros
- Joseph Gall
- Kader Attia
- Lewis Hine
- Lúcia Prancha
- Marlene Monteiro Freitas
- Oscar Gustave Rejlander
- Paul Maris Louis Pierre Richer
- René Descartes
- Rivane Neuenschwander
- Santeri Tuori
- Sigmund Freud
- Thomas Ruff
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