Making Faces Playing God

The theme of my last post and this one is age makeups that have unusual persuasive and emotive power.  My experience---and it is deeply subjective---is that among the aging transformations done by the most skilled and ingenious artists, a few cross into the realm of uncanny art by having a rare power to come alive in a specially compelling, specially real, way.  I suspect that the instances of this for me may not be one that have this power for you---and I would be keen to explore the comparisons (email?)/ Here are four more of my favorites.  Two (Kostov, Stiller) were cut from the final film.  I had hoped to discuss six makeups here, but I don't use photos without permission of the artist and the artists behind two of my choices were unresponsive (so far).  In my next post in October I'll continue the theme of age makeup but will focus on projects in which the aim is not to preserve the recognizable identity of the actor but to allow the actor to embody a wildl...

This posting, and the next two or three, are about aging with prosthetic makeup.  Many makeup artists call this the most challenging (and satisfying) kind of job.  In a moment, I'll consider why.  But first I want to share some thoughts about the audience for this blog.  I hope to reach as disparate an audience as possible, but I want to mention two groups.   The first group is the expansive community of professional, amateur, and would-be transformational makeup artists.  I had the great pleasure of meeting and befriending about thirty or more artists when I wrote my book, Making Faces, Playing God.  Many of these contributed to the book and have remained in touch through Facebook or personal messaging, and very many more---quite a few abroad---have linked up through Fb or have had a chance to comment on my book.  I would love to have this blog give me the chance to share what I have uncovered over the last fifteen years in little-known work...

 More than fifteen years ago, University of Texas Press published my book, Making Faces, Playing God:  Identity and the Art of Transformation Makeup.  It was a hybrid project and an odd one.  I was motivated by a number of themes that had haunted me in my role as a philosophy writer and teacher.  One was the role of recognizability in gluing our social lives together.  If we each could change appearance radically at will, if we each had multiple clones, if we did not have (for the most part) unique faces, most aspects of life would be impossible.  A second theme spun off the first and was inspired by an anthropologist's claim that societies are even more likely to have masks than weapons, that the impetus behind carnival and Halloween is universal.  The idean is that deep, unacknowledged emotions of fear and desire underlie the fantasy of anonymity, of not being recognized.  We fear the disruption of losing our place with others, but we lust ...