Making Faces, Playing God: Identity and the Art of Transformational Makeup

Making Faces, Playing God: Identity and the Art of Transformational Makeup

by ThomasMorawetz (Author), ThomasMorawetz (Author)

Synopsis

Wearing a mask-putting on another face-embodies a fundamental human fantasy of inhabiting other bodies and experiencing other lives. In this extensively illustrated book, Thomas Morawetz explores how the creation of transformational makeup for theatre, movies, and television fulfills this fantasy of self-transformation and satisfies the human desire to become the other.

Morawetz begins by discussing the cultural role of fantasies of transformation and what these fantasies reveal about questions of personal identity. He next turns to professional makeup artists and describes their background, training, careers, and especially the techniques they use to create their art. Then, with numerous before-during-and-after photos of transformational makeups from popular and little-known shows and movies, ads, and artist's demos and portfolios, he reveals the art and imagination that go into six kinds of mask-making-representing demons, depicting aliens, inventing disguises, transforming actors into different (older, heavier, disfigured) versions of themselves, and creating historical or mythological characters.

$55.11

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 246
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 15 Aug 2001

ISBN 10: 0292752474
ISBN 13: 9780292752474
Book Overview: This book is entirely unique, very well written, dramatic, and, at the same time, philosophical. It is likely to appeal to a very large audience, including anybody interested in the visual arts, in film, in theater, in philosophical problems of transformation, and in the unconscious generally. -- Melvin R. Lansky, M.D., UCLA Medical School and Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute

Media Reviews
This book is entirely unique, very well written, dramatic, and, at the same time, philosophical. It is likely to appeal to a very large audience, including anybody interested in the visual arts, in film, in theater, in philosophical problems of transformation, and in the unconscious generally. -Melvin R. Lansky, M.D., UCLA Medical School and Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute
Author Bio
Thomas Morawetz, Tapping Reeve Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Connecticut School of Law, writes avocationally on modern literature, non-fiction, mysteries, and movies. His interest in movie-making extends over thirty-five years.