Compelling Faces in Art - Mike Parr, self-portrait.

Mike Parr is widely regarded as one of the most gifted living Australian artists. His work is imbued with a strongly cathartic presence. 

This work is from one of his many self-portrait series, that have been created in a range of media that includes performance, installation, sculpture, drawing, drypoint etching and photography. In his performance entitled Close the Concentration Camps, 2002, Parr had his lips sewn together in solidarity with refugees in Australia’s detention centers. 

Once you realize that Mike Parr has cut, branded, stitched, burned and nailed his body in the pursuit of his art, these drawings take on a different context: awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future. It is the repetition of affirmations that leads to beliefs. And once these beliefs become deep convictions, you live your life as a revolution and not just a process of evolution. 

As J.Kent Clark said, “It is a profound human waste for people to go through life half-hearing, half-seeing, and only dimly aware of the range of their own perceptions and capabilities.” And, there can be no progress nor achievement without sacrifice.

Compelling Faces in Art - Ilya Repin, Judas, 1885.

Everybody knows the story of the man infamously known for his kiss and betrayal of Jesus in exchange for a payment of thirty silver coins. 

It is the story of betrayal, which is the worst pain in the world, because it goes beyond the physical, further beyond any other emotional pain one can feel. Betrayal never comes from an enemy...but comes from a friend. It injures the heart, and leaves you in the desert, your mouth dry and will broken. The wound lasts a lifetime. Our only defense is to distrust each other. 

The interesting feature of this painting, though, is how Repin gives to us the other side of the story. We are confronted with Judas’ anxiety and torment. Remove the religious implications for a moment and consider the man and his horrors; the fearful, acute suspense, his heart beating violently, the sinking of soul and spirit, and the breath come thick. 

Why is this such a compelling image for us, today? 

W. H. Auden once said, “Now is the age of anxiety.” We, as artists, have learned to live with it and use it to our advantage, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of “divine madness.” Some, like T.S. Eliot, even believe that anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.

Compelling Faces in Art - Odd Nerdrum, Kjærlighetspar (The Love Couple), 1976.

In the early 1970s, Odd Nerdrum was one of the leading figures to revolt against the dogma of Modernism. Focusing on contemporary social conflicts, with sympathy for the vulnerability of the individual, he created motives that made him one of the most mentioned and disparaged painters of Scandinavia. 

In Kjærlighetspar (The Love Couple), 1976, we see anecdote and narrative, that is allegorical in nature and appears to be done so with a sense of the apocalyptic. 

I imagine the first way to approach this work would be through the subject of love; that unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding. Does love consign these two to hell or to paradise? Does it illuminate and lead the way? 

Often I am helplessly confronted by a picture... filled with suspense. It is a genuine struggle and challenge. And obviously, from a personal point of view, the principal challenge is a personal challenge. And before I know it, all these puzzle pieces add up to something pretty amazing: to fail to love it is not to exist at all.

Compelling Faces in Art - Theodore Robinson, By the river, 1887.

Life is an adventure of passion, risk, laughter, beauty, love--and if lucky enough, a burning curiosity. Here we have a girl at river’s edge, spying on ducks. 

When I see her, I think of how the world and everything in it can be new, giving rise to astonishment; to wonder and stand wrapped in awe. Wonder is the desire for knowledge, for something of the marvelous. 

Her face reminds me that amazement awaits us at every corner. 

I am also reminded of the words of Merlin in T.H. White’s The Once and Future King: “Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

Compelling Faces in Art - Frida Kahlo, Girl With A Death Mask (She Plays Alone), 1938.

The Days of the Dead are a joyous and sacred time, a time to welcome the souls of the dead; it is a celebration in which the living and the dead are joined if even for a short while. It demonstrates a strong sense of love and respect for one’s ancestors, celebrates the continuance of life, family relationships, community solidarity, allows people to talk about, and even finds humor in death. In this way, death loses some of its terror. 

The mask, for humans, has always helped us make sense of the universe, to personify its forces. And the most visible form of personification has always been the face, serving as a tool of transformation and a bridge to the spirit world. The impact of masks increases when contemporary art turns to themes like identity or gender, a subject that Kahlo could possibly be exploring here. 

Pablo Picasso understood the power of masks, and said, “Painting isn't an aesthetic operation; it's a form of magic designed as a mediator between this strange, hostile world and us, a way of seizing the power by giving form to our terrors as well as our desires.” 

But it is Hans Hofmann who I think of when looking at this Kahlo painting: “Art is magic... But how is it magic? In its metaphysical development? Or does some final transformation culminate in a magic reality? In truth, the latter is impossible without the former. If creation is not magic, the outcome cannot be magic.”

Compelling Faves in Art - Rose Cecil O'Neill, The Kiss.

Rose Cecil O'Neill was an American illustrator, artist, and writer who created the popular comic characters, Kewpies. In 1912 a German porcelain manufacturer started making Kewpie dolls. As an extremely popular illustrator, O’Neill was paid top dollar for her work. 

Thomas Hart Benton said that Rose was the world’s greatest illustrator. In “The Kiss” we get to see how good of an artist she really was. 

Nothing is more articulate than a kiss, yet at the same time incoherent; it can be a sort of tender curiosity, or it can be like playing Russian roulette and you finally got the cylinder with the bullet in it.

Compelling Faces in Art - Basil Blackshaw, Head of Traveller IV, 1984.

We pass people on the street, some we notice, some we do not. The moment can be totally fleeting and meaningless. 

Or, as Gustave Flaubert once considered, “An overwhelming curiosity makes me ask myself what their lives might be like. I want to know what they do, where they're from, their names, what they're thinking about at that moment, what they regret, what they hope for, their past loves, their current dreams ...” 

I ask myself: When our eyes are cast upon another, are we in fact gazing into the depths of a mirror? 

But only from a distance, when the face is still just out of focus. I care about them when they are abstractions. I feel nothing when they are in front of me.