Written Faces

 
Plaster masks on sale at Sekaido art shop, Shinjuku, Tokyo.
left: classical European/ right: classical/folk Japanese.

"The white of the face seems to have as its function, not to denature the flesh tints or to caricature them (as with our clowns, whose white flour and greasepaint are only an incitation to daub the face), but exclusively to erase all anterior trace of features, to transform the countenance to the blank extent of a matte stuff which no natural substance (flour, paste, plaster, or silk) metaphorically enlivens with a texture, a softness, or a highlight. The face is only: the thing to write, but this future is already written by the hand which has whitened the eyelashes, the tip of the nose, the cheekbones, and given the page of flesh its black limit of a wig compact as stone."
(from Roland Barthes "Empire of Signs" 1970 (1982)).