Masques? Are we dealing with yet another contemporary artist who, a product of the American educational system, cannot spell? If this were the case, then substitution of the designation masks would be permissible and evcn, at the risk of tactlessness, mandatory. For the presence of a mask in many a masque is plain to see. What is less evident, at first glance anyway, is that Misiano-Genovese’s masques are more than masks, other than masks. Concealment, the function with which we associate their use initially, as we imagine donning a masque, yielding to another when we think of the performance of a theatrical masque, which implicates masks in something that transcend’s their ability to hide in the process of transforming them into agents of revelation. Neither an instrument of concealment nor an explicative one, a Misiano-Genovese masque is an implicative phenomenon. Using it, the wearer participates in a statement not his or her own, in which he or she (on balance one thinks of masques being worn by females more than males) becomes a party , from the moment one masque is selected to another.
The reason for this seems to me beyond dispute. The masque is an oneiric object. As much, it is the objectification not so much of a dream as of what Sigmund Freud called the dream work. It marks the welling up in conciousness of liberative forces that have succeeded in evading inhibitve censorship of the creative impulse. Therefore the fragility of the materials pressed into service demands respect as well as careful handling.
I have never felt comfortable with the overt narcissism of Leonor Fini’s masks, even though impressed by their inventiveness. A volume in which their creator herself
(no other model would have done, naturally) is seen wearing a number of highly elaborate masks confirms that, to Fini, masks are adornments, projections of an inner vision of the self in its various phases. Hence I take it as a sign of unwarranted modesty that Misiano-Genovese admires those masks. It was no surprise to hear him report how, during a photo session, models projected personality changes in keeping with – solicited by, I would argue – the masques they had slipped on.
The oneiric object’s special virtue is its essential feature: the irruption into diurnal experience of a manifestation of the dream world. Its effect on the imagination is conditioned by its concrete presence, by the fact that it allows us to palpate a dream and furnishes us an opportunity to identify with it. Thanks to their simplicity, Misiano-Genovese’s masques direct our attention beyond technique to a remarkable and strikingly efficient economy of means. Their distinguishing characteristic is that an individual is free to respond to the attraction one of them exercises over her imagination by donning it, signalling responsiveness by entrusting herself to it, letting it modify the face she turns to the world.
Uniformity of response to the masques – being able to affirm in good conscience that one likes them all, enjoys every one of them – is, in my estimation, an involuntary or ill-concealed confession of indifference. Thus true pride of possession does not mean being able to boast of owning a masque, “That belongs to me.” but admitting openly, “I belong to that.”
J. H. Matthews 1985
(Exhibition catalogue, "Masques") 1985 • Foreword by JH Matthews
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