Exhibition catalogue, "Masques" 1985
'Masque' Collaboration – Ray Johnson, (1986)
Ray's :"secret" talent!
visit with Ray:
"Unmasking the Mask"
Several years ago, Richard Genovese designed a cover, not a jacket, in tribute to a book of mine, I cannot remember which book it was. I know only that the cover incorporates a mask of the kind that might be used by an unimaginative child on Halloween. Neither I nor Genovese himself, I suspect, foresaw that almost a decade later he would be creating a succession of masques, of which he now brings a sampling before the public.
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 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 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 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 thei simplicity, 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.”
