Acceso usuarios
Patrizia Magli
In the physiognomic analysis, the face is configured as a system of expression, regulated by discardings and capable of receiving a semantic interpretation. It is a semiotic undertaking that reveals, under the form of a parable, its double tendency: on one hand, it tries to establish, by means of a "powerful" categorial apparatus, the constants in the process of constituting typologies and classes which will be used in the analysis of the objects studied. On the other hand, it is directed towards individualizing and even multiplying the differences that constitute the singularity of those objects. The physiognomic features are configured not only as particular ways of “saying” but above all as ways of “watching” the body. For Aristotle, the first systematic physiognomist of history, the soul is figure and form, the body is matter. Passions are then forms printed on the matter. Form and matter are not exclusively the body’s ways of being, but two ways of seeing the body (Magli 1995:23).
The lines of the forehead analysed by Cardstno, the figures of passions drawn by Le Brun, Lavater’s silhouettes, Cardinal Richelieu’s neuter masks are not signs of the same nature and do not allow the same sort of interpretation. These signs imply neither the same observer’s position nor the same producer’s identity. Nevertheless, all these types of signs, their different mode of production and of deciphering are united to create a true polyphony of the face. They make a text out of this object of the natural world. A text which is amongst the most complex and enigmatic ones. This paper will explore the dimension of make-up in the transformations of the face.
