Activity

This week, we would be focusing on the artist Arnulf Rainer, and his approaches to 'overpainting' faces, through his actions of adding gestural expressions over these photographs of faces. Participants would get to explore Rainer's series of 'Death Mask' and bring their interpretations, emotions and thoughts about the face onto a blank mask.

 

They would choose their own gestural strokes and expression, colour palette and medium to create their response by colouring and filling up the blank mask. The gestural strokes and expressions could be made using tools such as pens and markers, or even using their fingers.

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About the Artist

Arnulf Rainer is a self-taught Austrian painter who came to fame through his black-and-white pictures, of which many of these were works painted over photographs. He is also co-founder of the 'Hundsgruppe' (Dog Pack) established in 1950 and also held a professorship in Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts from 1981 to 1995—the same academy where he stopped attending his studies after 3 days of immense dissatisfaction! Rainer's works embodying raw emotion and spontaneity can be seen best in his 'overpaintings', where items such as antique books and photographs from popular culture are painted over.

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About the Artworks

'Death Mask' (1970) by Arnulf Rainer records the last stage of human expressiveness and tries to depict the moment into facelessness. As one gazes upon his Death Masks, one sees the face of suffering, the quietened, the decayed and those who have given up on the struggle, as well as terror and redemption. These works are characterized by 'overpaintings', where he paints over these faces through expressive gestures. In blurring these faces, Rainer seeks to conceal the original, creates something new and challenges our perspectives of the old.