Face Art

Ever from Ancient times, people have been interested in various arts of facial configuration, from facial configuration art in prehistoric times to nuo-mask and to facade used in theaters in the present. In the sense of the aesthetic perspective of facial configuration art, the human beings have gone though a process from God recreation to men recreation. Speaking from its external forms, facial sign has undergone a process from crudeness to delicacy and procedure-orientation. In terms of human senses, this is the process of human thinking developing from simplicity to diversity and complexity. The history of the facial arts development of human beings is the evolutionary history of human minds. Nowadays, facial arts assumes a diversified development trend, both inspiringly and creatively, thus resulting in diversity in forms and connotations. This essay expounds every specific facial configuration in its historical settings, illustrating the cultural connotation and aesthetic function of every specific facial configuration in terms of function, external performances, structural form and historical origin. The essay adopts analytical methods from semiotics to understand facial arts with the view to explore the aesthetic and cultural value of those ethnographic and modern symbols from a new angle.This essay begins with a definition of facial arts, proposing that facial arts is a formative arts embodied in human face, possessing its independent aesthetic value and cultural connotation. Human study of "face" dates back to prehistory, but constrained by the production level, masks of that time are epitomize of ghosts and gods representing a state of mind of seeking for refuge form mysterious power when human beings are associating with the evil natural surroundings. Masks are life-based images created by human being, in spite of prehistory or latter in the form of nuo-masks. Masks in the early days are images of "integration between human and creatures", representing human beings' inclination to depend upon nature, scare of mysterious power and flatter God.Facial makeup is a specific makeup art in Chinese opera, embody human's mental profile vividly by combining realistic paint and symbolism in an exaggerated way. Compared with masks arts, this kind of facial arts is relatively stable and manifesting, for its internal structure prescribes various facial elements such as complexion, nose, eye skull, brain frame. In the view of the difference of ways of portray and pigmentation in these above mentioned fields, people reveal information of characters in terms of age, temperament and morality. What is more, new character images can be created by combining and matching those different aspects. Facial makeup of ancient times serve the function of moral education, exerting insinuate effect upon people in their enjoyment and taste.Facial arts of modern design is more complicated and diversified in terms of material and connotation, representing people's search for novelty and uniqueness. By combining various facial elements using high-tech techniques such as photography and computers, sense of humanity, human taste and subjective conception are infused into this automatic mechanism epoch of which there is an extraordinary enchanting facial configuration, which is caricature and iconology, thus animating character's face or humanizing animal's face. This kind of configuration arts was originally used in political sarcasm, which satire and reveal characters by highlighting character's personalities and temperament in an exaggerated way of presenting people's facial construction.On the whole, the above mentioned facial arts are symbol and representation of presenting people's inner world in a specific historical period.