Violence and Splendor

7. Plumage and Talismans

45 7 Plumage and Talismans Coiffure, cosmetics, scarification, and tattooing make the outer surfaces of our bodies into artworks. Perfumes, the softened or stentorian intonations of the voice, the melodic lines of gestures, and dance extend body artistry across space and time. We do not hesitate to exclaim of a fish, a pheasant, or a horse how beautiful he or she is, but “How beautiful I am!” is something we must only whisper and when we are alone. We are concerned with our body’s appearance, but it is bad taste to show it; our body’s beauty should be ingenuous, harmonious, and unselfconscious, like the beauty of plants, butterflies, and birds, like the beauty of the dawn and of twilight. Things shape our bodies, imprint their forms on them. Raiment, headdresses, and jewelry make our bodies elegant or seductive, gallant or authoritative. We put the forms of our bodies on things. We make clay, marble, paint, chemical emulsions into statues, portraits, photographs. These things that we have shaped shape us in turn. Some of them hold smooth or grainy or patchy images of our bodies that are all surface and color, divested of depth. They make us move as patterns in the world pageantry of colors and forms. Some of these things may materialize anatomical ideals or dignity, authority, the radiance of deities. Their forms take possession of us and choreograph our movements. In found objects come upon by chance, by luck, or made, that bear some resemblance to our bodies or that do not—unusual bones, fossils, crystals, burls of trees, carvings—we feel their inner space and the vibrancy in that inner space, strong and healing. We wear these things on our bodies and they make contact with the inner space of our bodies. In the cave paintings of Lascaux, Cosquer, and Chauvet, where lions, rhinoceroses, aurochs, horses, and bears in movement were depicted with consummate skill, the few depictions of humans are stick figures shown dead or, when alive, with the head of a bird or antelope. These depict not the outer appearance of our bodies but a connection with the forces of the inner space of bird or antelope. The earliest known sculptures of our bodies, figures such as the “Venus” of Willendorf dating from the Upper Paleolithic, are concerned not with showing how our bodies look from the outside but how they feel from within. The first, Gandhara, Buddha images were made in Afghanistan under the influ- 46 V I O L E N C E A N D S P L E N D O R ence of Hellenic statues, which had long depicted the appearance of particular individuals, but the Buddha images were never meant to depict the outer aspect of the man Siddha ˉrtha Gautama; they depict an inner life in composure and compassion, which they induce in the viewer. In Africa and Polynesia masks did not only change the outer aspect of the body but were experienced to intensify the density and turmoil of its inner space. In Bali and Tibet, donning the masks induces trance. Overleaf: Man Asleep ...