His smile has always been believed one of the most enchantingthe most beautiful of all Hollywood. But how to explain the reason for so much fascination? He tried Riccardo Falcinelli, who in his latest book, Visus. Stories of the face from antiquity to the selfie (Einaudi, pages 552, €25), dedicated an entire chapter to the smile, where, in the various photos, together with Julia Roberts hypnotics also appears Mona Lisa.
Among the most famous Italian graphic designers, professor of Psychology of perception at the ISIA Faculty of Design in Rome, with over 600 images he managed to trace one history of the face over the millennia, practically creating, thanks to an alternative narrative, a new discipline, the «phology», which unfolds between art And history, semiotics And neuroscience, fashion And beauty.
Face, mirror on which the beauty trends of every era are reflected
From the enigmatic profile of Marilyn Monroewith i hair blond and lip fiery red, at eyebrows like a true diva Marlene Dietrichup to the “innovative” beard of royalty William And Harry. Among the various topics addressed in his new studio, we spoke with him about the one relating to cosmeticsthus discovering how the make-up and the hairstyles of the hairparticipate, sculpting according to the different trends of social customs, inarchitecture of ours face.
Could you explain the birth of this new studio of yours?
«I am convinced (and I convinced myself) by writing the book that our face is a construction. We build it over a long period of time, from when we are little to when we grow up. Deciding whether to comb your hair in a certain way, cut it or not, part it on one side are minimal, but constructional gestures. And every action on our face has an aesthetic consequence.”
And then?
«Putting on makeup doesn’t just mean putting on foundation or lipstick. It’s reductive to believe that. For me, make-up is any intervention on the face. If I decide that my beard ends at a certain height, this is already make-up.”
In fact, you also talk about cosmetics.
«Cosmetics comes from cosmos, which means harmony, that is, to put things right. And this bringing order requires a will. We have seen it with several stars, who have chosen to be natural, not to wear makeup and not to dye their hair. These are choices that have also become major media cases. In reality, in a society where most women dye their hair, not doing so is a much more radical “make-up” gesture. We’ve seen Kate Winslet in the series Murder in Easttown acting without any kind of make-up for the entire story. It was a choice that made it incredibly expressive, but as usual a powerful, radical choice.”
Julia Roberts has the most divine smile in the star system. What’s so special about it?
«On Julia Roberts I answer scientifically. Scientists have seen that a spontaneous smile requires the use of fewer muscles than a fake smile. When I smile out of courtesy, I make my smile of kindness, using lots of muscles. Whereas, if a person makes me laugh spontaneously, I use less. Well, his great talent, an almost biological gift I would say, is that he can smile with few muscles. This makes his smile seem absolutely authentic and magnetic.”
She mentions this very famous smile, in a photo gallery, where there is also the legendary one of the Mona Lisa, (ironically Roberts was the protagonist of a film entitled Mona Lisa Smile). How would you connect the two smiles?
«The main difference is that Mona Lisa laughs with pursed lips. However, we must put it into context. For Renaissance culture, smiling while showing your teeth was a sign of vulgarity. In the Roman de la Rose we read that women must always smile with their mouth closed. It was really a rule of etiquette.”
Are there any repercussions that reach us?
«We find them in high fashion shots. Generally, we see models with very serious expressions. In our Western culture, but also in the Eastern one, a concept of high, authoritative beauty, even glamorous if we want, is a serious, impassive, immobile beauty. This is an ancient, medieval value, but which remains in the sense up to us. Some time ago they wrote that the only true diva is Isabelle Huppert. I imagine he is a witty person, who laughs and jokes, but when he is on the red carpet he is absolutely serious, staging, in that context, a certain type of image.”
Marilyn Monroe? Her face is so iconic, that without those details she couldn’t be the same. Why?
«I will say something provocative: Marilyn Monroe, before being an actress, was a designer. What we know as Marilyn’s face was a great design invention made by herself. Together with the make-up artists and then with her favorite Allan Snyder, she developed a type of procedure that meant that with three hours of work, she became Marilyn: the shape of the eyebrows, the type of complexion that came out, the hairstyle. I think she was a brilliant woman, perhaps one of the first people who truly understood what it meant to build one’s face.”
She talks about different types of beauties, including Margot Robbie, spokesperson for Chanel N°5, as Marilyn was in her time. So, what definition would you give of beauty?
«Beauty is an invention because it changes depending on how cultural fashions change. We believe that there is a beautiful objective, but this is not the case. Every thirty years the parameters of regularity, linked to sex appeal, completely change.”
For example?
«In the 70s a trend for women was to be out of the ordinary. I think of Barbra Streisand or the actress of The Shining Shelley Duvall, or Sissy Spacek, who even had eyelashes so pale that you couldn’t see her eyes. In the 60s there was a revolution, a sexual liberation, there was ’68. This is because in turn, we came from the ’50s in which there was a very strong homologation, the men all parted on one side, the women all had their hair in curls at the hairdresser’s. In Hollywood, they’re all blonde, all short hair, leveled on Grace Kelly.”
The eyebrows are the frame of the gaze. How do they shape our appearance?
«From a design point of view, the distance created between the eye and the start of the eyebrow cut is what determines the intensity of the gaze. So you have to be very careful not to raise them too much, otherwise the look can be very mean and sharp. This is typical, for example, of traditional Japanese society where women depilated their foreheads. Someone who did it in Hollywood was Marlene Dietrich, she shaved them and restyled them so that they remained practically immobile when she acted, because they no longer had the mobility of that part of the face.”
Thinking of Margot Robbie, what about the real Barbie, the doll par excellence?
«He is basically a perfect caricature, because there is not a feature of his features that corresponds to the real person. There is a process of idealization: the very thin waist, the broad shoulders, the giant eyes. Processes of idealization have existed since the ancient world, see the bust of Nefertiti or more recently the necks of the women painted by Modigliani.”
Let’s talk about social media, with them our face is everywhere. What value do they have in our society?
«The most significant thing in my opinion is that the selfie, or rather the smartphone, has become more than a camera, a type of mirror. We look at ourselves through the smartphone lens as we look at ourselves in the mirror; therefore, there is continuous surveillance on our gaze.”
The nobility, princesses, princes and queens. What has changed today?
«Compared to the past, the face of nobles is essentially a poorly constructed face, because it has fewer needs and less power than it once did. Today, speaking of sovereigns, we should remember the youngest of the House of Windsor, Harry, who grew a reddish beard, when we know, for example, that he would not be expected to wear it.”
William also recently grew a beard, receiving a lot of praise.
«Yes, it’s true, William, like Harry, also made her grow».
His work on faces is clearly far from the now outdated theories, daughters of positivism, of Cesare Lombroso, a character he mentioned among other things. What do you say to anyone who might mistakenly connect them to you?
«Science explains to us that our judgment on others is always a prejudice, that is, the first impression we have of someone is in a certain sense always “Lombrosian”. There is no escape from this, but the point is that this impression has no rational basis whatsoever, it is the simple result of our visual habits. This is also why I wrote Visus: to free ourselves with awareness of overcome prejudices while “really” understanding where they originate.”
There is art history, but also criticism. Could it be said that with your work you have added to art, in fusion with the history of costume (which also includes make-up and hair and not just clothing), a sort of criticism that was previously missing?
«I’ll leave that to the readers to say. But there is no doubt that cosmetics are rarely talked about in art history books. It’s a shame, after all they were also a type of painting, made up of palettes and brushes.”
Source: Vanity Fair
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