The Direct Method of Wladyslaw T. Benda’s Masks

Benda’s preferred method according to Masks is surprising and quite different from the normal method. The “direct method” is to build the mask out of paper mâché from the edge of the mask to the tip of the nose directly, that is, without a mold of any kind. This process required holding the complete idea of the mask in mind before he began. An incredible feat of artistic achievement.

Wladyslaw Theodor Benda (January 15, 1873 – November 30, 1948), better known as W. T. Benda, was a Polish American artist active in the 1920s.

Benda studied art in Kraków, Pol., and in Vienna before coming to the United States in 1899. He settled in New York City, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1911. Benda’s illustrations were published in books and in a number of magazines. He is best remembered for his masks, which were used in theatre and dance performances throughout the world. Benda wrote the book Masks in 1944. And here, his direct method from the book:

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Amazing Polaroids of Ventriloquist Heads, ca. 1975

Jim Linderman is an American author and folk art collector. He has written a number of books, some self-published, and has written articles for collecting magazines.

Linderman spent several years in Kalamazoo, Michigan working as a research librarian. He moved to New York City in 1981, and obtained a job cataloging independently-produced punk rock and new wave recordings for the book VOLUME TWO: International Discography of the New Wave, published in 1982, which is in the collection of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Linderman left in 1981 to work at CBS News as a librarian and researcher.

While in New York, Linderman began collecting American folk art with a particular interest in African-American self-taught art and material culture. His growing collection led to a profile and interview in Folk Art Magazine, the publication of the American Museum of Folk Art in 2005. He later published a book of vintage photographs, Arcane Americana, based on this collection.

After ten years at CBS, Linderman took a job as a researcher on the PBS and BBC collaboration “The Edge,” a culture and art show presented by Robert Krulwich. The Edge ran for one year and was not renewed. Linderman spent his final years in New York researching at the BBDO ad agency; he left Manhattan in 2005.

In about 2008 Linderman began blogging about his collections. He has been interviewed and profiled in various print publications and web sites about his collection, publications and blogs. He was the subject of a full-page profile in the New York Times in 2012.

Here, some original Polaroids of ventriloquist heads circa 1975 from Jim Linderman’s collection.

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Covers of Vogue in the 1910s

Began as a weekly newspaper in 1892, before becoming a monthly magazine years later, Vogue is an American monthly fashion and lifestyle magazine, based in New York City that covers many topics, including fashion, beauty, culture, living, and runway.

The British Vogue, launched in 1916, was the first international edition, while the Italian version Vogue Italia has been called the top fashion magazine in the world. As of today, there are 26 international editions.

Here below is a photo set that shows what Vogue covers looked like from over 100 years ago.

Vogue, November 15, 1910

Cover of Vogue Magazine, November 15, 1911

Cover of Vogue, July 15, 1912

Cover of Vogue, June 1, 1912

Cover of Vogue, The Giving of a Garden Party, August 1, 1912

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30 Haunting Photographic Self-Portraits by Francesca Woodman From the 1970s

Francesca Woodman (April 3, 1958 – January 19, 1981) is best known for photographing herself. But her pictures are not self-portraits in the traditional sense. She is often nude or semi-nude and usually seen half hidden or obscured – sometimes by furniture, sometimes by slow exposures that blur her figure into a ghostly presence. These beautiful and yet unsettling images seem fleeting but also suggest a sense of timelessness.

Woodman took her first self-portrait at age thirteen and continued photographing herself until she died. She attended public school in Boulder, Colorado, between 1963 and 1971, except for second grade, which she attended in Italy, where the family spent many summers between school years. She began high school in 1972 at Abbot Academy, a private Massachusetts boarding school. There, she began to develop her photographic skills and became interested in the art form. Abbot Academy merged with Phillips Academy in 1973; Woodman graduated from the public Boulder High School in 1975.

Through 1975, she spent summers with her family in Italy in the Florentine countryside, where the family lived on an old farm, and many of her photographs were taken there. European culture and art had a significant impact on her artistic development. The influence of surrealist art, particularly the photographs of Man Ray and Claude Cahun can be seen in the themes and style of her work. She developed her ideas and skills as a student at Rhode Island School of Design.

Although Woodman used different cameras and film formats during her career, most of her photographs were taken with medium format cameras producing 2-1/4 by 2-1/4 inch (6x6 cm) square negatives. Woodman created at least 10,000 negatives, which her parents now keep. Woodman’s estate, which is managed by her parents, consists of over 800 prints, of which only around 120 images had been published or exhibited as of 2006. Most of Woodman’s prints are 8 by 10 inches (20 by 25 cm) or smaller, which “works to produce an intimate experience between viewer and photograph.” Many of Woodman’s images are untitled and are known only by a location and date.

Woodman continuously explored and tested what she could do with photography. She challenged the idea that the camera fixes time and space – something that had always been seen as one of the fundamentals of photography. She playfully manipulated light, movement and photographic effects, and used carefully selected props, vintage clothing and decaying interiors to add a mysterious gothic atmosphere to the work.

Her importance as an innovator is significant, particularly in the context of the 1970s when the status of photography was still regarded as less important than painting and sculpture. She led the way for later American artists who used photography to explore themes relating to identity such as Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin.

On January 19, 1981, Woodman took her life, aged twenty-two, jumping out of a loft window of a building on the East Side of New York City. An acquaintance wrote, “things had been bad, there had been therapy, things had gotten better, guard had been let down. Her father has suggested that Woodman’s suicide was related to an unsuccessful application for funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. A lackluster response to her photography and a failed relationship had pushed her into the deep depression.

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Strange and Fabulous Masks Made by Wladysław Teodor Benda From the 1920s and 1930s

Wladysław Teodor Benda was a Polish-American painter, illustrator, and designer. His work illustrated magazine covers such as Collier’s, McCall’s, Ladies’ Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Theatre Magazine and many others. Many publishers regarded Benda as their go-to artist for his dependability and artistic abilities.

Beginning in 1914, Benda was also an accomplished mask maker and costume designer. His sculpted, papier-mâché face masks were used in plays and dances and often in his own paintings and illustrations. They were used in masques or miracle plays in New York City at venues like the New York Coffee House. Benda also created the masks for stage productions in New York and London for such writers as Eugene O’Neill and Noël Coward.

He became so well known as a mask maker that his name became synonymous for any lifelike mask, whether it was of his design or not. Benda also created “grotesque” masks, which were more fantasy or caricature in nature. Benda created the original mask design for the movie The Mask of Fu Manchu, which was originally published as a twelve part serial in Collier’s from May 7, 1932 through July 23, 1932. The cover of the May 7 issue presented a stunning portrait by Benda. In the latter stages of his career, Benda spent less time doing illustration and more time making masks.

Articles by and about Benda and his masks appeared regularly in many of the same magazines and publications that carried his illustrations. In the 1930s, he authored the Encyclopædia Britannica entry on masks. He also wrote a book, Masks, a study of his own designs and unique construction techniques.

Here, a selection of strange and fabulous masks made by Benda from the 1920s and 1930s.

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“Heaven’s Gift” by Annie Benson Müller From the 1930s

Why are these spooky babies wearing different wigs of real human hair?

Perhaps they made you think of Victorian mourning jewelry made from the hair of the deceased? These hairy babies are usually described as post-mortem photographs or mementos of dead children on the utter creepshow that is the internet today. Alas, the true explanation is less macabre, but the result is no less unsettling.⁣⁣

These are all homemade collages using reproductions of a picture called “Heaven’s Gift” by American illustrator Annie Benson Müller, which was mass-produced in the USA through the 1930s. Crafty mamas who couldn’t afford an expensive baby book or studio portraits would glue locks of their baby’s hair and scraps from christening gowns and baby blankets to these cheap illustrations – a loving albeit slightly unsettling keepsake of their beloved babies.⁣⁣

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Individually, these creepy-cute hair babies are not too weird, but put them all together and they start to feel downright ghoulish. No wonder people assume they had a more gruesome meaning! And hey, if the real explanation doesn’t satisfy your dark appetite, just remember: these assemblages were made for babies born in the 1920s and ’30s so technically most of these do use the hair of people who are (now) dead.

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Folies Bergère Performance, circa 1932

“Le Triomphe des Vamps” at the Paris music hall, Folies Bergère, ca. 1932.

It’s fascinating to see scantily clad black men on stage with scantily clad white women in the 1930s. Was France that much ahead of the U.S. in race relations? Or was it more a matter of less strict concepts of modesty?

30 Vintage Photos of Mrs. Gertrude Shilling Wearing Eccentric Giant Hats for Years at Royal Ascot Racing Events

Considered now to be one of the greatest milliners and hat-makers in the world, the hats David Shilling designed for his mother Gertrude to be worn at Royal Ascot in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were anywhere from over the top, to avant-garde, to just plain insane!

For 30 years, until she was well into her 80s, Gertrude Shilling appeared at showy events in towering creations that took imagination to design and construct, and a very determined sort of cheek to wear. There was the five-foot tall giraffe design that she pioneered in the 1970s, a three-foot wide daisy hat – with a stalk embroidered down the back of her coat – and a massive concoction of an apple with a four-foot arrow pierced through it.

Gertrude Shilling was made for exaggeration. Born (March 3, 1910) and educated in St John’s Wood, London, she was one of the nine children of businessman Louis Silberston and his wife Phoebe. Her grandfather had been an alderman of the City of London, and most of the family were members of the Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers, a City craft guilds.

Gertrude married Ronald Shilling, who was something in the rag trade, and with whom she had David, her only son. The family lived in London’s west end, and socialized at places like the races at Deauville.

Gertrude encouraged her son’s design sense. He was 12 when he first designed a hat for her – she wore it to Ascot in 1966, stunned the staid folk in the enclosure and made the front page of the evening papers. It was the beginning of more than 30 years of Ascot outings for the mother-and-son partnership.

“I was at St Paul’s,” said David Shilling. “And art was really not on the agenda there. My mother allowed me to indulge my creative side by designing outfits for her. The outfits I made for my mother were really theatre rather than fashion. The early ones were quite extraordinary, three and four feet high, the product of a child’s imagination.

“My mother’s outfits were outrageous, but as I got older they became more glamorous and that really sowed the seeds for this revolution. It is exciting that women have the freedom now to dress how they want.”

Gertrude Shilling was often congratulated on her slender figure but she had had to struggle hard for it. As an 18-year-old debutante, she weighed 14 stone and hated being photographed. At her coming-out dance she wore a silver and white dress and described herself as looking like “an oversized fairy queen.”

The following year, she vowed to lose weight in time for a Cote d’Azur party, with the Prince of Wales and Noel Coward among the guests. In five months she lost four and a half stone. A young man, who had not seriously noticed her before, told her she looked gorgeous. To celebrate, she treated herself to a white swim suit, with stripes of red and blue stripes, at Debenham and Freebody in Wigmore Street; a matching cap made her look a little like a French revolutionary.

Gertrude was first diagnosed with breast cancer in the 1960s, but did not let it impede her appearances at Ascot. She was later the first woman to have a breast implant in Britain. She worked for charity, entertained the elderly and kept her hats in a special warehouse near in home. When all was said and worn, she had chutzpah.

“She was great fun, incredibly energetic. A gay icon before the term was even thought of. She got cancer while I was still at school and then survived 35 years after diagnosis. Amazing. Having Royal Ascot to look forward to each year helped to prolong her life, giving her that goal of getting there.”

Gertrude Shilling died on October 13, 1999.

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Inside Man Ray’s Studio in Paris From the 1920s

In 1921 Man Ray (born Emmanuel Rudnitsky, in Philadelphia) moved to Paris. As he and artist Marcel Duchamp had previously tried to create a chapter of Dada, the fractious European art movement, in New York, Duchamp and the circle of Dadaists in Paris welcomed him with open arms. They showed his recent paintings and, to help him make his way, spread the word of his talent as a portrait photographer.

Renting a ground-floor studio in a block of artists’ flats at 31 bis rue Campagne-Première, in the heart of Montparnasse, he became a central figure in the cultural scene of that cosmopolitan district of artists and expatriates. Tzara and Duchamp lived nearby for a time, the Jockey bistro and nightclub where Kiki belted out her bawdy songs was on the corner, and a couple of blocks farther on were the big sidewalk cafés where the artists congregated. The quarter was bubbling with bohemian activity and Man Ray’s ground-floor living and work space, which doubled as his portrait studio, became another nexus. The photographic lab installed in the loft was also a center of activity, a closet-sized “cottage industry” complete with assistants. 

This studio has sometimes been called a school, but it was nothing like a proper school. Like many successful photographers, Man Ray simply needed help with his equipment and with developing film and finishing prints, and within a year of arriving he had found young people to help him. Four of them went on to become famous photographers in their own right: Berenice Abbott, an American who had studied sculpture in Paris and Berlin and was struggling to survive; Jacques-André Boiffard, a French medical student who became a Surrealist and lived for long periods in Man Ray’s studio; Bill Brandt, a German who put in some time before leaving to live in London; and Lee Miller, a beautiful young American who posed for portraits and fashion shoots, and who became Man Ray’s collaborator in films and photography, as well as his lover.

Man Ray was no professor, for he taught only by example; in the tradition of apprenticeship, his assistants just watched until they learned, and then they helped. Disdainful of fancy technology, he showed them that what counted was not the camera but instead the vision of the person behind it.

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Noire et Blanche by Man Ray, 1926

Man Ray’s Noire et Blanche (French for Black and White) is a photograph exemplary of Surrealist art. The striking faces of the pale model and the dark mask have a doubling effect. This repetition is a reminder that a photograph is a double of what it represents, namely, a sign or an index of reality.

Man Ray, Kiki de Montparnasse in Noire et Blanche, 1926. © Man Ray Trust / ADAGP – PICTORIGHT / Telimage – 2013

In Surrealism the act of doubling indicates that we are all divided subjects made up of the conscious and unconscious. In reading this photograph as typical of primitivism, the woman can be understood as European civilization and the mask as “primitive” Africa. The image draws a parallel between the two faces presenting them as related to each another.

The title “black and white” is a word play because the order is reversed when reading the image left to right. The artist also printed a negative version of this image.

Noire et Blanche’s negative. (© Man Ray Trust)

The picture was first published in the Parisian Vogue magazine, on May 1, 1926. It is a portrait of Kiki de Montparnasse, Man Ray’s lover and model at the time the photograph was taken.

There are prints of the photograph in several museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, and the Stedelijk Museum, in Amsterdam. A print of the photograph was sold by $3,131,533 on November 8, 2017 at Christie’s, Paris.

Man Ray, Noire et Blanche (variante), 1926. © Man Ray Trust / ADAGP – PICTORIGHT / Telimage – 2013

Man Ray was one of the most famous and original artists of the 20th century; his importance and influence have many aspects. He revolutionized photography through his experiments and then popularized these through his work as a portrait and fashion photographer. Man Ray’s iconic images such as Noire et Blanche, Le Violon d’Ingres and haunting portraits of his many friends and colleagues are now embedded within popular consciousness.