We read each other's faces in detail - nuances of brow, clouding over of the eye, tightening of muscles around the mouth - the messages sent out - the bat squeak of sexuality - flirting. A host of narratives to contemplate e.g.

a. natural features and movement - moles, creases, yawns and laughter

b. conscious distortion - wink, smirk, wrinkling the nose

There has always been a reluctance to explore a full range of expressions on the human face. Portraiture and even narrative paintings tend to the schematic, even bland. Yet artists and scientists are interested in the relationship between the musculature, emotion and stimulus.

There is however a substratum of imagery that suggests that photographers, certain artists, and in particular cartoonists and satirists were interested in pushing the face further.

There is a popular tradition of recording facial distortion in folk prints, in gurning competitions (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), and in mugging for the camera (family albums and in Jim Carey's perennial acting style) or deliberate use of the head and expression alone.

Where to start ?

USEFUL BOOKS

1. Ernst Kris, Psychoanalytical Explorations in Art, Schocken New York 1964 (1952)has two relevant sections,

A Psychotic Sculptor of the Eighteenth Century ( F.X.Messerschmidt, and Part Three - the Comic (including an essay with Gombrich) .

See also Ernst Gombrich's Meditations on a Hobby Horse, Phaidon London 1963, see sections On Physiognomic Perception, and The Cartoonist's Armory, There is published correspondence between Kris and Gombrich in the academic press that is valuable.

2. The Pulling of Faces can be traced in cartoon and caricature in Judith Wechsler, A Human Comedy, Physiognomy and Caricature in 19th century Paris, Thames & Hudson 1982. I have found little myself on Face Pulling (children, play etc) but I haven't really looked hard. I have enjoyed various essays in

Bruner, Jolly and Sylva, PLAY Its Role in Development and Evolution Penguin Harmondsworth 1976,

3. Racial slant on this see Lewis P.Curtis, Apes and Angels, The Irishman in Victorian Caricature, David and Charles, Newton Abbot, 1971 (Smithsonian) how to demonise your Fenian enemy using Darwin. Simianising the Celt.

4. Classical analysis of facial types and expressions, Jurgis Baltrusaitis, Aberrations, An Essay on the Legend of Forms,MIT press Cambridge Mass., see Animal Physiognomy, and reference to Leonardo's Grotesques, to G della Porta De Humana Physiognomia 1586, Charles Le Brun TraitŽ de Passions, P.Comper Treatise on Physiognomie, J.C.Lavater, Essays on Physiognomy, right up to the 1850's when all this material informed the caricatures of Cruikshank, Gavarni and Daumier - the animalistic in expression being the licence to explore extremes of expression.

In terms of the classic texts see Charles Darwin, The Expression of the emotions in Animal and Man, several editions, uses the photographs of the French doctor, Duchene de Boulogne, who had made experiments with passing electricity through the face of a man whose facial muscles had failed after a stroke. (influence on the Surrealists. Also see references to Charcot on female Hytseria, that during mental illness the face abandons all decorum. Again, very influential on Surrealist art. See also the work of Sir Charles Bell, anatomist who studied the relationship between expression and facial muscles without recourse to the supernatural or just plain spookiness of Lavater.

5. One of the determinants in deciding what level of expression the imagemaker is allowed in showing expression is the representation of pain - particularly after Lessing's essay on the Laocoon, a standard and easily available text on depicting the pain shown on the face.

See also Lucy Bending, The Representation of Bodily Pain in late nineteenth century culture, Clarendon Press London 2000, mainly literary but interesting. See also Lisa Silverman, Tortured Subjects Pain Truth and the Body in early modern France The University of Chicago Press, again not exactly visual.

6. Generally there is a large body of work generally on the human face, see John Liggett, The human face, Constable London 1974 excellent start on the visual. Practical uses of facial analysis - see Jacques Penry Ôs books on the face, the inventor of the Photofit system used in crime.

See John Prag and Richard Neave, Making faces, Using Forensic and Archaelogical Evidence, British Museum Press London 1987.

7. Facial marking and masks, many excellent works on this aspect of the face in the theatre - the facial language of makeup and the disguises of Mummers and Players - particularly the faces made for the Italian Commedia del'Arte. see John Mack (ed) Masks the Art of Expression British Museum Press London on the needs of the masquerade and the religious ritual - drawn from many cultures represented in the British Museum.

8. individual artists and the extremes of expression

8.1 a drawing I found in the Exter Museum by Benjamin Robert Haydon, I smell a stink, the self portrait as he sniffs something awful. I have a repro of this.

8.2 H.Perry Chapman, Rembrandt Self Portraits, A Study in seventeenth Century Identity, Princeton University Press Princeton New Jersey

8.3 Gustave Courbet,

9. Manuals of Drawing Faces - a very important sector of inquiry is this.

PROJECTS

to study the faces of footballers after scoring a goal

sudden changes of expression in the early silent cinema

getting people to pull faces for the camera

calculate the transitions from calm to greed

the use of expression in the desiring of the product

the depiction of grief

conditions when the face is concealed

mechanical extensions to the face (eye, nose, ears etc)