Analyses the expansion of head and body masking from
nineteenth-century Paris to its international maturity in contemporary
culture
- Looks at the presence and development of masquerade in the modernist
era - via performance history - with parallel references to
theatricality and performativity in visual arts and visual culture
- Comments upon masquerade's foundation in popular performance
throughout the 19th and 20th centuries,
frequently alluding to significant images from the history of
photography
- Theorises masquerade within the context of European theatre and drama
scholarship, as well as British and European conservatory arts and
performance training
- Employs critical thinking influenced by phenomenological and semiotic
analyses of performance
This book highlights that masquerade can be regarded as a distinct genre
of performance activity that employs elements of the carnivalesque,
circus, dance, gestural theatre and theatre of objects. Popenhagen
traces artistic disguising from fin de siècle Pierrots in Paris,
Marseille and Vienna to early twentieth--century masquerading
in Moscow and Zürich. He explores identity play and display through the
complementary lenses of image studies, cultural history and performance
theory.