A 1996 exhibition at the University of California-Berkeley Art Museum entitled "The Mask of Venice: Masking, Theater, and Identity in the Art of Tiepolo and His Time" explored masking, intrigue, and role-playing in La Serenissima, the Serene Republic of Venice, during the 18th-century.[1] Timed to coincide with the 300th anniversary of the birth of Giambattista Tiepolo, the presiding artistic genius of his generation, the show described masking as a metaphor for both disguise and liberation in the otherwise rigid and controlled nature of Venetian society as it neared its end at the hands of Napoleon. The mask as a liberating instrument features also prominently in the work of Irish-American artist Matt Lamb. Characters appear and disappear in his compositions in a constant play of self-differentiation and communal merge. As the critic Athena Schina has stated, "time contaminates, alters and transforms the conditions in which the beings and the currencies of life emerge and disappear as the living truth is interwoven with myth and realism with the vision in an allusive, enigmatic and hyper-realistic manner."[2] Similarly, the 18th-century master, with his elegant, fluid line and extraordinary imaginative powers, brought forth an art that drew heavily on theater, illusion, fantasy, and play. Tiepolo's paintings most particularly reflected a Venetian society deeply involved in masquerade. Already in the 14th century, Petrarch, himself an Italian, had praised Venice as a fantastic "other world." Given its extraordinary situation on hundreds of islands in a coastal lagoon, Venice is still one of the most remarkable cities in Europe. Unlike other major centers in Italy, Venice is a medieval rather than an ancient city. Its heritage was not so much that of classical Rome, but rather that of the Byzantine East, with which it had long-standing political and commercial associations.

The masks used during the Venetian Carnevale were primarily derived from those worn in the traditional commedia dell'arte, the Italian improvisational comedy featuring stock characters. As Carnevale borrowed the idea of masking from the stage, the mask became both concealing and revealing. Being masked displaces meaning from who you are to how you behave, releasing the mask wearer to act in ways that would otherwise be inappropriate. The liberating role of the mask is at once playful, mysterious, and sometimes sinister. Along with the humorous Punchinello characters featured so prominently in the commedia dell'arte, certain masks became associated with irrational types of behavior. Likewise, the figures in Matt Lamb—if we follow Donald Kuspit's assessment—appear to "have made peace with their dementia—they are comfortable being deranged."[3] Carol Damian reaches a similar conclusion when she asserts that "as [Lamb] transcends the recognizably physical and perhaps attempts to reenact a highly original spiritual creativity of his own, he is intent on revealing the higher sensibilities and tense passions that dwell beyond the sphere of reason."[4]

Equally, there is—in both the 18th- and 21st-century artists—"a general sense of the absurdity of modern life ..., a feeling of being lonely and anxious in a crowd which has no empathy for one's existence ... In Lamb we see, again and again, people who have lost their individual shapes because they have become part of the flow of the crowd."[5] We could say the same about the characters one finds in Tiepolo's compositions. For approximately eight hundred years, Venice had enjoyed a position of unrivaled superiority. Considered a breed apart from its European cousins, the Republic was unquestionably the most extravagant, most beautiful state on the Continent. Unlike the vast majority of their counterparts in contemporary European nations, each citizen in Venice enjoyed a high standard of living. However, each citizen was merely one component of the great cultural and economic machine that was the Republic.

In the visual arts, Venice was particularly exceptional and separate from the rest of Italy. By the early 17th-century four "schools," or regional traditions, of Italian painting were widely recognized: primarily the Tuscan or Florentine, the Roman, the Lombard, and the Venetian. The most distinctive of the four, the Venetian school had direct ties to painting elsewhere in the Peninsula and was recognizably Italian compared to the painting of other countries. While there is a considerable stylistic variety among the works of Venetian artists, already by mid 16th-century the fundamental common qualities of the various schools had been clearly articulated. Significant changes occurred in Venetian painting across its two periods of greatest florescence (roughly the 16th- and the 18th-centuries); but a consistent approach, often self- conscious on the part of later artists, links the latter generation painters such as Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1754), Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770), and Francesco Guardi (1712-1793) to the masters of the Venetian Renaissance, especially Titian (1488/90-1576), Jacopo Bassano (c. 1510/15-1592), Tintoretto (1519-1594), and Veronese (1528-1588).

These are among the legendary names of Venice's golden age of art. Venetians pioneered and perfected the art of painting in the rich medium of oil on canvas. They exploited the medium's versatility, producing luminescent works in radiant colors. To see their paintings is to see the soft-colored light of Venice, the Venice of 400 years ago. "The Venetians are noted for the beauty and handling of color," says George Keyes during a recent exhibition of Venetian art at the Detroit Institute of Arts. "In contrast to the importance of line in the work of Michelangelo and Raphael, Venetian painters emphasized shapes and patterns." The same point could be made in reference to the Irish-American painter. "Not formally or academically trained in the skills of drawing, color, or illusion, Lamb employs figural forms, compositional constructions, and color use that are neither tidy nor refined," according to Michal Ann Carley.[6]

George Keyes has noted that Venetian paintings can almost be characterized as hedonistic. "Their paintings were intended to delight," he has commented. A similar interest in the pleasurable and sensual qualities of the medium is evident in Matt Lamb. Carol Damian notes how extraordinary effects result from [Lamb's] obsessive interaction with subject and substance ... Each work is a transformation of substance that produces a metamorphosis of the physical world, from organic to inorganic, human to plant to animal, real to purely imaginary."[7] Hedonism was undoubtedly also at the base of Venice's Carnevale, which took on its general form in the second half of the 13th- century, uniting popular forms with political ends as a way of bringing the city together. The use of masks during the life of the Venetian Republic remains one of mankind’s notably eccentric practices. Indeed, masks have been worn in cultures throughout the world for thousands of years, but perhaps never with such fervent pageantry as in Venice. With a level of social wealth unequaled since, the citizens of Venice developed a unique culture—one in which the concealing of the identity in daily life became paramount to daily activity. The masks served an important social purpose of keeping every citizen on an equal playing field. As a result of the concealment of identity, however, people naturally found themselves taking advantage of the situation. The society grew ever more decadent. The immense amount of travelers coming through the city meant that sexual promiscuity was commonplace and acceptable. The Republic fell into a state of luxury, indolence, and moral decay. Eventually the wearing of masks in daily life was banned and limited only to certain months of the year. Nevertheless, the mask remained the greatest sign for a paradoxical situation in which what was Venetian became other, in which celebration became mourning, and in which "truth" was both hidden and revealed. Similarly, "with a sense of wit and humor and a fair degree of irony and criticism, Lamb depends on his characters to bring his world out of physical chaos and into the light of a new spiritual reality."[8]

The emblem of Carnevale was, literally, the mask, a term that could apply to the wearer as well as to the object, attesting to the depth of identification of individual with disguise. As noted earlier, the masks of Carnevale derived most immediately from the masks worn on stage in the traditional commedia dell'arte and more distantly from masks worn in traditional societies, and shared with the latter certain basic characteristics thought to be universal to the practice of masking: simultaneously an act of simulation or mimicry and of disguise, masking could be alienating and transporting, intoxicating and liberating.[9] To be masked privileges the wearer, protecting subjectivity and privatizing individual identity. It displaces meaning from who one is to how one behaves. The carnivalesque festival was, through the use of masks, "an interregnum of vertigo, effervescence, and fluidity in which everything that symbolizes order in the universe is temporarily abolished so that it can later re-emerge," according to Caillois. Such festivals were, like art itself, fundamentally about unmasking, disclosing the unvarnished truth hiding under a veil of false and arbitrary information.[10] The wearing of masks, then, could serve to reinvigorate, renew, and recharge both individuals and society. In the same way, Friedrich Kasten has observed how Lamb's "figures stand out against the riot of color, only to retreat back into it, or to be reborn from it anew."[11]

The most notorious of Venetian mask types has been thought to be the black mask, associated with amorous intrigue and mysterious plots against prevailing powers. This type of mask, again quoting Caillois, liberates the wearer from social constraints: "In a world in which sexual relationships are subject to many taboos ... the black mask ... traditionally symbolizes the means and often the announced decision to violate these taboos."[12] The wearing of masks at Carnevale thus became a kind of release from, even a compensation for, the decency and prudence deemed necessary throughout the rest of the year. In the case of Venice, still in the 18th-century a staunchly Catholic city in which most public art played a religious function, the effect of the mask in providing release from dominant moral codes must have been considerable. Friedrich Kasten also notes that Lamb's world can only be interpreted as "the world behind the mirror, the world of daydreams and divine hallucinations, which invites us to loosen the ties of rationality and everyday considerations."[13] The function of his masks is to liberate the individual by forcing him/her to project his/her individual identity into a universal whole represented by "the other."

Perhaps the most important form of mask in the Venetian Carnevale, as an object with which the wearer identified, was the bautta, the combination of mask, black cape, and tricorn hat that came to symbolize the festival. The bautta, whose name is commonly thought to derive from the cry "bau, bau" used to frighten children, was reserved for the most fortunate members of society—nobles and part of the middle class. Part of its function was to allow wearers to pass through the turbulent city without being disturbed. At the same time, wearing the bautta in public places had the effect of checking displays of excessive luxury in apparel, something of increasing concern to Venice's great and good as the divide between rich and poor became more noticeable and as revolution began to sweep Europe. The wearing of the bautta was strictly regulated. Women were required to wear it at the theater, and nobles and foreigners were obligated to don it for most official ceremonies. It brought to the heart of the city a kind of "otherness," as if the wearer were transported to another land where he was unknown. The art of Matt Lamb has a similar purpose. "The artist takes leave of 'structures of certainty', he rids himself of everyday routines to enter a new realm of experience. He creates lyrical islands in a prosaic sea, or enters gardens of dreams. Of what he finds his paintings speak. They are the painted diary of an explorer in the realm of the imagination."[14]

Two additional forms of Carnevale masks spoke to the relationship between genders in the male-dominated world of 18th-century Venice. The first of these is the gnaghe, a mask worn by men to impersonate women. In addition to the mask, the wearer was required to adopt a shrill tone of voice, in an attempt to imitate, stereotypically, the voices of women. More revealing, perhaps, is the moretta, a black oval mask worn exclusively by patrician women. What is particularly telling about the moretta is that it had no bands or strings but was instead held in place by the means of a button that the wearer clenched between her teeth. Speech was effectively precluded. The visual element was the only means of communication. This is also true for Matt Lamb. As Athena Schina suggests, "each image is a syllable, and each syllable is a bond relationship that unites contradictions in nodes but it also diversifies them organically, presenting on the surface a kind of narrative mesh consisting of realistic, surrealistic and expressionistic elements as a converted sediment in which they take on a revelatory guise."[15] As the same author notes, this other form of narrative leaves "traces and imprints, rhythm-generating motions and plastic vibrations [that] place their charge on the color of the canvas."[16] Indeed, I want to argue that a strong connection exists between the communicative symbols of the Carnevale masks and the known Venetian inclination toward a progressive dissolution of form into color and light. The link between the two may be found in the deep desire for mystery and equivocation that underlies both.

From early in the 16th-century the Venetians avoided the use of clear, precise outlines in favor of softer, more atmospheric effects, and they created compositions based on color rather than line. Venetian colors were not more brilliant or varied than those used by Florentine artists. Rather, in Venetian art the arrangement of colors, their tonality, and the tactile quality of the paint itself were more a fundamental part of the image than an embellishment of a drawing. Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) was the first to establish oil on canvas as the typical medium, thus abandoning wood panels. The advantage of his oil emulsions was in their translucency and depth of color. The artist came to master the employment of glazes, producing luminous effects as light reflecting from the underlying colors shone through the darker-hued film coating. His love for light came from his teacher, Giovanni Bellini, who also instructed Giorgione (Giorgio da Castelfranco, c. 1478-1510) in a new and highly lyrical use of light. The lighting is soft and hazy and is used to create mood rather than to define sharply the objects in the scene. Giorgione deliberately refused to make preparatory drawings, preferring instead to compose directly on the canvas; he felt that this led to a more atmospheric rendering and to more striking color effects.

As the 16th-century progressed, the Venetian artist's brushwork became increasingly visible, breaking through contours, animating the surface of the pictures, and obscuring minute details. For the principal support of Venetian painting, rough-woven canvas replaced smooth wooden panels. The texture of the canvas further exaggerated the painterly effects. At the same time, the paintings' emphasis on surface texture and brilliant effects of light and color gives them a sensuous quality that suggests the sheer decorative potential of Venetian painting. If the classical painters of central Italy had achieved the new complete harmony within their pictures by means of perfect design and balanced arrangement, it was only natural that the painters of Venice should follow the lead of Giovanni Bellini, who made such happy use of color and light to unify his pictures. It was in this sphere that the painter Giorgione achieved the most revolutionary results. Though the figures are not particularly carefully drawn, and though the composition is somewhat artless, the picture is clearly blended into a whole simply by the light and air that permeate it all. It is there, by its own right, as the real subject of the painting. From now on, painting was more than drawing plus coloring. It was an art with its own secret laws and devices.

The love of the medium for its own sake is obvious in Matt Lamb. Mary Towley Swanson has written that the artist "admires the way in which the color of the gouache becomes more intense as the oil under the medium curdles and pushes it to the surface", or how "linseed oil, generously mixed with pigments, allows each of the different media to mix, while retaining their special coloristic qualities."[17] The same applies to Titian. Following in Giorgione's steps, the 16th-century Venetian painter came to be considered the shaper of the Venetian coloristic and painterly tradition. In his late works forms gradually came to lose their solidity, partially dissolving into hazy paint textures and vibrant brushstrokes, while color becomes more intense, so that a universe seems to be on the verge of disintegrating into flame. In his mature paintings Titian used this dematerializing style to convey a state of being that transcends the physical. His work, which permanently affected the course of European painting, provided an alternative, of equal power and attractiveness, to the linear and sculptural Florentine tradition championed by Michelangelo and Raphael.

The last masters of this phase of the Venetian school—Jacopo Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti) and Paolo Veronese (Paolo Caliari)—were strongly influenced by Titian. The former was most interested in Titian's use of dramatic light and the depiction of heightened emotion. Tintoretto aspired to combine the coloristic invention of Titian with the monumental figures of Michelangelo. His brushstrokes are rough and broken. Such an unorthodox technique incurred the censure of his contemporaries, but later generations recognized it as a means of elevating the drama and tension. He made use of the rapidly receding diagonals and foreshortenings popular among Mannerist painters but brought to these elements the Venetians' love of light as a means of defining form and heightening the sense of drama. On the other hand, Veronese is best known for the rich color and inter-weaving compositions that he learned from Titian and used in large paintings crowded with figures.

As noted earlier, the last period of significance for Venetian art occurred in the 18th-century, during which time several painters of quality arose who enjoyed international reputations: Canaletto, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and Francesco Guardi. Against a backdrop of political and economic decline, the 18th-century actually came to represent for Venetian history an extraordinary late flowering in art unequaled since the Renaissance. Returning to the last important Venetian figure painter with whom we started this essay, Tiepolo was one of the greatest decorative artists of the Rococo. His characteristic style displays numerous active figures in vivid pastel colors ranged across vast, airy spaces. Critic Robert Hughes describes Tiepolo's work as "full of soaring and twisting space, transparency and delicious shot-silk color—a place dedicated to the imagination and filled with idealized personages from history, myth and fable." Yet arts historian Paul Holberton has observed that Tiepolo "could temper the graceful, operatic posturing typical of the Rococo school with an Olympian grandeur."

Perhaps the most obvious characteristic to emerge from looking at some of Tiepolo's series is the extent to which similar motifs and figures reappear from one print to the next and from one series to the next, despite the fact that neither series seems to involve any explicit or implicit narrative. Standing wise men in oriental costume, emaciated dogs, young soldiers, urns emblazoned with masklike motifs, these are the dominant refrains of many of his etchings. Such motifs can be found, in their genesis, in the artist's drawings, where the works known as the Solefigure vestite, the single dressed or standing figures, explore the same facial types, part oriental, part gypsy, that appear over and over again in the prints. The sage, especially, presents a seemingly impassive or ambiguous front that, when combined with other figures, sets him apart as a sort of masked stoic. Even when alone, these figures possess a certain masked quality, like the stock stage characters of the commedia. In combining his stock actors, Tiepolo evokes what have been described as "the contrasting yet complementary themes of life and death, youth and age, primitive instinct and ancient wisdom." In the case of Lamb, "the artist wishes to convey deep spiritual messages of agony and hope, death and re-creation ... His themes focus on life and death and man's spiritual journey between the two: their optimistic messages of rebirth and resurrection express the need to transcend the limits of human existence."[18] As Carol Damian has pointed out, "crowded into their own imaginary world, Lamb's figures bear mask-like faces and a strange and incomplete corporeal presence."[19] For both painters, one in the 18th- and the other in the 21st-century, art reflects a particular attitude about creation, about illusion, fantasy and play, and—most definitely—about re-defining one's identity through the universality of the mask.

[1]. Oliver Logan. 1972. Culture and Society in Venice, 1470-1790: The Renaissance and lts Heritage. London: B. T. Batsford Ltd.

[2]. Athena Schina, in Dominicus Rohde (ed.). 2002. Lamb: Peace, Tolerance, Understanding, Hope and Love. Tünsdorf: smkt University Press, p. 28

[3]. Donald Kuspit, in Dominicus Rohde (ed.). 2002. Lamb: Peace, Tolerance, Understanding, Hope and Love. Tünsdorf: smkt University Press, p.  20

[4]. Carol Damian, in Dominicus Rohde (ed.). 2002. Lamb: Peace, Tolerance, Understanding, Hope and Love. Tünsdorf: smkt University Press, p. 23

[5]. Donald Kuspit, in Dominicus Rohde (ed.). 2002. Lamb: Peace, Tolerance, Understanding, Hope and Love. Tünsdorf: smkt University Press, p. 20

[6]. Michal Ann Carley, in Dominicus Rohde (ed.). 2002. Lamb: Peace, Tolerance, Understanding, Hope and Love. Tünsdorf: smkt University Press, p. 47

[7]. Carol Damian, in Dominicus Rohde (ed.). 2002. Lamb: Peace, Tolerance, Understanding, Hope and Love. Tünsdorf: smkt University Press, p. 23

[8]. Carol Damian, in Dominicus Rohde (ed.). 2002. Lamb: Peace, Tolerance, Understanding, Hope and Love. Tünsdorf: smkt University Press, p. 23

[9]. Roger Caillois. 1961. Man, Play, and Games, trans. Meyer Barash. New York: The Free Press, p. 75-87

[10]. Mikhail Bakhtin. 1984. Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

[11]. Friedrich Kasten, in Dominicus Rohde (ed.). 2002. Lamb: Peace, Tolerance, Understanding, Hope and Love. Tünsdorf: smkt University Press, p. 25

[12]. Roger Caillois. 1961. Man, Play, and Games, trans. Meyer Barash. New York: The Free Press, p. 131

[13]. Friedrich Kasten, in Dominicus Rohde (ed.). 2002. Lamb: Peace, Tolerance, Understanding, Hope and Love. Tünsdorf: smkt University Press, p. 26

[14]. Friedrich Kasten, in Dominicus Rohde (ed.). 2002. Lamb: Peace, Tolerance, Understanding, Hope and Love. Tünsdorf: smkt University Press, p. 26

[15]. Athena Schina, in Dominicus Rohde (ed.). 2002. Lamb: Peace, Tolerance, Understanding, Hope and Love. Tünsdorf: smkt University Press, p. 28

[16]. Athena Schina, in Dominicus Rohde (ed.). 2002. Lamb: Peace, Tolerance, Understanding, Hope and Love. Tünsdorf: smkt University Press, p. 28

[17]. Mary Towley Swanson, in Dominicus Rohde (ed.). 2002. Lamb: Peace, Tolerance, Understanding, Hope and Love. Tünsdorf: smkt University Press, p. 13

[18]. Angela Tamvaki, in Dominicus Rohde (ed.). 2002. Lamb: Peace, Tolerance, Understanding, Hope and Love. Tünsdorf: smkt University Press, p. 17

[19]. Carol Damian, in Dominicus Rohde (ed.). 2002. Lamb: Peace, Tolerance, Understanding, Hope and Love. Tünsdorf: smkt University Press, p. 24