A Man of Many Hats: Macri's Millinery Motif
by Kenneth Radu
Part One:
Various characters in cinema, art and literature are so closely associated with their hats that the two become inseparable, the hat forming part of character and narrative: for example, Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and his deerstalker cap, or Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade and his fedora, or Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and her broad hat over a wimple. Dr. Seuss’s Cat always wears a lopsided, peppermint top hat, which reminds me of Macri’s Deus Ex Machina a comical, Dickensian-looking chimney sweep with his seemingly knitted and tilted top hat.
 |
|
The mask in this portrait disguises nothing, for the eyes are obvious, but it does arouse curiosity and unease, as masks sometimes do. Despite the tight fit of the shirt with its chain-like threading, open at the neck, there’s disarray in this portrait, a devil-may-care attitude indicated by the strands of loose hair amidst the necklaces, which themselves point to something out of the ordinary, as if the psychology or morality of the man is as tangled and insouciant as his appearance. The hat crowns the pause, possibly pensiveness, or the look of expectation, something about to happen, or not, or, having happened, stillness now reigns. Because of its size and appearance, the hat attracts attention and acquires significance.
My first response to this portrait was to smile, for it is indeed somewhat comical; but the humour becomes tinged with wariness and apprehensiveness. That may well be the effect of the surprising hat, a top hat, the sign of a gentleman, but here possibly snatched off said gentleman’s head and plunked down on the head of a thief like someone out of Oliver Twist. The shift in my response could also be caused by the arrangement of long hair, necklaces, and the one ear poking out of the hair like an animal’s ear sticking out of fur.
Yes, Deus Ex Machina is both calm and devious, not a figure I would willingly trust; either a fool or madman (and I use the term madman in a purely literary sense), for we know Macri incorporates aspects of both in his portraits. Let’s not forget the title with its meaning of either divine intervention or convenient contrivance, both designed to save the day, as it were, or free a hero from a narrative dead end. I can’t help feeling there’s something slightly mad and/or demonic in this portrait, either real or feigned, so the title is a risky intervention indeed between art and viewer. Who exactly requires either divine or demonic assistance, or some arbitrary event that resolves a problem? The incongruent hat tops it all off. I recall poor, hatless Edgar on the heath in King Lear, who begrimes himself, pretends to be mad to save his life, and calls out the names of a host of devilish henchmen and clowns like flibbertigibbet, Mahu, and Frateretto, any one of whom could appear like Macri’s portrait.
Mention madness and hat in the same breath and Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter’s Tea Party immediately comes to mind. The Mad Hatter’s hat with the attached price tag, as depicted by Tenniel’s illustration in the first edition, remains permanently fixed in memory. Frenzy and absurdity co-exist in the topsy-turvy party Alice attends. Of course, not all hats necessarily bespeak derangement. Often, they convey cultural identity, sensitivity and beauty, divinity and victory like Donatello’s sculpture of a lithesome David whose hat is wreathed with laurel. Who can forget Ingrid Bergman’s wide-brimmed hat in Casablanca, which adds to her poignant loveliness. The hats may also indicate a silent connection among groups of people, as they do in Jean Paul Lemieux’s Dufferin Terrace. Of course, there’s the perfect and humorous bowler hat in Magritte’s The Son of Man, and the striking image in William Strang’s Lady with a Red Hat, and Macri’s own portrait of man whose head bends under a preponderant sombrero.
Outside the cinema and literature, in everyday life people used to wear hats or head coverings of one kind or another as a matter of course. I don’t mean baseball caps here, the signature head piece of our day, but beanies, berets, boaters, bonnets, bowlers, fedoras, hijabs, homburgs, kippahs, kufis, sombreros, top hats, toques, trilbies, turbans, wimples, and so on. There were absurd and fanciful creations for women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, or simple hats like a cloche or pillbox with net veil, or slouch hats, scarves and kerchiefs, or beaded caps for dressy formal occasions like the one Bette Davis wears in Dark Victory. Aside from the dictates of weather, hats were often worn (and still are) more as a matter of social custom and/or personal vanity than of necessity or religious rules, although the latter remains true for many across the world. In a moment of authorial pretension, I once donned a fedora for an author’s photo, a hat I had never worn before or since.
Of course, my range of reference here is limited. The history and meaning of hats and assorted head coverings in disparate cultures around the world can fill volumes, but having put on my thinking cap, I shall restrict myself to a purely subjective, less ambitious and geographically limited essay about a few of the hats or head coverings in Adamo Macri’s portraits. Also, hats in life are not quite the same thing as hats depicted in art. Art may reflect reality, but it also changes it. I have written about specific elements in Macri’s oeuvre before (e.g. eyeglasses in
The Eyes Have It), but studying various Macri portraits has made me take my hat off not only to admire, but also to consider how hats function in these works.
The hats in Macri’s art take many shapes, although the toque is a favourite, and I dare say because it’s more malleable than a fedora or top hat. All the head coverings, which include cowls, hoodies, crowns, scarves and, of course, the toque, become inextricable from the total effect and meaning of the image: change the head covering in Aerosol from hijab to a cloche and the portrait’s profundity and purpose is altered, its specific cultural and political context even undermined. Similarly, the portrait Psionic Foresight demonstrates that in Macri’s art, specific hats in whatever form are as artistically essential, as inseparable from the identity of the figure depicted, as hats and/or head coverings are in portraits by Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Frans Hals, Magritte, Vigée Le Brun, and Rubens.
For example, in Jean-Jacques David’s romantic canvas, Napoleon Crossing the Alps, a stylized Napoleon, astride a galloping, vigorous steed, wears a gold-trimmed bicorne the wrong way to highlight his distinctiveness, even if, in historical fact, Napoleon sat on a mule to manage the mountainous trails. It wouldn’t serve David’s purpose to have Napoleon ride a jackass, or even trundle over the Alps like Hannibal on an elephant. But the hat is so well integrated in the rhythm and colour scheme of the composition that it's now indelible. Hat, horse, and phony Napoleon: a perfect trilogy of propaganda and hero worship.
Consider the enormous black hat in The Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals wherein the size and colour (or shades of black) of the hat, despite traditionally negative associations with black, contribute to the zest and luxuriousness of the portrait. The overwhelming hat seems to be laughing like the man, the hat as much a display of personal wealth as the jewels and lace on his chest, symbolic of riches and social status, of imperial exploitation and smug vanity. The hat commands attention and becomes a symbol of the person, just as the hat in Macri’s Psionic Foresight says a good deal about the figure wearing it.
When Macri offers a head without hat, covering or ornamentation, the hair often acts the role of symbolic hat and conveys meaning in ways similar to that of a carefully chosen hat. This is evident, for example, in the sensitive portrait Gerasim, or in the study of the divided brain in Latent Corpus Callosum Discernment, or in the narratively ladened and disconcerting work Cursive Penmanship and the Misfortunes of Virtue, and certainly in the hatless, ready-to-rumble, provocative series Night. Lest I lose my hat, I return to the matter at hand. There are many appearances of the toque and cowl in Macri’s art. I suspect it has something to do with manipulation and plasticity, texture and structure, allowing the artist to arrange and adjust to achieve an effect so necessary to the portrait that it cannot be complete without it.
Given the title of Psionic Foresight, one may well ask if a baseball cap would serve the purpose? The answer to this question resides in the actual head covering Macri has chosen for this quiet yet powerful piece. If it’s his purpose to draw a viewer’s attention to the notion of extrasensory phenomena like telepathy, telekinesis, precognition, clairvoyance, insight, foresight and second sight, then a fedora won’t produce the same quiet beauty and impact as the grey toque so carefully woven that I’m reminded of a tight collection of cells, the grey matter of intelligence and perception among the folds of the brain. The toque seems to grow out of the head rather than simply cover it. The tilt of the head causes it to dip and gather on the shoulder, as if there’s an abundance of intuitive knowledge that cannot be confined within the skull, the drop of the hat on the left side corresponding with the fall of hair on the right. One might say that the toque in this portrait is a crowning achievement. I love the balance and pairings of elements so often seen in a Macri portrait, evidence of his careful attention to structure, colour and composition. We know that Macri is fascinated by the physiology of the brain and what it portends, as the portrait Latent Corpus Callosum Discernment so amply demonstrates, a portrait significantly devoid of hat.
Part Two:
Although the toque in Male Head with Toque is the same texture as that in Psionic Foresight, its arrangement here suggests versatility and pliability, a perfect device for artistic manipulation. It also emphasizes the image of masculine poise and refinement, given the clipped beard, skin tones, smooth features. This is not a face that threatens or a poise that raises anxieties. With no implication of derangement, the face instills a sense of ease, as if what the soothsayer sees will not disturb the viewer, assuming he has such powers. Moreover, the position or angle of the head, along with the toque, gives this portrait an aura of regality, and reminds me of the Head of an Oba (a Nigerian king), a sculpture of which can be seen in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
What is interesting in Male Head with Toque, among other aspects of the portrait, is not only the toque, but also the body. If the purpose of a toque is to keep the head warm on a cold day, why would the body be unclothed? The same question applies to Histrionic Sitter. Lack of other clothing does focus attention on the head and hat, so to speak, and indeed, the appearance and texture of the toques become central to understanding the art. We can dispense with the obvious immediately. What the man is wearing has nothing to do with the weather. We’ll also put aside the eye coverings in each portrait (the word sunglasses doesn’t seem applicable), although they are equally important, but they’re not my focus at the moment.
 |
| Histrionic Sitter |
The title, Histrionic Sitter, makes me take off my hat and scratch my head. Is there not a deliberate contradiction here? A “sitter” indicates someone posed and poised, stable, inactive, waiting, and in a sense the figure is precisely that. The word histrionic, however, indicates volatility, drama, attention seeking, lack of restraint. I see little of that in this portrait. One may reasonably argue that the freneticism is inward, hidden beneath the monk-like cowl and behind the severe eyewear. The man appears collected and quiet on the outside, but may well be semi-hysterical within. One can only speculate and play the psychologist. Macri’s portraits contain narratives, that much is certain, whether overt or subtle, obvious or symbolic. Whatever the case may be, the reason for the title of this piece is kept under the sitter’s hat, or cowl in this case, and one can only speculate.
The narrative implicit in each portrait is also evident in Street Art, a curious name, wherein the black hoodie functions as a cowl with its religious significance, say a monk, or potential disguise if some form of criminal activity is intended, or simply shelter against the wind. If I look at it long enough, I imagine a seed pod like that of a milkweed, opening to reveal growth within, as if the head of the artist is about to emerge from the silent depth of creation, a symphony of significance that calls to mind Beethoven‘s magnificent Ninth Symphony composed when he was in fact deaf to the external sound of music. And yet, I sense that the head can just as easily be receding, as if retreating from exposure into its own private cell of consciousness. The hood, the pod, will be zipped up to enclose it utterly, an introvert’s dream or a claustrophobe’s nightmare.
I wonder if the blackness of the hood contributes to the simultaneity of opening and closing, in the way a white hoodie may not. And there’s that splatter of white on the cloth and the indecipherable writing on the hood like graffiti, so to speak. We cannot know the “story,” nor, do I believe, it’s Macri’s intention that we do. Colour symbolism, of course, is present in any culture, and in the West white is most often associated with virtue, purity and innocence; or, if one wishes to move into negative associations, white also signifies absence, loss of vitality, sickness, even death and ghostliness. The head in Macri's Coded Palette, however, pushes outward, a shock of symbolically green hair bursting out and proclaiming: here is life, here is vitality, here is extroversion, her is joy. Except it’s unreal, isn’t it?
The image of Christ with a crown of thorns on the jacket combined with the clownish spots on the cheeks, and the evident artificiality of the hair, all render this portrait ambiguous. The bright whiteness may be cover-up for, oh, I don’t know, something insidious, unsavoury, the way clowns for all their humour and harmless slapstick can actually terrify rather than amuse young children and make some adults apprehensive. Like Stephen King’s clown, Pennywise. The lack of expression in the Macri portrait, however, prevents this work from being overtly or implicitly malevolent, except it’s so made-up of contradictory elements that I can’t quite feel comfortable in its presence. It’s absurd, it’s fun, it’s odd, it’s off-putting, and it’s fascinating. Since facial expression is a form of predetermination, Macri takes pains to avoid it, thereby rendering his works richer in implication, narratively more complex and open to viewers’ own understanding of what they see.
One work where expression is utterly absent is Male Head with Bugle, a brilliant contraption. I used the word contraption deliberately because the portrait consists of a collection of minerals, crystals and geometric shapes like the Fibonacci spiral, and a metallic, sharply pointed hat. Unlike the cloth hats of other portraits, the prominently positioned hat here is smooth, flat, lacking the texture and woven complexity of the toque, and seemingly held in place by black straps. The effect of this hat, combined with other elements, is to deprive the figure of depth and humanity, as if Macri has ingeniously concocted a portrait of an android: hollow, devoid of emotion and depth, a kind of a digitalized human being, as soulless and robotic as anything AI could have created, despite the glitter, or because of it. I think, also, that the glittery and metallic surfaces of this piece discourage psychological analysis of the sitter, which is often merely speculative, at times impertinent, and in any case irrelevant here.
One of Macri’s portraits, among many to be sure, where viewers may well be tempted to offer their psychological study is
Flanked by Concrete. I don’t necessarily exempt myself from this popular activity. There’s such a calm aura about the portrait
Flanked by Concrete that it undercuts any notion of struggle, even if the figure appears to be emerging from the lifeless background and freeing himself from, well, being flanked. The military notion of being flanked by the enemy, however, doesn’t seem to apply here. Indeed, the very undifferentiated features and smoothness of the toque itself demonstrate a fitting ease and comfort. I have written about this work in a piece about Macri’s art called
In My Dark Gallery, and won’t repeat myself here, except to say that the black toque (or is it deep brown?) in this portrait heightens the somewhat brutalist elements, connecting head with concrete. It suggests at the very least that the figure is not rejecting but merging into the ambience, not fighting to free or identify anything distinctive about himself, separate from his world, but calmly blending into its hard reality. Yes, the air of concrete confidence in this portrait is highlighted by the toque. He is flanked by concrete, but is also part of it.
I remind myself again of the inherent architectural and sculptural elements in a Macri portrait. At the risk of talking through my hat, so to speak, I wonder if ideas about undecorated functionality and the deliberate exposure of raw materials in so-called brutalist architecture are pertinent here, given the colouring, structure and calm impersonality of the man in the brutalist-looking toque. To illustrate what I mean by undecorated functionality, a visual comparison between the austerity of Flanked by Concrete and the elaborate baroque mask and head gear Macri’s Carnevale will suffice.
To contrast further the living figure in a visually diminished world of Flanked by Concrete, nothing to my mind reveals more about Macri’s adept and original handling of hats than the portrait Memento Mori, an extraordinary work about mortality and decay, a portrait rich with an awareness of the cyclical nature of life and death in the natural and human world, which are not separated. And the hat! Resembling a cracked skull or a pseudo carapace of hardened sloughed off skin or fragments of a discarded hive, it crowns death tinged with life, it covers both depletion and vitality.
Hats never fail to demonstrate Macri’s acute sense of composition and colour, balance and weights, structure and texture, from a simple toque to the elaborate, baroque hat of
Telltale Manual. His range of head coverings is extensive, and includes often impressive portraits of the regal and the divine. One of my favourite portraits, for example, is the exquisitely subtle
Pinus Attis in which the head is partially covered with a cluster of pine needles, attached like a fascinator. Here, the “hat” has pagan, as well as Christian associations, as I have written previously in an essay called
Behold the Man.
I believe that I’ve said no more about hats than the obvious in this essay. When we first look at a portrait by Adamo Macri, we may be inclined to say something like the hat’s purpose is clear, but the more we look, the more we see depths and subtleties, narratives and nuances, and realize that, no, the meaning of hats is not obvious at all, but only seems so. Therein lies the mystery; therein lies the splendour of Adamo Macri’s art.
Kenneth Radu has published books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. His work has been nominated for a Governor General’s award and twice received the Quebec Writers’ Federation prize for best English-language fiction. He also has written extensively for the online cultural magazine, Salon .II. He has recently completed the manuscript of a new novel, which is now undergoing revisions.
A Man of Many Hats: Macri's Millinery Motif
