A remarkable thing about the Barberini Faun is the way it presents the perfect body, the complete sensuality, with only the face portraying something disturbing. The dedication to the dissolute life produces something far from the good life or the life well lived - it produces a life bordering on a nightmare, or a life lived under a great weight. So says the Barberini Faun. A similar distortion of expression can be found in the other sculptures of satyrs at the Glyptothek. Age appears to deepen the malaise. The youngest faun has even a suggestion of hope in its expression. But this is lost in the Barberini Faun who is imprisoned irremediably, but not necessarily unwillingly, within his own indulgence. The second sculpture makes no reference to hope - neither present nor absent. It is at an intermediary stage. The dissolute is there, certainly, but the frown, also present in the Barberini Faun, has not yet mastered the somewhat fragile smile.
The second satyr of the three below is particularly interesting as it has on me a strong effect that I have long noticed, but which is often hard to identify. It takes us a very short while to get a first impression from a face, but it is not instant. Looking at this sculpture the very first impression is that of a smile, and yet within a couple of seconds my brain has processed other aspects of the mouth and face generally that lead my overall impression to adjust very rapidly from viewing a happy and beautiful person to viewing someone far removed from happiness and also probably far removed from from beauty, though it is hard to describe exactly the final impression. I can feel that change take place - but the process itself is quite unconscious. It’s kind of like watching a movie, except nothing in the object perceived is changing, all the change is going on as my mind takes a moment or two to read the face. Interestingly, too, the concluding point is incomplete - I am left wondering what my overall impression is - I am uncertain as to its meaning. That makes the face attract my attention, as I’d like to know more about it - it makes me search it. But it is also a very uncertain process because there are contradictions between happiness, beauty, and further strange emotions in the face. As a part of the process, my desire to see beauty is thwarted, but I find it hard to put a coherent alternative in place. The face is not ugly, but…? I am left hanging on to my desire to see beauty, even to the point of trying to project it back into the face, but my efforts are given little support.
I wonder if the sculptor was aware of all (or some) of these things, whether it is just my own reaction, or worse, my own invention? It is not hard to imagine the sculptor has sought to make a face of contradictions, but is this little two second movie with its tantalizingly incomplete conclusion a part of his intention? Any thoughts on these things?
