This animation by South Shields artist Sheila Graber traces the use of the expressive image in art from African masks to the twentieth century.The animation uses plasticene modelling and directly painting under the camera as a technique. The film opens with a depiction of outer space showing stars and planets. A spiral cloud starts to fill the centre of the view. The distraught face from Edvard Munch’s painting the Scream appears through the cloud. Title: Expressionism [title over The...

This animation by South Shields artist Sheila Graber traces the use of the expressive image in art from African masks to the twentieth century.The animation uses plasticene modelling and directly painting under the camera as a technique. The film opens with a depiction of outer space showing stars and planets. A spiral cloud starts to fill the centre of the view. The distraught face from Edvard Munch’s painting the Scream appears through the cloud. Title: Expressionism [title over The Scream image] On a red background the form of a female figurine appers, the Venus of Willendorf, which transforms into other early interpretations of the human body. A face with large luminous eyes stares out from the centre of a blue coloured ornamented circle, which then transforms into a depiction of the Indian god Shiva as Lord of Dance. Primitive face masks appear on screen followed by a face made with clay or plasticine, which is then covered with metal foil, then it is transformed once again into a grotesque mask. Close-ups of primitive masks follow. The animation continues with a rapid montage of transforming human faces and animal or dragon-like heads. They in turn transform into early representations of crucifixes. The sequence is followed by an example of an illuminated page from an early Christian text. This transforms into the interior of a cathedral looking up towards a vaulted ceiling with a large window in the distance and other windows at either side. A ghostly depiction of Christ appears. Then one of the early masks appears which transforms into a piece of stained glass depicting the face of Christ. This is followed by other painted depictions of Christ, including one of the Crucifixion by Graham Sutherland. This gives way to a bright yellow sun, which changes into a landscape showing a wheat field by Van Gogh. It moves on to The Scream by Munch, a detail from the Girls of Avignon by Picasso and a depiction of a woman’s head with the German word Brücke, which represents a school of expressionist artists based in Dresden. More abstract faces appear including the 1922 painting by Paul Klee called Senecio, which is followed by a representation of a painting by Kandinsky, morphing into one of the ‘Screaming Popes paintings by British artist Francis Bacon. Another abstract painting depicting a face is alternated with the Venus of Willendorf figurine seen earlier. Close-ups of the eyes of some of the paintings and masks seen earlier in the film appear on the screen in rapid succession, followed by a recapitulation of paintings seen earlier in the film. The film slows down to show a number of the depictions of Christ, then a mask and the face from The Scream again as the film enters outer space once more, and the images start to recede and fade out. The spiralling cloud effect appearse, then the stars and planets recede. End Credit:  Produced by Sheila Graber