Margaret Severn and How She Channeled Archetypes Through Mask Dances
Mask Dancer Margaret Severn, 1940. Nina Leen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
I caught the insomnia bug one night last June. Instead of staring at the ceiling, I decided to try and get back into the headspace of this project, and a deep dive into Margaret Severn, a dancer in the early-to-mid 20th century. It was the big fat dose of inspiration I needed.
I've pinned probably 3 or so photos of Severn's work a while back. Black and white images of a woman posed in character with a paper mache mask against a simple drape backdrop. It's these images that catch my eye every time I scroll past them when referencing masks for my own designs. Well, I finally decided to dive a little deeper.
Severn was a dancer and vaudeville performer born to one badass Suffragette and Psychoanalyst. She crossed paths with W.T. Benda, a multimedia artist whose work ranged from stage design to commercial illustration. His masks would take close to 6 months to make and cost over $1000 at the time. After working with Benda on the production of in The Greenwich Village Follies of 1921, Benda was kind enough to teach Margaret Severn how he made the masks so she could continue her work.
The Creator of the Benda masks and Their Wearer depicts Mr. W. T. Benda and Miss Margaret Severn. Photographed by Nickolas Muray, American, b. Hungary, 1892–1965
I personally find Severn’s masks more visceral. Something about the simplicity of the material highlights the craftsmanship of her character’s emotion and personality. The clarity of the archetype and the rough texture of paper mache work together to simultaneously pull us in and push us back into our childhoods.
Dancer Margaret Severn painted a mask that she used in her performances, 1940. Nina Leen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
I can't help but see the parallels between me, at this moment in our current socioeconomic history, and these artists collectively building a new era of art in the 1930s. With the world falling apart around them, they must have felt a certain type of freedom to explore their creative impulses without shame. In a sense, nothing they did mattered, but with the perspective of time, we see the power of the art they created and the freedom they inspired for generations to come.
Severn, quoted in Life magazine, " 'When I put them on they hadn’t been used for years in the theater, so this was called a complete novelty by some, those who didn’t know anything about the history of masks, and by others, it was a renaissance of the art of the mask.'
"In her performances, she said, she viewed the mask as a portal to a new identity. 'The mask has this peculiar quality as if it were inhabited by a disincarnated spirit of some sort, and when the dancer puts the mask on, he is possessed by this spirit and ceases to be himself, and so I just allowed that to happen with these masks that I wore,' she said."
"She added that, 'Each mask, in its particular feeling, usually finds some person, and perhaps many people, in the audience who respond to that particular emotion, who see themselves in that particular guise. I think that’s one reason they have such universal appeal.' "
from the series 73-Mask Dances (Margaret Severn), taken by Nina Leen for LIFE Magazine in 1944.
Honestly, I could quote this article all day. It's exactly what I've found when working on this project. If you want to dive in, by all means! I recommend perusing this collection of images and checking out the short film Mask Dances (1982)
