New approaches to the portrait within contemporary art: Face and mask

The main purpose of this thesis is to exhibit the use of masks starting from the primitive societies until today, areas of use, and their impacts on contemporary art. First the general notion of mask, the reasons of its appearance and its psychological roots have been mentioned in this paper. In subsequent chapters the place, the function and the importance of the mask in ancient and Far Eastern cultures have been analyzed. Further the reflections of those cultures to today can be seen. And last, the interactions between masks and contemporary art and the interpretations of these interactions have been demonstrated with artworks.