Mask

Christina Ramberg was part of a group of artists known as the Chicago Imagists who emerged in the 1960s and embraced the figure in their work, often with wit and irreverence. Ramberg’s paintings and drawings examine the female form and fragment its parts—cropping, manipulating, and stylizing them with a keen sense of fashion, texture, and pattern. Ramberg explored both physical and psychological constraints and allures of traditional feminine identity. However, although she created female forms, there is little implication of actual human flesh. They are shells or masks: her figures’ heads are tightly wrapped and manicured, while their torsos and arms are shaped and bound as if by a corset.

Mask—based on the head of her friend and fellow Imagist artist Roger Brown—stands out as a singular object in Ramberg’s body of work, which is predominantly two-dimensional. The painting and patterning on the mask are representative of the artist’s signature style and the subject is illustrative of Ramberg’s main themes.