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Joseph Fuchs's ouevre essentially reflects five entities: Pulcinella, commedia dell'arte, Giovani Domenico Tiepolo, Venice, and the mask. Commedia dell'arte is an early form of theater stemming from Roman influences and becoming a cohesive, performing unit in the 14th century. Distinct from legitimate theater, commedia dell'arte "lives" in the outdoors on the streets in makeshift theaters (tighten up (comes alive on the street?) The performers use lazzi, extemporaneous comedic skits, and wear mask and costumes of the typical clowns of the commedia: Pulcinella, Arlecchino, Pantalone, Dottore and Capitano. Joseph Fuchs's Pulcinella, dressed in white baggy pants and shirt and a tall conical hat, is a playful trickster who revels in lazzi. Here he creates a unique world under his tall hat. He plays, he tricks, he makes the viewer explore the foibles and fortes of life. Before Joseph Fuchs, Giovani Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804), son of "the famous" Tiepolo, danced Pulcinella through a series of drawings, Divertimenti, shown at Stanford University Art Museum in 1979. At this exhibit Joseph Fuchs saw and absorbed Pulcinella. In 1982 he began his preoccupation with the playful, masked fellow in oils, ink drawings and watercolors in which Pulcinella romps through lazzi, Carnival and all aspects of daily life in the Venice. Joseph Fuchs employs the mask to represent man's answer to the juggling of life's ironies, for behind a mask one can react honestly to the world without being subjected to the various insecurities del' umomo.

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