Connections/The Nose

My name is Masha Turchinsky and I work as a creative producer in Digital Media. My topic is "The Nose."

Perhaps one of my fascinations with the nose is due to my strong resemblance to my father who had a very strong nose. And I inherited that feature. He became ill and died when I was just a teenager.

When I look at Emperor Constantine, I see my father's nose. We are kindred nose spirits. From the side, I get

a sense of all of his plans for the empire. His nose has a lot to do with that strength. Inspired by this great emperor, I named my own son Constantine.

Prominent noses are familiar to me. I feel comfortable with them because I feel I know them.

I approach Madame X and I say, "Sister, I know that nose." [laughs] I even feel a bond with the

Cycladic figure where I don't need any more from that face, it's just perfect the way it is, to me.

For much of my life I have been told, by both friends and strangers, that I have a Roman nose. And I actually love that, because the term Roman nose leaves a lot to interpretation.

That Ring with the intaglio portrait of Emperor Tiberius, it has so much character. If he was trying to make a statement about what he looked like so that nobody would confuse him with anybody else, it worked.

I like the expression, "It's as plain as the nose on your face."

It's the first thing that you put forward. It leads the way.

It's often the first thing that people notice about you.

The nose seems to define people's personalities. They can be imperious, they can be weak, they can

be playful, they can suggest power. The idea of being nosey and getting into things

there's probably a little bit of truth about that. The nose can insinuate itself. I probably fall into the category of thinking

strong features make a strong person. I get a sense of this man. I actually don't wonder about what the rest of his face looks like.

The Queen Mother Pendant Mask. The nose

anchors the entire face, it's strong, it's elegant. It's a very arresting, confident image.

Noses don't have to be perfect to be interesting. J. P. Morgan had quite a big nose. He decided to emphasize it, he made a choice, he has this

big mustache underneath. This is a powerful man making sure that you look at his face.

One of my favorite stories is "The Nose," by Gogol. One day a man wakes up and his nose is missing. And it turns out that his nose is running all over St. Petersburg. And so he has to run out and try to find it. What

I took from that story and this man's distress was that in losing his nose, he lost face. Physically lost a part of his face, but he lost face in society.

And then there's people who just don't like their nose. Apparently the artist made this wonderful portrait, and the sitter's daughter really objected to how her mom's nose looked in the picture.

She thought it looked too big or it was ugly, and so the picture got put away somewhere for decades. That's interesting that you could like everything except the nose and that rendered it unacceptable.

I recently heard an Armenian expression that when somebody is the spitting image of, for example, their father, you say, "He fell from his father's nose." That's your DNA. Your nose tells where you come from.

While I'm not critical of people changing their bodies to make themselves happier, I will never have a nose job. I would no sooner

alter my nose than I would deny my family's history.