When I first read of this, I thought of the tango, Maquillage. Make-up provides a similar metaphor to that of the hastily thrown-together frame, and of Evita's need to appear vital, to seem well, and to hide her despair within a luxurious remnant of her glamour. Eva Perón came from the lowest class, like tango; from nowhere, like tango. She became world renowned as the very essence of Argentine beauty - darkly impassioned, severe in her power, and violable in her personal life, also like tango.

There is another, a tango called Viejo Smoking. The Argentine word "smoking" comes from the English smoking jacket, and "un viejo smoking" is an old tuxedo. This tango is different from Maquillage because it is about a man and the suit of clothes he wore in the old days, the function of which was to lead women astray.

He is an old decrepit now, looking back, and he sees his past in the smears of make-up and the stains left by tears in the lapel of his tuxedo jacket. He wonders where they've all gone, all those women. He laments their absence, yet brags to us about his use of them and his abandonment of them.

He refers to his "fama de gigolo," his reputation as a gigolo. Now, though, he is abandoned, friendless, and awaiting his death. Nonetheless, in the end he repeats the gigolo's chorus. He longs for the life he had. His soul aches for it, and he is seemingly unable to see that his current ragged state was caused by his callous deception of others.

In both these tangos there is a mask intended for deception, a mask that is nonetheless a mark of a certain formality. The lovely colors of make-up, intended to deepen the glorious beauty of a woman, are equal to the black elegance of the tuxedo, which makes a man into what appears to be a gentleman of classic sincerity.

They're like the brush strokes intended by Vermeer to enhance the reflection of light on a wine glass or by Turner to darken and make more threatening the faraway squall. In tango, though, these brush strokes — the makeup, the tuxedo — form the mask that hides, yet in the end elaborates the ecstatic passion, the betrayal, or the lie.

Because of what they hide, the formality of them makes tango that much more incendiary.