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These images celebrate cosmetic make-up. They explore how some women paint their faces, for fun, fashion, fetish or fantasy – or let men do it for them, for real or on the screen. As in the 1960s, painted women can become caricatures of themselves at the level where couture model meets ballet dancer meets stripper meets transvestite. I am intrigued by the art in artifice, the transition from maquillage to mask, camouflage and disguise, illusion ... escape. Face or mask, which is the real self? |
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What about fantasy, creativity and the smack of a new lipgloss as brush leaves tube? Would everyone please just back off a little and allow us to put on make-up and pretend to be other people in the privacy of our own homes? Lipstick could be an indicator of economic progress. The Economist editorial 24 May 2004 |
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She had a young face, painted very thick. It was really the paint that appealed to me, the whiteness of it, like a mask, and the bright red lips. Party women never paint their faces. George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four 1949 |
| "I've just seen the most delightful and charming girl at the Variété. She has the most lovely brows imaginable, drawn with a pencil, eyes which owe their depth to the judicious use of mascara, a voluptuous mouth which would be non-existent were it not for her lipstick, and the most beautiful hair, which is a wig!" "She must be a monster!" answered Rude. "She is a great artist!" replied the poet. from a conversation between Charles Baudelaire and Maxime Rude in the mid-nineteenth century. According to Enid Starkie's Baudelaire 1957 |
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It was not really until the first year of college when I was frustrated and I was studying painting and had considered photography as a way to go, that for fun and for relaxing therapy I would in my room turn my face into someone else's face with make-up. I just wanted to look different. |
| Everyday you got to wake up Disappear behind your make-up … I can be whatever I want to … I’m not living in a real world Blondie Eat to the beat A mask can show the face or character of someone else, and is often assumed to conceal the 'real self' that lies beneath. Notes for Self Portrait exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London 05/06 |
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