Guerlain takes us from the cold recesses of Russia for their fall lineup to warm up in the Far East with their spring collection, Cherry Blossom. Meant to evoke "'La Vie En Rose' with an Asian twist" the stand-outs clearly are the blush, which has "shades reminiscent of Japanese cherry trees in bloom" and eye shadow palette, which was "inspired by the rays of sunlight
reflecting on the surface of a lake, while the violet and mauve evoke
oriental flowers playing with shadows in a garden at dusk." Both feature delicate, abstract fan patterns.
Blush, with and without flash:
The eye shadow palette:
Why Guerlain didn't do an actual cherry blossom design is beyond me, but these are gorgeous nonetheless – pale pinks and purples always nice to see for spring, and while I wish the pattern were a bit closer to the theme, it's fairly creative as far as makeup designs go. I also like this collection since it reminds me a tiny bit of the European fascination with Japanese textiles and art in the late 19th-century: Japonisme. While this term really refers to the techniques used (particularly for wood-block prints called ukio-e) rather than the subject matter, some Japanese objects can be seen in paintings from this time. Among the most famous is Claude Monet's 1875 portrait of his wife in a kimono and holding a fan:
(image from artistandart.org)
And while Van Gogh is famous for his sunflowers and irises, he too got swept up in the craze for anything Japanese and painted almond blossoms:
(image from blog.stillriverstudios.com)
I sort of feel like Guerlain creative director Olivier Echaudemaison (quite a name, non?) was channeling Japonisme1 in this collection – a distinctly Western take on a part of Japanese culture.
1For more on Japonisme, check out Japonisme: The Japanese Influence on Western Art Since 1858 by Siegfried Wichmann or Japonisme in Western Painting from Whistler to Matisse by Klaus Berger.
These eye shadow palettes have been on the Museum's wishlist for quite a long time, and I'm sort of kicking myself for not buying them when they were half price as Sephora was getting rid of its Cargo stock a few weeks ago. Oh well. Even though Sephora dropped Cargo the line is still available at Ulta and beauty.com.
Each one has a different illustration reminiscent of both the city the palette is named for and the colors inside. I'd love to know who did the designs but couldn't find any information. In any case, here they are.
Barcelona, Bermuda, Shanghai:
Toronto, Baja, Vienna and London:
The one that really stands out to me, however, is Tahiti:
(images from beauty.com)
For some reason this reminds me so much of this portrait by Matisse of his wife, completed in 1905:
(image from for-arts-sake.buzzsugar.com)
Cargo's isn't as painterly – the brushstrokes aren't visible – but the use of bold color and the somewhat abstract way the faces are presented seem similar to my eye. Or maybe I just love Matisse and am always looking for comparisons to his work. ;)
Makeup Minute posted about the German Brand Uslu Airlines last week and I was struck by the company's ad. It reminds me quite a lot of Morris Louis' work, especially since they chose to orient the lip glosses vertically rather than horizontally.
(image from splendidcity.com)
Here's a work by Louis, one of the Curator's favorite artists (I like his work but he's also one of my faves because he was born here in B'more and attended MICA!) This is one of his later works entitled 1-81.
(image from ameringer-yohe.com)
Morris Louis (1912-1962) is known for staining, rather than painting directly on, unprimed canvases with thinned acrylic paints. This created abstract, monumental fields of bold color. What's really interesting is that he painted in a tiny room in the house he shared with his wife, and the canvases he favored were so big he had to fold them. He never actually saw many of his works completely open and hung up in a gallery. Oh, and he was very secretive about his work – he left behind no techniques of how he poured the paint onto the canvas, and no one, not even his wife, ever saw him at work. She would come home from work and the studio would be perfectly neat and the canvases he had been working on all put away.1 If you have a chance to see some of his work in person I highly encourage it. Not only are they sort of hypnotizing to look at, but you can really see how he served as a bridge between Abstract Expressionism (Pollock, Rothko) and the beginning of Color Field Painting (Noland, Kelly.)
I realize that an ad used to sell lip glosses and the paintings of a great artist have nothing in common, but I did think in this instance it was a valid comparison and a nice way to talk about one of my favorite artists. 🙂
1 All of this info is from a podcast at the Hirshhorn Museum featuring curator and Louis expert Diane Upright. For more on Morris Louis, check out this 2006 exhibition review in the Washington Post and an essay by his champion and famed art critic Clement Greenberg.
The name of this collection immediately got my attention, although upon delving into it I was a bit disappointed. "Dramatic, daring Lashes have been a chic and urbane part of the modern
Artist’s persona since Edie and friends made it all happen Downtown, on
block-print canvas or grainy 16-millimetre film. Multi-media,
counter-culture, the ultimate cool. In The Studio is the epitome of the
look updated, featuring new Studio Fix Lash in Black Fix or Studio
Brown…Go for the bold stroke, as they do In The Studio." I'm not really sure the ad copy makes any sense – they tie big lashes to Edie Sedgwick, which I can sort of understand, but how are they a "chic and urbane part of the modern artist's persona"? I think mostly MAC was grasping at straws and trying to make their most basic products (mascara and foundation) seem more hip and interesting. Nitpicking of their advertising aside, In the Studio reminds me of a very common theme depicted in painting: the artist at work in his/her atelier. The new exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art and School of the Institute of Art (both in Chicago) prove that the depiction of the artist's work space is still just as relevant as it was back in 1855, when Gustave Courbet painted his famous The Artist's Studio (L'Atelier du peintre): A Real Allegory of a Seven Year Phase in my Artistic and Moral Life :
(image from smarthistory.org)
The Musée D'Orsay has an excellent summary of the painting's significance. Looking at this I think MAC could have done a better job in advertisting (even the ad doesn't really show the artist/model at work, per se) and in crafting a more interesting collection, but nevertheless I like that they at least attempted to connect makeup to art.
MAC's latest collection, Baroque Boudoir, features a pretty damask design "etched like the fine filigree of a French
baroque settee" according to the website. French baroque settee?! Let's see if the pattern resembles French Baroque style at all.
Lip gloss and lipstick:
And the compact:
(images from maccosmetics.com)
French Baroque is most often associated with Louis XIV (1643-1714), who was responsible for the construction of Versailles. Here's a pic from the King's bedroom in the famous palace – check out the wallpaper!
(image from essential-architecture.com)
And here's a sofa:
(image from chestofbooks.com)
While the design is nice and similar to actual French Baroque, I don't think it's quite MM-worthy so I'll be saving my pennies for the spring collections. ;)
How cute is this powder from LancĂ´me's holiday collection? I guess the designers thought an angel would be fitting for the holiday season, although an angel did appear previously in a LancĂ´me bronzer. I think it would have been cool to see the little guy shooting an arrow, but the purple heart is a nice touch (but I'm confused as to why purple was chosen for a face powder.)
This reminds me of all the adorable cherubs in Renaissance/Baroque art, particularly Italian. Putti (derived from Eros/Cupid, the gods of love) appeared in quite a few paintings and sculptures from those periods.
Andrea Mantegna's ceiling oculus fresco in the Camera degli Sposi, Mantua,
1465:
(image from crossings.tcd.ie)
The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne by Annibale Carraci, Farnese palace, 1597:
(image from depts.washington.edu)
And who can forget these little ones from Raphael's Sistine Madonna?
(image from easyart.com)
While I would have liked to see a more original idea that LancĂ´me hadn't done before, this is pretty good for a holiday piece. I just wish I could somehow hang it on my Christmas tree!
I was doing my usual Sephora browsing and stumbled across Smashbox's newest collection. Inspired by the Tudors, the "luxe, sexy, and indulgently sensorial" fall lineup features deep, rich colors housed in elegant faux-leather packaging. The elaborate crest and tiny crown details truly make these items fit for royalty.
Reign Jet-Set eyeliner palette and Monarch eye shadow palette:
Crowned lip gloss and Regal blush:
(photos from sephora.com)The outer packaging really is very Tudor-esque – check out the dark oak paneling in this Tudor period room at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts:
(photo from artsconnected.org)
As for the colors themselves, they definitely are reminiscent of the decadent jewels and other adornments of the royal clan. Overall I think this is a unique idea for a collection and very well-executed.
MAC released a new collection last week called Baby Bloom, consisting of a new tinted moisturizer and tinted lip balms. Maybe it's just me, but I found the campaign image to be really creepy.
(photo from maccosmetics.com)
Between her eye staring lifeless off into space and the vine wrapped around her neck, it seems like the model is laying dead in a field. And it got me thinking of a piece by Marcel Duchamp - Étant Donnés: 1° la chute d'eau / 2° le gaz d'éclairage, which translates to "Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas". This work was installed in 1969 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (where, incidentally, the Curator once worked) after Duchamp's death. It is quite possibly the most enigmatic and, in my eyes, scariest piece of modern Western art.
You go up to the door and peer through 2 of the holes in it…
And this is what you see:
(photos from artnet.com)
Pretty eerie. While I don't think Duchamp meant for the piece to be particularly scary, that's always how I perceived it. It's the same with the MAC photo – while trying to come up with an eye-catching ad, the company instead created a fairly disturbing image. Neither shows the woman's face in full; a flower completely obscures the model's eye in the MAC ad, while you only get a glimpse of the woman's hair in Duchamp's work (and trust me as someone who looked at this on a weekly basis – no matter how much you crain your neck, you NEVER see her face.) Regardless of whether you find the images disturbing, both make you wonder why the artist/designer chose to represent what they did.
Anyway, if you're in the Philly area I highly suggest you check out Étant Donnés in person, especially since there will be an exhibition in honor of the 40-year anniversary of its installation starting on August 15.
p.s. For more on this work and others by Duchamp, the following makes for good reading: Duchamp: A Biography by Calvin Tomkins; Étant Donnés by Anne D'Harnoncourt and Walter Hopps; Marcel Duchamp, a collection of essays edited by Anne D'Harnoncourt; and Rudolf Kuenzli's Marcel Duchamp: Artist of the Century.
Several recent releases are taking their cue design-wise from Moroccan architecture and patterns. The raised surface of Laura Mercier's Moroccan Bronze palette looks to be inspired by the amazingly intricate stucco work in the Bahia Palace in Marrakech:
(photo from s3images.com)
And the interlocking pattern of the Sephora Moroccan collection palette is reminiscent of the door to the Mohamed V Mausoleum in Rabat:
(photo from sephora.com)
If you can't get to Morocco any time soon these items can suffice. Pretty!
This collection was released back in May, but fortunately I waited until MAC had a Friends and Family 25% off sale to procure some items. I was also greatly inspired by the African art collection I saw last weekend at the BMA. "Everything from Lipglass
to Beauty Powder Blush exotically packaged to liberate the animal
spirit of Woman, Wild Things and Style Warriors everywhere." I'll say. There are the usual animal prints, but MAC takes up a notch by adding silver designs that look like those found in African art.
The pattern on the lipgloss in particular looks strikingly similar to the one on this plank mask from Burkina Faso:
(photo from uiowa.edu)
I'm guessing the packaging designers at MAC just got lucky, but it's possible they actually did look at some African art in coming up with this pattern. In any case, the packaging definitely represents the collection, which is always a good thing in the Curator's eyes.
