In addition to the rose-patterned offerings by Prescriptives and MAC this spring, the Body Shop has hopped on this floral bandwagon and came out with its own rose collection. Here are the blushes and a lipstick (there were 3 lipsticks total, and all had a light rose scent.)
The eye shadow and a blush stick:
(photos from thebodyshop-usa.com)
I've said it before and I'll say it again: while I'm always happy to see designs on makeup (I do think they deserve a museum, after all), I'm getting a bit tired of roses. Especially for spring – with all the lovely flowers available during the season, I think companies could definitely come up with something besides roses. How about a peony or tulip-inspired collection? Oh well. To liven things up a bit I've decided to present a little dose of art featuring roses.
Salvador Dalí's Meditative Rose (1958):
(image from theartistsalvadoredali.com)
Cy Twombly's The Rose ("IV" of four paintings, 2008):
And here they are installed at the Gagosian Gallery:
(images from gagosian.com)
Let's hope we see a different floral motif next spring!
I've been really enjoying these Guerlain eye shadow compacts that have patterns on each of the four shadows. Their latest features a fairly abstract interpretation of leaves you might find growing deep within the jungle.
This palette definitely reminds me more of a jungle rather than desert island palm trees, and that in turn reminded me of one of my favorite artists. Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) was a self-taught French artist who didn't begin painting until he was in his early 40s, and depicted many jungle scenes even though he had never left France.
(Tropical Forest with Monkeys, 1910, National Gallery of Art; picture from nga.gov)And now for some personal/art history/makeup museum-related insight. Rousseau is one of my favorites because I see much of myself in him and his life. The Curator is always rooting for the underdog, and Rousseau is the epitome of an underdog. He had always desperately wanted a career in art but, lacking the
financial advantages that would allow him to pursue it full-time, he held various administrative jobs that stifled him, a story the Curator knows all too well. When biographer
Cornelia Stabenow1 writes, "The only escape route lay in art…in spite
of the continual risk of mockery, he exploited every opportunity to
rise out of anonymity," she may as well be describing me – just change
"he" to "she" and it's dead on. Anyway, Rousseau persevered even though his work was often made fun of by critics, who regarded him as having
no more artistic skill than a child – his work "caused many viewers
to laugh till they cried."2
But he kept painting and painting, and towards the end of his life he began receiving serious critical recognition for his work, and now his paintings hang in the likes of MoMA and the National Gallery of Art. Needless to say I find great inspiration in him. He was the little toll collector that could, and I'm the little museum that could. It might take me till I'm 80 – it truly is a jungle out there – but someday I will have a real Makeup Museum! (Oh, and get that Ph.D. I've been hankering after since I was 8.)
1 Cornelia Stabenow, Rousseau (London: Taschen, 2001) 10.
2 Cornelia Stabenow, Rousseau (London: Taschen, 2001) 7.
Through New Curator I have just been alerted to the fact that it is International Museum Day, according to the International Council of Museums. Here's to all the established, traditional museums (think the Met and Louvre) and of course to the smaller, kookier ones like the Makeup Museum and others. If there is an entire museum devoted to clocks and watches, surely there's room for a beauty museum!
Spring has sprung here! So I've chosen my most springy, hopeful pieces to display. I was inspired by this lovely work by Botticelli:
Sandro Botticelli, Primavera, c. 1482 (photo from historylink101.com)
So here's my own version of Primavera. :)
Main exhibition:
Some detail shots:
Shu birthday palette and YSL Palette Pop:
Stila hankerchief palette with some friends:
Here's the auxillary exhibition in the hallway.
Bottom shelf:
Part of the top shelf:
Finally, here's the other auxiliary exhibition in the office:
And some details:
I think this is my favorite shelf – MAC Culturebloom postcard, Chanel Faeries quad and a Chantecaille Papillon eye shadow.
Happy spring!
I've always admired Estee Lauder's fancy jeweled compacts, but this season they seem to be focusing on the makeup itself rather than its outer packaging. Their Fleur de Lys and Vivid Garden powders feature intricate floral patterns in gorgeous spring colors.
(photos from esteelauder.com)
While I love the colors and the dragonfly on the Vivid Garden palette, I find the fleur-de-lis palette particularly interesting since the emblem has such a rich history. It's a bit too long to go into here, but it was traditionally a symbol of the French monarchy and appears in much French architecture and art. Here are a couple examples.
The ceiling of Sainte Chapelle:
(photo from sacred-destinations.com)A stained-glass window at Bourges cathedral:
(photo from uark.edu)
The Arts Council of New Orleans even commissioned artists to produce fleur-de-lis structures around the city to represent its French heritage:
(photos from nolanotes.com)
It's a little odd that this motif made an appearance considering it had nothing to do with the collection, but since this is the first time Estee Lauder has branched out into designs onto the actual makeup rather than the outer compact I won't be too harsh. ;) I also like that the design on the palette is a bit more abstract than the traditional fleur-de-lis.
Let's wait and see if this is a continuing trend for the brand.
Methinks Smashbox and/or Vogue magazine was reading my blog post on Shu's fall collection a few months back, where I surmised that it would be pretty cool if a makeup company came out with Pollock-esque paint-splattered compacts. Look what Smashbox has released:
The interior:
The rest of the collection:
(photos from smashbox.com)
And the accompanying Vogue blurb (which appeared in the February 2009 issue), complete with a picture of Pollock just as my post included:
I'm glad to see that Vogue recognizes that the line between art and makeup is getting increasingly blurred, which is what I've been trying to convince people of for years!
The spring 2009 collection for YSL included these so-called "collector palettes for the eyes/complexion", featuring stripes of color that can be mixed and matched to "turn your look into a work of art". "Contemporary art inspires this year’s Spring Look. An explosion of
vivid colours, graphic lines and sensorial textures reveal a strikingly
modern interpretation of beauty," says the YSL website.
(photos from nordstrom.com)
I'm not really sure what the company intended these to look like – they remind me a bit of a Rothko, (one of the curator's favorite artists) but the edges of the colors are obviously neater and lack the fading that Rothko's "color fields" have:
(Mark Rothko, Yellow and Gold, 1956, image from worldgallery.co.uk)
Still, that looks like the inspiration for the palettes, no? In my opinion, it's modern visual art and not the the YSL clothing lineup for the spring 2009 season that was the jumping-off point for these palettes. The ready-to-wear collection, created by Stefano Pilati, had an "East-meets-West" feel to it and had nothing to do with modern art. One of the questions I always try to answer in Couture Monday is whether the company intended their makeup collections to correspond to the season's clothing. Usually this is not the case, as the cosmetics division of a couture house is completely separate from the actual clothing and run by totally different people. With these palettes YSL follows that pattern. And while I'm pleased the palettes look Rothko-esque, it's still a fairly vague suggestion with no clear relation to a particular artist or genre. Another somewhat disappointing release for spring!
It took me a while to get out of my turkey-induced coma, hence my hiatus from the Museum. But my long-awaited Chantecaille Tiger powders have arrived!! The embossing is really stunning. (I have not been able to procure the Bengal palette due to lack of funds, but I'm hoping Santa will provide the final piece in this collection for the Museum. ;))
White Tiger, with flash and in natural light:
Bengali Bronzer:
While I think the design is nice, it may have been interesting to see the entire tiger on the powder, the way Lancôme did with their Elephant bronzing powder earlier this year. Instead of a face product there could have been an eye shadow – a tiger's black stripes would make a good liner, and the rest of the body could be a shadow or bronzer. I guess overall I wanted to the tiger to appear more ferocious, the way it looks in its natural habitat. The more I look at these powders the more I think they look almost like a nice little portrait of a tiger rather than capturing the beauty of the animal itself in all its wild glory. But maybe I've been thinking too much of the work by famed 19th-century animalier Antoine-Louis Barye (1796-1875):
Tiger Walking to the Left, Brooklyn Museum
Tiger Walking, cast after an original, photo from artwansongallery.com
Barye was an established animal sculptor who spent much of his time at the zoo in Paris, and he was able to beautifully capture the movement and power of tigers after a Bengal tiger arrived at the zoo in 1830.1 I think something closer to his work would have made a better palette than a simple "head shot" of a tiger. Still, these are quite lovely and will make for an excellent exhibtion.
1 For more on Barye, check out the exhibition catalogue "Untamed: The Art of Antoine-Louis Barye", available at the Walters Art Museum (which, incidentally, has the largest Barye collection in the world - if you're ever in Baltimore I urge you to check it out!)
Every year MAC releases several eye shadow and lip color palettes in limited-edition packaging as part of their holiday collection. This year's design features red snakeskin and a big red jewel in the center of each palette. While I'm not crazy about combination of strong colors, animal print and gems — it strikes me as overkill — I'm liking how the palettes are presented in the promo ad. They're surrounded by pomegranates, which at first is what I thought the print on the packaging was. It didn't look like snakeskin upon first glance, but rather bits of juicy, ripe pomegranate seeds, which for some reason I think make the palettes look infinitely better than they would on their own:
(photo from maccosmetics.com)
I think the other reason why I like this ad so much is that the translucence of the pomegranate seeds and the shiny surfaces of the palettes remind me of Dutch 17th-century still lifes. All of MAC's holiday items are shown with delectable looking fruit including grapes, raspberries, pears, and grapefruit. Compare them to the details from a couple of Dutch paintings – the way the textures are represented is very similar:
(Jan Davidz de Heem, detail from Still Life, date unknown, photo from artunframed.com)
(Floris Claesz. van Dijick, detail from Still Life with Cheeses, c. 1615-1620, photo from rijksmuseum.nl)
There are completely different objectives, of course – the meaning in a 17th-century Dutch still life does not correspond to a contemporary photo advertising makeup. Nevertheless there is a resemblance in the way the fruit is presented.
Getting back to the snakeskin palettes, they come in 2 shades – a bright true red and a reddish-orange. I suspect that once I see them in person and not artfully in arranged as they are in the ads, my interest in these will drop. I just think there's too much going on in the packaging and they'll look quite cheap in real life. However, I've been wanting to start collecting MAC holiday pieces and, well, no time like the present!
Ever since Allure magazine featured palettes by Hourglass I've been intrigued by them. Well, the not the palettes themselves but the leather case used to hold them! The delicate, understated trees have a gorgeous Art Nouveau character about them, and even the font on the Hourglass logo looks vaguely early 1900s. At the same time, the palettes have a modern sensibility in how compact they are as well as the colors and ingredients used. The colors are subtle and are carefully chosen to create a cohesive look – whether it's a tropical one (the Island palette, with its bronzes and light golds, would be perfect for a sun-kissed summer look) or a daring nighttime one (the smoky shades in the Dusk palette are spot on for this), there is a palette to fit any mood of the wearer. And as a skincare bonus, all of the blushes and shadows contain Vitamin E.
I do wish the packaging for the rest of the line outside the palettes was as interesting, or at least for the palettes to have different designs depending on the colors. They could just make the trees a different color to distinguish the palettes from one another…especially given that the makers of Hourglass seem to enjoy the tree motif – they've also created a separate bath and body line called, you guessed it, Trees. Here's hoping the palettes are merely a starting-off point for more pretty packaging!
(photo from sephora.com)
