The Bare Essentials

Make up artist - Billy Kidd

As seen on Behance.net

War-painted male models with elusive gazes.

Seen on fashion156.com
Jayden Tang - photographer; Makeup artist -  Kim Keifer;  Hair stylist Atsushi Ninomiya

Letting it all go

An estimated 700 revellers shed their clothes in favour of body paint to take part in Spencer Tunick's latest art installation at the Big Chill Festival in Herftfordshire this weekend.  This form of installation involving spray paint make up was a first for Tunick, by dividing the volunteers in to five colour groups: Yellow, Pink, Teal, Blue and Black, he paid homage to the art of Yves Klein, Mark Rothko and  Ellsworth Kelly.  One participant wrote on Twitter that he felt ‘somewhat liberated and invigorated’ by the experience. Another said the whole thing had been an ‘awesome experience’.  In the final group of setups with the Blue, Teal and Black, the painted participants were arranged in reference to the BP oil spill in the Gulf Mexico, as four rows of black painted participants interwove their way into a blue and teal sea.

BodyTyping by Laura Alvarado

Laura Alvarado's collection 'My Affair' has evolved from a project titled BodyTyping, she goes on to explain her work as,

"a series of works in which the relationship between jewellery and the body is reinterpreted as the body is not only the wearer but it becomes an active part of its creation and its form.  The shape of the body serves as a mould and affects the final form obtained from the scan, creating a new piece every time. Each person is different and every impression is unique."

In 'My Affair" the concept for Alvarado's jewellery silhouettes is taken from the book “My Love Affair with Jewelry” by Liz Taylor. The jewellery is drawn and used as stencils on the naked skin, they are then scanned and digitalized with the help of a 3d scanner and printed using Rapid-prototyping Technologies.  Filming the process has brought the performative process of body decoration to the fore, allowing the observer to participate in the ritualistic practice of body decoration.   However it would be far too simplistic to label her work under 'performance', far better would be to ascribe it as 'body art', as defined by Amelia Jones in 'Body Art, Performing the Subject' where she explains how we should consider this form of work,

body art ... - in its opening up of the interpretive relation and its active solicitation of spectatorial desire - provides the possibility for radical engagements that can transform the way we think about meaning and subjectivity (both the artist's and our own).

Jones emphasises this point further by referring to Ira Licht, who argued in 1975,

"the relationship between artist, subject and public" - encourages us to rethink the very methods by which we fabricate histories of art and to rethink the ways in which we understand meaning to take place.

Alvarado is a designer who is part of a new understanding of the ways in which body art can radicalise our understanding of postmodernism as a method of visual production, while also revising how meaning and value are determined in relation to works of art and design.  Her work is important because she is performing the gradual shift that has been occurring since the middle of the last century, by articulating our experience of ourselves.

My Affair from Laura Alvarado on Vimeo.

DIY ethic

YouTube is a strange and wonderful place to see how lovers of face and body decoration use cosmetics in the privacy of their own home.  The explosion of products and the encouragement of make up companies to 'be yourself' has provided an individualistic perspective, where anything is possible.

Things you can try online.

As if the privacy of your home wasn't enough, see these videos below of some Japanese software which graphically applies make-up to your face or provides you with suggestions of new hairstyles through a webcam. As contemporary versions of Max Factor's "Beauty Micrometer" where the desire was to look as 'natural' as possible, they disregard the physical flaws of the face and suggest that in our postmodern culture as long as you have enough make-up/hair extensions, flaws can never be a problem. 

Why look in the mirror when you can use one of these?