The Art of Beauty
Makeup, Femininity, and Modernity
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Description
Exploring the proliferation of makeup as both practice and metaphor across intellectual, visual and material culture, this transnational study involves analysis of French, British, German and Russian art, philosophy, fiction, journalism and advice manuals.
From its negative early modern associations with the sensual and the superficial to its acceptance and widespread use in the 1910s, Ksenia Gusarova traces makeup's many transformations.
Across centuries and national boundaries, associations between makeup and visual arts, particularly painting, were fairly commonplace in European intellectual and popular culture. Though mostly unflattering, occasionally comparisons were made that challenged established aesthetic hierarchies in order to promote new definitions of art. The Art of Beauty examines the discourse about cosmetics as (inferior) art, arguing for its important role in policing the boundaries of what was considered artistic practice and who was allowed to engage in it, with regard to gender in particular, but also class and race.
Accessibility Information
Additional accessibility information
- PDF/UA-2, 1.4
- accessibility@bloomsbury.com
Hazards
The publication contains no hazards
Support for non-visual reading
Has alternative text descriptions for images
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Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Chapter 1. "Cosmetic" art and “painted” faces: a prehistory of the debate
Verbal cosmetics: the use and abuse of "colours" in early modern rhetoric
French Academics quarrel over “made-up” paintings
Cosmetics in the Encyclopédie and Diderot's criticism of Rococo aesthetics
Deceived by rouge no more: Kant on the power of illusions
Chapter 2. Acting the part: makeup on stage and off stage
The theatre of fashion: acting, imitation and woman's “nature”
Actors' beauty: between advantage and liability
Character makeup and physiognomics
Chapter 3. Living statues and death masks: the ambiguity of cosmetic whiteness
The many kinds of statue-like women
(Un)seeing the paint: made-up sculptures in art and life
Porcelain and plaster: material hierarchies in makeup metaphors
Chapter 4. From realistic to abstract: makeup as painting on the face
The riot of color: face-painting beyond physiognomics
From transparency to opacity: makeup as a visual paradox
Learning from painting: makeup principles and techniques borrowed from a painter's studio
Shaping vision: makeup and the artist's touch
Beyond illusionism: makeup as a “tattoo”
Chapter 5. Makeup in avant-garde art: from appropriation to othering
Radical makeup: futurist face-painting
Modern art as defacement: cosmetics in Proust
Makeup for the face of new art: Malevich's white
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Product details
| Published | 10 Dec 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (PDF) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 240 |
| ISBN | 9781350333345 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Visual Arts |
| Illustrations | 30 bw illus |
| Series | Fashion: Visual & Material Interconnections |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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