ART AND MAKEUP  -  Journal Article by Jody B Cutler

The author likens the works of Cindy Sherman and Sanja Ivekovic, in partilcuar their works shown at the Museum of Modern Art in NewYork, both in 2012. The article begins by drawing connections between the concept of feminism in history with the present, by analysing art critic Charles Baudelaire’s The Painter of Modern Life, written in 1863. Cutler states that the source, “...emphasises a woman’s duty to embellish her natural visage. Baudelaire objectified the painted woman as a means and end of (male) artistic inspiration and fantasy-fed desire, a construction that resonated from modernist painting from his own era to the neon eyeshadow of Andy Warhol’s Marilyns.” The author furthers to support her argument by suggesting that mass media images and global cosmetic consumerism has instigated a new level of obsession between makeup and female sexuality.

According to the source, Cindy Sherman’s photographs are set apart and individualised by the artist incorporating herself in her works as the feminist object. Her use of makeup as the medium is designed to deflect rather than attract the make gaze. The article suggests that, “The makeup-as-armour effect may well reflect a ‘survivalist strategy’ that undermines the nihilistic inherent in her will to disguise.” The exhibition contained an array of Sherman’s work from the 1970′s to the 2000′s. Her earliest works were mugshot style black and white photographs depicting Sherman transformed through minimal props and makeup from a post-adolescent geek to a cigarette-smoking “hussy”. From there she moved onto colour representations, the most well-known being the Centrefolds series where makeup was used as a device in enhancing unnerving moods such as angst, terror and exhaustion in dimly-lit closeups. In the 80′s the artist utilised prosthetic body parts as her sculpture, which was a surrealist and expressionist attempt at portraying notions such as eating disorders. The source states that, “the driving force of her art is the self/other image, which often comes across as a makeshift avatar, although never a conventional self-portrait.”

Feminism and politics are common themes in Sanja Ivekovic, prominent to her home country of Croatia and uses video, photography and sculpture as an outlet. Her early videos, created in the 70′s, such as Instructions No.1 shows the artist handling cosmetics and drawing arrows with eyeliner on her face to replicate the lines of face cream application and plastic surgery diagrams. This work along with similar ones by the artist are effective by how, “attention is shifted from result to process, and in the latter, the cosmetically induced gaze is utterly denied.” The article also delves into Ivekovic’s use of collage to manipulated makeup advertisements by adding lipstick smears, scratches and rips to reveal hidden stigmas and insecurities in women. Tragedy of a Venus 1975-76 juxtapositions newspaper prints of Marilyn Monroe at different ages with matching scrapbook photographs of herself. Provocative text is incorporated such as “Still without confidence” and “A lot depends on makeup” to appropriate and unit the images. The article proceeds to point out Dada derived influences in this manipulation of text and newspaper/magazine photos of beauty and makeup to provide an anti-aesthetic context.

This is my method to breaking down articles and reading critically:

Skim the article real quickly -- only highlighting/underlining key important sections.

Go through and write a sentence or two by each paragraph summarizing the key points.

When I'm done, I write three to five sentences explaining the main point of article. What's the take home message?

Then, I ask myself if what I read makes sense with everything else I know. Does it support other studies?

Go back to the methods and results. Look at the stats. Is it valid? Did they use reasonable parameters? Ask yourself if they may had stretched or underplayed certain numbers.