Make-up artist Alex Box defines herself as someone who started as an artist doing make-up and now is a make-up artist doing art on her make-up.
Such a long and convoluted definition becomes very clear once you leaf through the recently published volume Alex Box by Rankin (Turnaround).
This slim but beautifully made coffee table book features large portraits by Rankin of models who have been turned into works of art by Alex Box’s make-up skills or drawings.
In some cases Box transformed her models using make up, in others she just drew or created collages on top of Rankin's photographs, but her main principle – make-up is a sort of performance art – is followed from the very first picture till the last one.
There is definitely a passion for gothic atmospheres in her work, but you can't deny there's also the bright exuberance of the 80s in those gold or pink touches.
So while the blackened out face of a model may remember of dark atmospheres from Box’s favourite Anne Rice’s novels, the most colourful and glammed up pictures remind of rave parties and power fashion icons à la Joan Collins in Dynasty.
Some pictures call to mind Veruschka's transformations: one photograph for example portrays a model's face covered in brightly coloured make-up, its texture transforming her skin almost into a grainy stone.
The final shoot, comprising nine pictures, portrays instead a model at different make-up stages, from white to thick black.
For this shoot Box used icing sugar on the face and textured paint on the head and drew inspiration from Francis Bacon’s works, so she layered one cosmetic/ingredient on top of the other coming up with some fabulous effects that remind a bit of Irving Penn’s face transformations and in particular of his pictures of a model’s face covered in Fauchon candied fruit, milk or jewels.
The book also features a Q&A with Alex Box (you wish the interview was actually longer since it would have been interesting to hear more about her inspirations and art references) and an epilogue by Anna-Marie Solowji.
There are no further texts included since the volume is not a make-up manual, but an art book, so you can freely go back to it and look again and again at the images, taking inspiration from them or trying to spot the various references to art in them or conceive it as a sketchbook or to use Box's words, as "an emotive make-up diary".
I recently bought the book as an early Christmas present for myself: though it's priced £50, you can easily find the volume on Amazon for less.
The book should come with a warning, though: it's highly (I would say almost addictively…) inspirational, so once you have finished leafing through it you will probably try to experiment a little bit with make-up art on your own face and body. Well, I suppose emulation is the highest form of praise.
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