Art has had a profound impact on the world of beauty. Historical movements that embraced unconventional or exaggerated features continue to influence make-up artists, while contemporary painters also make their mark on beauty trends, with numerous artistic luminaries directly collaborating with or inspiring brands. We take a look at a group of movements and artists that have had a resounding influence on the beauty fashions of today. Some are direct references, such as the repeat polka dots that pay homage to contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama; others, such as the confident swipes of colour by make-up doyenne Pat McGrath, are less literal translations.
PRE-RAPHAELITE
A group of British painters working in the mid-19th century, the Pre-Raphaelites are a mainstay on beauty inspiration boards. Artists such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais took inspiration from literature and mythology, featuring women with alabaster skin, refined features and flowing hair. Singer Florence Welch encapsulates the romance of the Pre-Raphaelites, while gothic horror movies evoke the movement’s heroines. In 2025’s Frankenstein, hair designer Cliona Furey and make-up artist Jordan Samuel embraced a Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic for Mia Goth, complete with an unimaginably long deep-red wig.
ART NOUVEAU
Contemporary make-up phenomenon Isamaya Ffrench is famously influenced by art, from Salvador Dalí, to Francis Bacon and Dadaism. She regularly cites Art Nouveau, inspired by the trippy homage this late 19th-century movement played to the natural world and its ‘whiplash’ curve effect – an ‘S’ shape seen in art and architecture of the time that follows the organic curl of a vine, hair or flame. Make-up artist Thomas de Kluyver has also created art nouveau-styled beauty looks for brands such as Vivienne Westwood, with bespoke eyebrows drawn to mimic rose branches and fantastical, ornate details.
POP ART
The connection between pop art and make-up is deeply entangled: art imitates beauty; beauty imitates art. The mid-20th-century movement drew on bold graphics, bright colours and consumer culture. Artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein presented everyday women and celebrities including Marylin Monroe with expressive lips, abundant eyelashes and dramatically coiffed hair. The style is still ubiquitous in the fashion and beauty worlds, with major make-up artists such as Pat McGrath including intense graphics and riotous explosions of colour in their looks. The spirit of pop art is alive in the work and products of Isamaya Ffrench too; cue striking silver packaging and bold treatments.
Aside from wider movements throughout history, there have been some crucial creatives who have inspired beauty trends through their art. Below are some of the most catalytic examples.
Kerry James Marshall
Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (Beauty Queen), 2014
A highly influential figure within contemporary painting, Kerry James Marshall is known for his stunningly rendered portraits of Black sitters, which celebrate the beauty of dark skin. His aesthetic is a challenge to historical suppression and neglect of Black sitters, which has led to collaborations with Wales Bonner and seen him on inspiration boards for brands including Valentino. In 2020, he painted a majestic fictional character wearing a formal evening dress by Off-White for the September cover of Vogue, painting her skin so dark that, in his own words, she was ‘at the edge of visibility... The point is to show that blackness is rich and complex'.
Yayoi Kusama
Few artists have combined such a personal, psychological practice with the world of commerce. Yayoi Kusama is famous for her immersive works, which cover interior spaces, graphic sculptures and her own body with dots and colourful repeated icons, originally inspired by her state of mind while hallucinating and experiencing OCD symptoms. Her instantly recognisable aesthetics have been applied to a host of famous faces, including Léa Seydoux, Naomi Osaka, in a global campaign for her Louis Vuitton collaboration. Kusama’s ubiquitous dot designs can also be found littered across experimental online make-up accounts.
Marilyn Minter
Marilyn Minter’s paintings and photographs are instantly recognisable for their thick, luminous use of make-up. Placing her models behind wet or steamed glass, Minter homes in on open mouths slathered with bold lipstick and sweat-stained, high-contrast eyeshadow. Pamela Anderson, Monica Lewinsky and Miley Cyrus have featured in her work, which takes a feminist approach to sexual expression. She describes make-up as ‘war paint’ and collaborated with beauty giant MAC, celebrating its loose glitters and punchy pigments. At the time she summed up her beauty aesthetic as what happens under the ‘party lights, it’s hot, you’re sweaty, you’ve got that slight perspiration on your brow, your eyelashes start coming off’.