Beauty Of The Beast

Walden Green and makeup artist Emily Schubert discuss her new beauty manual. Walden also shares some good links.

Emily Schubert is the ultimate tactile multihyphenate. Throughout her career, she’s worked as a makeup artist, a costume designer, and even a hand model for a stint in her ‘20s. It’s Emily’s hands that appear, freshly manicured and clasped mischievously, on the cover—and throughout the pages—of Beauty Of The Beast, a new “transformation manual” published by A24 and a synthesis of her experiences working with other forward thinking artists like SOPHIE, Blood Orange, and Oneohtrix Point Never.

In the book’s introduction, Emily writes “If the body is so changeable, so open to manipulation, why not have a hand in the process?” Across seven chapters, she walks readers through that process, beginning with the fundamentals of life and death, youth and age, and gradually (literally) building out to the bloodier, bonier, more monstrous ends of what makeup can do. A few weeks ago, Emily and I connected over the phone to talk about her 1988 Nissan, the ongoing CGI vs practical effects debate, and the parallels between journalism and makeup artistry. —Walden Green

Walden Green: Can you speak a little bit to the conceptualization process behind Beauty Of The Beast?

Emily Schubert: I grew up with manuals, like the Bobbi Brown Makeup Manual. That was the thing I learned from most, and what moved me about it was her take on beauty—that it felt fresh, like something more natural—and that she posed a different makeup philosophy that really resonated with me as a kid.

I think of Beauty Of The Beast as a makeup philosophy book where I'm walking through why things are important. Initially, I wanted to design it off of a car manual. I actually brought my car manual into the design meetings, because the point was to teach you not where to go, but how to get there. So, it's like a non-prescriptive manual; it's a manual that doesn't say “do this smokey eye for your crush” or whatever. It's saying, “these are the tools, and you can use them however you want to.”

That's the freedom of makeup, and I think that makeup can often be something constricting, something shame based. This book does pose something different, where it combines beauty and special effects makeup—and it’s the first of its kind to my knowledge. I haven't found a book that combines beauty and special effects and just says that they're the same thing, which I believe they are, and I always have. I guess that's why I'm excited about this book, because it's saying “this is painting and sculpture in motion; these are pigments, this is your material.” I'm thinking about Greek stage makeup, about contour makeup, about making a skull for Halloween. In Chapter 2 I talk about how those three things are kind of the same idea: you’re just sinking and raising the planes of the face so you can see someone's expressions more clearly. The skull is like zero, like you're kind of finding the skeleton in the face. That's what the Kardashians are doing because they're on camera all the time, and that's what they did in Greece on stage so you could see what the characters were feeling.

WG: One thing that stuck out to me is the overall general trajectory of the book. You start with arguably the most naturalistic thing there is, which is Alive [Chapter 1] and Dead [Chapter 2]. Then it gradually progresses to what I can only describe as the more monstrous end of the spectrum—built-out stage makeup with prosthetics and fake blood and such.

ES: I wanted it to be cumulative. I love those parts where I'm like, “See page 26,” referring back to itself that way that textbooks do. I really wanted it to read like a textbook and be truly useful because the idea is that it's an anti-CGI book. It's a practical effects book, so it should be able to be held in your hands and you shouldn't have to pick up your phone while you're using it. Ideally everything would be in the book—that was also an idea behind it.

It took me a really long time with Claire [Marie Healy] and Perrin [Drumm], the editors, to find the structure. It was so powerful to do it with Claire because Claire has a very minimal understanding of makeup. That’s why I think we were such a great team, because I take this stuff for granted. I would just rattle things off and be like, “Oh, what do you mean, it's called lab work, when you're making a prosthetic” and she’d be like, “I don't know what that means.” So you have to explain.

WG: I love that you raise the CGI and practical effects dichotomy as well, because that's something that I see a lot of discourse about in online spaces right now.

ES: I mean, I really believe in the human hand. I believe that you can see the hand, and I think it resonates with people in a different way that might be hard to describe. But I think that we know what's going on. What’s interesting, too, is the CGI stuff in film and real life is so blended at this point. So I think it does make sense to blend beauty and special effects, as it makes sense to have all these filters to blend your digital with your public persona—or plastic surgery, that kind of thing. We’re entering a really interesting time when it comes to the human façade.

WG: So you've cited car manuals, you've cited the Bobbi Brown Makeup Manual. What, if any, were the other design inspirations that you were bringing into these early meetings?

ES: I'd say there's three more: there's the 1965 Dick Smith Do-It-Yourself Monster Makeup Handbook. There's What’s What, which is just a visual glossary book. It has like an illustration of a lawnmower and then these little arrows. It's an amazing tool for a writer. There are little arrows pointing to every piece of the lawnmower and what it's called. And then my dad, he's an eye surgeon, and he has all these old medical textbooks from the ‘80s. I have a 1988 Nissan, so that's the car manual that I was using too.

WG: So many beauty guides are like technologies of subjection, right? They’re teaching you how to create the look, but also in the visuals, they're teaching you what looks are worth creating.

ES: Exactly. So this manual is just the former.

WG: And the images in this book are so gorgeously done but so idiosyncratic. I'm assuming they’re all your work.

ES: I worked with a photographer, Jason [Al-Taan], who I met through SOPHIE. We were very close and Jason was very close with SOPHIE too, and that's how we met, because Jason was one of the few people that SOPHIE would trust to take her photo. Honestly, a lot of the concepts in this book are things that I would talk about with SOPHIE. We connected on this stuff a lot, because Coco [Campbell] and I made her dresses for a long time. I didn't do her makeup, but we would talk about the body and how to package yourself.

WG: In the “Preparing Yourself and Your Subject” section, you observe how makeup is one of the few professions that involves laying your hands directly on another person's face. Can you talk a little bit about the intimacy between the makeup artist and the makeup wearer?

ES: I think that it's like 60% bedside manner. Being a makeup artist is relaxing the subject and also having authority, keeping it light but you’re still diligent about the job. I grew up working in my dad’s office, and so when I would see him with patients, you understand how important bedside manner is. Special effects also comes from medicine. The prosthetic adhesive that you use is medical grade, and so it is very much about having a system, having a plan, otherwise you're just touching someone's face.

Between the makeup artist and the subject, you have to develop trust, curiosity. I'm sure it's not so different actually, from your job. You have to ease in, you have to make it feel natural, but still professional, like you’re not going to go in with no limitations but with intimacy. That’s why I always ask, “Can I use my fingers?” Because it's kind of a funny thing to say, and it throws people off but it's sweet because I don't want to just surprise them. You don't want to just touch someone's face without acknowledging it or asking.

WG: That's kind of how I feel about asking to record my interviews. Most people assume that they’re going to be recorded regardless, but I think that there's a lot of power in someone's words existing, recorded and reproducible forever.

ES: I mean, that's also what I say in the book. I think a lot about death masks and busts and stuff like that, where that was how you immortalized people, and it's not so different…putting someone on film. I do take it as a great responsibility. Before the cameras roll, they look at me. And I give them a go. I guess I have to think about it in a grandiose way, but it's fun. It's fun to think about it that way.

WG: Speaking of subjects, let’s talk about the casting for these images in the book.

ES: We worked with Casting Double, my friends Eléonor [Hendricks], Elise [Raven], and Salome [Oggenfuss], so it was a combination of them and then people that I knew. At least initially, I wanted it to be all teenagers because the Dick Smith book, he made it for his 10 year old son and all these teenage boys are the models for it. The book cover—this angel, or whatever you want to call it—he's my friend's 13-year-old kid.

I thought it was important to have someone on the cover who was in middle school because that was when I started thinking about all this stuff in a serious way. And then those are my hands on the cover. I worked as a hand model my whole 20s—that's how I would support myself also along with makeup. So I also wanted this to be a hand modeling book.

I really paid attention to the poses throughout the book, and yeah, and it's all about the hands. I mean, that's kind of the whole idea.

All photos by Jason Al-Taan, courtesy of A24.

PLAYBACK

Snippets of streaming news — and what we’re streaming.

• Calling You Out by Charly Bliss (Spotify)

• FTR by Cruel Santino and S-Smart (Spotify)

• The 360 remix with robyn and yung lean by Charli XCX (Spotify)

• Beth Gibbons’ Lives Outgrown (Spotify)

• Emily St. James unpacks the ending of I Saw The TV Glow (Vulture)

• HBO’s Ren Faire is Succession by way of Best In Show (Letterboxd)

• I need to be the hottest person in these absurd trolley problems (Neal.Fun)

MIXTAPE

Good links from the Dirtyverse.

• What does a font taste like? Olivia Hingley on the “typosensory.” (It’s Nice That)

• QAnon’s paranoid, conspiratorial thinking is all over today’s reactionary American politics. (Mother Jones)

• Greta Rainbow visited the Ireland-NYC portal when it was running and when it wasn’t. (New York Review of Architecture)

• The cure for our national short song crisis is, unsurprisingly, long songs. (Blackbird Spyplane)

• What do arthouse cinema, streaming services, and SHEIN have in common? Caroline Busta on content as catalyst. (Document)

• Christopher Chang lists his top three rivers. (The Paris Review)

• Kathleen Hanna + Jenn Pelly = Dream Crossover (Vulture)

• Arvida Byström’s artwork managed to piss off the galleries and the OnlyFans creators at the same time. (SSENSE)

• From Burg Ockenfels to Birkenstocks, in words and photos. (Bloomberg)