The Best Posts From Gucci’s New Beauty Instagram, Including One Inspired By The Middle East

The account explores the relationship between art and beauty

Earlier this week, Gucci launched its new beauty Instagram account, @guccibeauty, which aims to present creative director Alessandro Michele’s vision of beauty. But instead of the glamorous model and product shots we are used to, the account showcases an amalgamation of beauty, art, history, culture, gender and geography in an easily digestible, scroll-friendly way.

For The Art of Beauty, as the first series of posts is known, Gucci tapped a group of art writers and critics to give detailed background on the pieces pulled from galleries, private collections, and museums like the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The captions aim to provide further information on specific beauty related aspects of each painting, such as red lips and curled hair, as well as explaining different beauty practices from around the world, the way in which beauty ideals have been preserved and evolved, and the way beauty is interpreted by different eras and cultures.

According to a press release, the Instagram account will also be where Gucci details new beauty launches (which hopefully means there’s a new Gucci makeup collection in the works), fragrances, looks from the fashion shows, and special collaborations with artists and talents. You can check out five of our favourite posts from Gucci Beauty below, including a painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme who was fascinated with the Middle East and wrapped his model in a translucent veil in a nod to her perceived exotic origins.

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Title: Woman from Constantinople, standing, c.1876
Author: Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) Private Collection ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ The French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme is the quintessential Orientalist painter, a European artist interested in a fantastical, stylized depiction of other cultures. After visiting Egypt in 1856 he became fascinated with the Middle East in particular and brought back local artifacts and costumes, which he used as props in his Paris studio. His work was extremely popular and much of it is now held in private collections, including this moody portrait. Gérôme wrapped his model in a translucent veil in a nod to her perceived exotic origins, drawing our attention to her languid gaze and ambiguous smile. Yet the image is theatrical, almost a fiction. #GucciBeauty — @tatianaberg
Photo © Christie's Images / Bridgeman Images

A post shared by Gucci Beauty (@guccibeauty) on Sep 15, 2018 at 12:27pm PDT

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Title: Vanitas, a young woman seated at her dressing table, 1632
Author: Paulus Moreelse Private Collection ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ In his native city of Utrecht, Paulus Moreelse was a sought-after portraitist. He was especially appreciated for his rich use of color, often imbuing his figures with a lively, pink-cheeked vigor.
One of his favorite genres was playfully sensual portraiture of young women with tousled blonde
hair and overflowing décolletage. This privately held painting is a particularly memorable example, wherein he places the woman at her dressing table. Her gold jewelry is splayed out in pride on the tablecloth, an example of vanitas, a genre of painting meant to symbolize both the pleasure and ultimately futility of earthly delights. #GucciBeauty — @tatianaberg
Johnny Van Haeften Ltd., London / Bridgeman Images

A post shared by Gucci Beauty (@guccibeauty) on Sep 14, 2018 at 10:09am PDT

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Title: Woman with Marigold, 1876 Author: Felipe Santiago Gutiérrez Museum: LACMA, Los Angeles ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ This 1876 portrait from @LACMA, one of the #GucciPlaces, of a native Latin American woman wearing a huipil (native blouse) and holding a marigold over her pregnant belly is emblematic of the artist’s ability to capture the spirit of the sitter within a moment. The painting is most likely a specific portrait, made within a genre of symbolic depictions of mothers, though the subjects of those paintings were usually white, making this painting a striking and meaningful exception — we are invited to consider her interior world. The painter, Felipe Santiago Gutierrez, was born in Mexico himself and became one of the first internationally known Mexican artists. #GucciBeauty — @lrsphm Image courtesy of LACMA

A post shared by Gucci Beauty (@guccibeauty) on Sep 13, 2018 at 11:30am PDT

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Title: Untitled (Eva), 2018 Author: Simone Kennedy Doig
Location: Baert Gallery, Los Angeles. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Born in London in 1994, #SimoneKennedyDoig spends her time between her birthplace and Trinidad, where she moved to in 2002 and spent much of her childhood. Her works deal with intersectional identity, which for Kennedy Doig is informed by her experiences in Port of Spain and London. This is an oil painting that portrays two young women, friends in front of a mirror, staring at their own reflections. One figure, applies makeup, heightening her own sense of beauty while the other female casts a glance upon her. The expression captured in the onlookers gaze contributes to an atmosphere tinged with perhaps a small dose of envy. The image offers a psychological exploration of femininity from a female's perspective, standing in contrast to the male gaze and the usual depictions of women throughout art history. #GucciBeauty — @sirsargent Courtesy of the artist and Baert Gallery, Los Angeles.
Photo: Joshua White.

A post shared by Gucci Beauty (@guccibeauty) on Sep 13, 2018 at 11:30am PDT

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Title: Portraits of two women, 1950
Author: Lois Mailou Jones Private Collection ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Nearly every moment of #LoisMailouJones’s life was captured and shared through her paintings.
Her style traversed the aesthetic landscape, first mimicking the work of the post-Impressionists
and then drawing from the rich colors and symbols of Africa and Haiti, where she often traveled.
In her portraits, Jones was known for her ability to capture the rich complexities of black skin
tones, rendering her subjects (often her friends or students from Howard University, where she taught) as near three-dimensional figures. Styled in feminine blouses with red lips and curled hair, Jones manages to capture each woman’s beauty in this 1950 painting’s tight headshots. Jones suggests a familiarity and bond between the two only found
through family or friendship. #GucciBeauty — @britticisms
Lois Mailou Jones Pierre-Noel Trust

A post shared by Gucci Beauty (@guccibeauty) on Sep 17, 2018 at 4:56am PDT

The New York Public Library is taking its collection of classics global via its new social initiative “Insta Novels”, which aims to make great stories available even more widely.

• Words by Gracie Stewart

• #Beauty
• #Instagram
• #Gucci
• #Art history