Exploring the proliferation of makeup as both practice and metaphor across intellectual, visual and material culture, this transnational study involves analysis of French, British, German and Russian art, philosophy, fiction, journalism and advice manuals.

From its negative early modern associations with the sensual and the superficial to its acceptance and widespread use in the 1910s, Ksenia Gusarova traces makeup's many transformations.

Across centuries and national boundaries, associations between makeup and visual arts, particularly painting, were fairly commonplace in European intellectual and popular culture. Though mostly unflattering, occasionally comparisons were made that challenged established aesthetic hierarchies in order to promote new definitions of art. The Art of Beauty examines the discourse about cosmetics as (inferior) art, arguing for its important role in policing the boundaries of what was considered artistic practice and who was allowed to engage in it, with regard to gender in particular, but also class and race.