M.A.C. Mints Marilyn

It’s 5:00 p.m., and Marilyn Minter is about to have a party. Caterers move this way and that, carrying crates of glasses and arranging hors d’oeuvres on trays, while Minter minions—the brilliant young assistants from her workshop who, the artist swears, are now better at her technique than she is—silently continue their work, dabbing paint on giant canvases just-so with the tips of their fingers. Male models—tonight, they’re waiters—loll on a couch and watch the video that’s on a constant loop. More on that later. Soon 100 people will jam themselves into Minter’s studio here on Mercer Street to get a look at the six-foot-tall art-world star and her work—the studio’s walls provide a tantalizing glimpse of the unfinished works that will appear in shows in L.A., Cincinnati, and Murcia, Spain, later this fall. There’s a series with Pamela Anderson (“She took off all her makeup for me; that was pretty brave”), and several photographs on the back wall—reference for a painting—of the bottom half of a woman’s face, showing only lapis-blue lips and an open mouth dripping with liquid gold. “That’s Wangechi Mutu**,**” Minter says of the artist and friend with whom she has begun to collaborate. “I’m starting it tomorrow.” The reason everyone is coming this evening, though, is to get a first look at the kaleidoscopic photograph hanging in the studio’s entrance: a long-lashed, shimmer-splashed blinking eye encrusted in all manner of sticky, sequined club-world glitter. It’s very M.A.C. And it’s very Marilyn Minter. In fact, M.A.C.—which stands for Make-Up Art Cosmetics, a little-known fact—is Minter’s cohost this evening, and this photograph is the result of a project commissioned by the cosmetics company that treads so softly and successfully between the avant-garde and the mainstream. It’s part of a new series for which M.A.C. asked three visual artists with three very different styles—Minter, the painter Richard Phillips, and the illustrator Maira Kalman— to create images inspired by their fall cosmetics. There will be three parties this evening in three studios. The night starts chez Minter. Although Minter herself is known for her bare, freckled skin, accented simply with a touch of blush and her signature brick-red lips (M.A.C. Dubonnet, a shade she’s been wearing “for years”) her paintings and photographs, on the other hand, are a wild, decadent, tight-focus, Technicolor celebration of makeup madness. Of her invitation from the always edgy cosmetics company (the SoHo store is just around the corner from her studio, and she’s a loyal client), “I’m surprised they didn’t ask me earlier!” she roars. Minter calls makeup “war paint” and believes that, conventionally, it shows “people at their best.” In her work, though, as in the image we’ve come to see unveiled, “I’m trying to make a picture of when it’s a little later,” she says, eyes twinkling, a touch of mischief creeping into her tone. “You know,” she continues, very slowly, setting the scene, “party lights, it’s hot, you’re sweaty, you’ve got that slight perspiration on your brow, your eyelashes start coming off. No one ever takes a picture of that,” she says, exposing her specific brand of beauty and truth: the nitty-gritty with a slick coat of high gloss on top. “I always say, ‘Perfection is the flaw. It doesn’t exist.’ I saw something somewhere about ‘porcelain pores’—you’re not even allowed to have pores anymore!” she says, looking truly outraged. “Everything I do—paintings, photography—is metaphorically talking about what it feels like to look at perfection all the time. What it feels like to look.” For this piece, she says, “they gave me all this makeup, and I just played, which is what I always do.” In this instance, “all this makeup” roughly boils down to loads of M.A.C.’s loose Glitter, Reflects Glitter, and powdery Pigment—with a healthy, clumpy coat of mascara on top. She produced the video—the one that was bewitching the models/waiters—during her M.A.C. shoot. You might have seen it, too, if you (A) were in Times Square this summer (it played on the Jumbotron) or (B) managed to catch Madonna’s “Sticky & Sweet” tour. “She just saw it and bought it. It’s her opening number,” says Minter, noting that Madonna was already a collector, and owns two of her paintings. But back to the video: Titled Green Pink Caviar, it depicts two models licking what looks like icing and pastel cake batter off a clear glass baking dish. Our perspective: beneath the dish. It’s sort of like midnight, Magnolia Bakery, no one’s looking. Except, now, Madonna’s entire audience. “Literally, when the model was changing eye makeup, I said, ‘Come over here and lick some glass,’ ” Minter says of the video shoot, in which the models patiently licked meringue and blue food coloring while the camera rolled, eventually turning the whole mixture pale green. In homage to Green Pink Caviar, the food at her party will be “all kinds of desserts.” Ultimately, though, for Minter, makeup and beauty have very little to do with each other. “You know when women look their best?” she asks. “When they’re in love.” M.A.C.’s new fall line, at makeup counters, starting August 20; maccosmetics.com. Marilyn Minter will have shows this fall at the Cannery in Murcia, Spain (opening September 12), the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati (opening October 2), and Regan Projects, L.A .(opening October 24); greenpinkcaviar.com.