These are promo images for makeup brand Illamasqua‘s new collection Theatre of the Nameless, which was inspired by the notoriously voluptuous 1920s Berlin nightlife. I’m a sucker for any modern, dark interpretation of ’20s makeup.

Related post >> John Galliano’s theatrical runway makeup

{via the ever-brilliant Coilhouse blog}

There was a lot of controversy surrounding Ionesco’s nudes with her young daughter as the model. More on that below.

Irina’s images of her daughter, Eva Ionesco, were very controversial, as you can probably imagine. In these, the prepubescent Eva is displayed in an array of nude, erotic, and bondage-flavored poses, with a seeming precocious knack for modeling, an intense gaze, and a weird, Lolita-esque allure. I find these photos to be some of Ionesco’s most interesting work, though, and personally, my perceptions of artworks are totally divorced from any moral values, so I don’t really think about them in terms of whether it was okay for Irina to use her daughter for such images or not.

Here’s an interesting tidbit: Eva Ionesco’s first acting role, at age 11, was in my second-favorite Roman Polanski film, 1976′s The Tenant (my favorite is 1965′s Repulsion). Around the same age she appeared in erotic roles in a “soft-core surrealist sci-fi” film called Spermula (which sounds hilariously bad), and in Maladolescenza (“Adolescent Malice” in English), which “has a reputation of anything from a beautiful work of genius, to the lowest form of titillation.”

Eva is directing her first feature film this year, Je ne suis pas une princesse, an autobiographical movie with Isabelle Huppert in essentially the role of her mother.

If you’re curious, Eva has the same intense gaze as an adult.

See many more Irina Ionesco images here.

More pictures over on Fashion Gone Rogue.

Born in 1881, she was a Danish actress who played in over 70 films, almost all of which were made in Germany. She was known for portraying passionate women caught in tragedy, and for the erotic quality of her performances. She brought a more subtle, naturalistic, and minimalistic acting style to cinema, in contrast to many silent actors who used theatricality – much like my beloved Louise Brooks did later on in the late ’20s. She also played Lulu in the 1923 adaptation of the Wedekind play, Erdgeist (“Earth Spirit”), which role Louise Brooks was to play in 1928 in Pabst’s Die Büchse der Pandora.

“‘Asta Nielsen’ means the power to speak of pathos, to see pain, and to find the middle path between Baudelaire’s flower of evil and the sick rose of which Blake sang.”
- M. S. Fonseca

Here are a few pictures of Asta below: