In your face: This hungarian artist knows how to orchestrate some solid drama with unconventional materials.

Eszter Magyar knows how to build up the grotesque and the ugly - until it becomes beautiful. She is the creative behind makeupbrutalism pouring us some serious drip.

Let’s check in with your roots first: What relationship did your mom and grandma have with make-up? How did you discover it for yourself?

One of my grandmothers loved lipsticks, but nothing bold as I remember - my other grandma was a legendary badass, she was totally crazy and fearless - but not into makeup at all. My mom is kind of the same, she was not really interested in makeup until the point, when I became a makeup artist - probably she wanted to take advantage of my education. I remember one thing, she had a little makeup box with all the products like blushes, lipsticks, eyeshadows. It ended in my Barbie-House as a piece of furniture. I was never really invested in makeup - I used it, of course, but I had one eye pencil. I was not interested in techniques, products or whatsoever, I just thought if I use heavy eye makeup, no one will notice my diastema. Oh, I was wrong. But it was perfect for self expression, since I was into punk scene. Fun fact, I never wanted to be a makeup artist, it was not even my idea to study it. Just my teacher had a huge impact on me and it turned out I'm good at it. But it took years and years to find my true style in makeup.

When did you come up with makeupbrutalism?

It was an organic process - I started to experiment quite early because I’ve gotten bored from classical techniques. So I just went home one day, sat down, started to play with shapes and colors and documented everything. I uploaded the first eye closeups in 2014, but started frequently around 2017. I had some workshops called MAKEUPBRUTALISM in a makeup school even before I started my account (which was born in 2018). So to be honest, I had no clue what I was doing, I had no intentions with it, I never planned on having a large following, getting interviewed or anything. I just enjoyed doing different stuff, played around, questioned myself - and one question always led to another. So probably it was always in the air; it just took its time to manifest itself as @makeupbrutalism.

“Just another impossible beauty standard”: tell us more about this amazing and important statement, from your perspective …

All the beauty trends today are a “little bit” hard to achieve if you don't have those specific features which are required. I just wanted to level up this idea of impossible beauty and started to photoshop eyes on my teeth, tongue, tits etc. I remember someone just commented under one of those posts: “oh great, another impossible beauty standard”. And I was like: YES THAT'S IT. Because how far can we go with this? I can push those limits even further. My main confusion, where it all began, was that I don't understand the relation between people and beauty. how can we take something so seriously if we know that it will change in a minute. What was a flaw yesterday, could be the biggest trend tomorrow and vice versa. And still it destroys people each day.

Pick the most disgusting pic of your work so far: Why is it disgusting - what did you want to express?

I'm not disgusted by any of my looks at all. Yeah, probably there are some, which are more impactful as the others, but I wouldn't consider any of them disgusting.

Pic your favorite work: what do you love about it?

I love all the textart ones. The „this is not makeup“- series or the one which says “If this is makeup than what isn’t” .

What is your favorite cartoon character?

I really enjoy cartoons which are made for adults like the “Les Maîtres du temps“ which is a french-hungarian cooperation. Once I found a list “cartoons which should be illegal for children“ and that's where I found “Grave of the fireflies“. I could cry even just when I think about it. But I have early memories when I watched AEON FLUX on MTV and I could never erase that trailer from my brain. Those had the biggest impact on me, but on the other hand I'm a Disney princess who is singing Disney songs all the time (of course in hungarian). And I have to confess my new obsession, Studio Ghibli movies, especially the Miyazaki masterpieces. Sometimes I just turn them on and listen to the language - it calms me down.

You are pretty punk in your make-up attitude: what kind of makeup would you do on young Debbie Harry?

I love to separate makeupbrutalism from my makeup artist self, because if you are somewhere as a makeup artist, you are a team member. What you do is not about you, just taking a little part of big whole. But what came immediately in my mind is a dirty powder pink fluffy eye makeup with bold pointy red lips.

Imagine you would do a shooting with Grace Jones: what would you do on her?

As a makeup artist I like all or nothing. On one hand I think she is perfect so I would put nothing on her literally, but on the other hand I would custom make some tattoos of Grace herself and would stick everywhere on her, because one Grace Jones is not enough.

What gives you the most inspiration these days?

When it comes to makeup everything should be smooth, symmetric, homogeneous and semipermanent -if you ask the industry. So this was something I wanted to challenge with more textured looks. I tried to find new methods which can lead to a more 3D result.

What is your favorite quote?

“The bed is shared, the pillow isn’t”.