Demi's Birthday Suit
Encyclopedia
Body painting
Body painting, or sometimes bodypainting, is a form of body art. Unlike tattoo and other forms of body art, body painting is temporary, painted onto the human skin, and lasts for only several hours, or at most a couple of weeks. Body painting that is limited to the face is known as face painting...
by Joanne Gair
Joanne Gair
Joanne "Kiwi Jo" or "Kiwi Joe" Gair is a New Zealand-born and raised make-up artist and body painter whose body paintings have been featured in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue from 1999 to the 2011 edition...
photographed by Annie Leibovitz
Annie Leibovitz
Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer.-Early life and education:Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, Leibovitz is the third of six children. She is a third-generation American whose great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants, from Central and Eastern Europe. Her father's...
that was featured on the cover of the Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
August 1992 issue to commemorate and exploit the success of Leibovitz's More Demi Moore
More Demi Moore
More Demi Moore or the August 1991 Vanity Fair cover was a controversial handbra nude photograph of the then seven-months pregnant Demi Moore taken by Annie Leibovitz for the August 1991 cover of Vanity Fair to accompany a cover story about Moore....
cover photo of Demi Moore
Demi Moore
Demi Guynes Kutcher , known professionally as Demi Moore, is an American actress. After minor roles in film and a role in the soap opera General Hospital, Moore established her career in films such as St...
one year earlier. As an example of modern body painting artwork, it raised the profile of Gair in pop culture as an artist in that genre.
The work is considered to be groundbreaking by some, although there is controversy surrounding its originality. The converse of this image serves as the cover to Gair's second bodypainting book, Body Painting. The photo shoot also let Moore show off the results of her fitness regimen.
Artistic perspective
Gene Newman considers the body painting of Moore to be the introduction of modern body painting to the world. Although willing to credit Moore and Gair with the rebirth of bodypainting in a San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
story, the "makeup artist, wig maker and stylist" Jim Ponder had difficulty calling interest in bodypainting a trend because it traces back to the "beginnings of man". Joanne Gair has described the painting as a stylized reference to Botticelli, since the sinuous pose is reminiscent of the central figures in both Primavera
Primavera (painting)
Primavera, also known as Allegory of Spring, is a tempera panel painting by Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli. Painted ca. 1482, the painting is described in Culture & Values as "[o]ne of the most popular paintings in Western art"...
and The Birth of Venus
The Birth of Venus (Botticelli)
The Birth of Venus is a painting by Sandro Botticelli. It depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a fully grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore...
. The Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
product description for Gair's book calls her participation in this photoshoot as her "defining moment". Soon after the release of the magazine Gair became such a pop culture icon that she was considered for an Absolut Vodka
Absolut Vodka
Absolut Vodka is a brand of vodka, produced near Åhus, Skåne, in southern Sweden. Since July 2008 the company has been owned by the French firm Pernod Ricard who bought V&S Group from the Swedish government....
Absolut Gair ad campaign according to a story in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. The work is considered to be an example from the most sophisticated end of the bodypainting spectrum which extends all the way to Henna tattoos.
Some sources have claimed that the work is a derivative of preceding works. Playboy published a photo with similar bodypainting, with a necktie
Necktie
A necktie is a long piece of cloth worn for decorative purposes around the neck or shoulders, resting under the shirt collar and knotted at the throat. Variants include the ascot tie, bow tie, bolo tie, and the clip-on tie. The modern necktie, ascot, and bow tie are descended from the cravat. Neck...
, suit jacket and similar pose, in its March 1968 issue, as part of a feature on bodypainting. A publicity website for Tim Gratton, two-time world body painting champion from Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, claims that he was the inspiration for the art work.
Details
Gair had worked with Leibovitz and Moore on More Demi Moore. Departing Vanity Fair editor Tina BrownTina Brown
Tina Brown, Lady Evans, CBE , is a journalist, magazine editor, columnist, talk-show host and author of The Diana Chronicles, a biography of Diana, Princess of Wales. Born a British citizen, she took United States citizenship in 2005 after emigrating in 1984 to edit Vanity Fair...
felt "The only thing to do for the anniversary cover was to reprise it." According to a Houston Chronicle
Houston Chronicle
The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Texas, USA, headquartered in the Houston Chronicle Building in Downtown Houston. , it is the ninth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States...
story that quotes both Moore and Brown, about 100 million people had seen the earlier cover, and this cover capitalized on the anniversary.
They decided to attempt a body painting during the week-long shoot at the Chateau Marmont Hotel
Chateau Marmont Hotel
The Chateau Marmont is a hotel at 8221 Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, California. Built in 1927, and modeled loosely after the Château d'Amboise, in France's Loire Valley. It has served as the backdrop for a number of events in the lives of well-known rock stars and actors.-History:Fred...
in West Hollywood, California
West Hollywood, California
West Hollywood, a city of Los Angeles County, California, was incorporated on November 29, 1984, with a population of 34,399 at the 2010 census. 41% of the city's population is made up of gay men according to a 2002 demographic analysis by Sara Kocher Consulting for the City of West Hollywood...
in 1992. Gair was provided with a pinstriped
Pin stripes
Pinstripes are a pattern of very thin stripes of any color running in parallel found in cloth. The pinstriped suit has become associated with conservative business attire, although many designers now produce fashionable pinstripe patterns for fashion-conscious consumers...
three-piece suit by Richard Tyler as a model to paint onto Moore. Since in those days she did not generally work with assistants, the day started at 6:30 A.M. and Demi Moore slept that night in the painted-on suit in case they needed to resume the next day. It took 15 hours to apply the suit because it was difficult for Gair to build the proper paint density. Moore's body heat melted the paint. For the 1992 cover, which required a full-day sitting for Gair and her team of make-up artists, Leibovitz could not decide where to shoot, and "reserved two mobile homes, four hotel rooms and five houses". Stylist Lori Goldstein assisted with the application.
Having started rigorous workouts in the final trimester of her pregnancy
Pregnancy
Pregnancy refers to the fertilization and development of one or more offspring, known as a fetus or embryo, in a woman's uterus. In a pregnancy, there can be multiple gestations, as in the case of twins or triplets...
the year before to prepare for her role in A Few Good Men
A Few Good Men (film)
A Few Good Men is a 1992 drama film directed by Rob Reiner and starring Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, and Demi Moore. It was adapted for the screen by Aaron Sorkin from his play of the same name. A courtroom drama, the film revolves around the trial of two U.S...
, Moore was physically fit for the photoshoot. Thus she appeared in additional nude photos within the magazine's cover story. Moore viewed the photos as a chance to show off the results of her workouts: "I said I would get better with each baby and I have." The weeklong effort also involved shots taken in Kauai
Kauai
Kauai or Kauai, known as Tauai in the ancient Kaua'i dialect, is geologically the oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands. With an area of , it is the fourth largest of the main islands in the Hawaiian archipelago, and the 21st largest island in the United States. Known also as the "Garden Isle",...
, Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
that are included in Gair's second book, Body Painting. Moore felt she looked better on the cover at age 29 than she had in a bikini
Bikini
The bikini is typically a women's two-piece swimsuit. One part of the attire covers the breasts and the other part covers the crotch and part of or the entire buttocks, leaving an uncovered area between the two. Merriam–Webster describes the bikini as "a woman's scanty two-piece bathing suit" or "a...
nine years earlier in Blame It on Rio
Blame it on Rio
Blame it on Rio is a 1984 romantic comedy film, written by Charlie Peters and Larry Gelbart and directed by Stanley Donen. The script is based on the 1977 French film, Un moment d'égarement. The original music score was composed by Kenneth Wannberg...
.
More Demi Moore
Demi Moore had appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair exactly one year earlier in the August 1991 edition in Leibovitz's photograph, More Demi MooreMore Demi Moore
More Demi Moore or the August 1991 Vanity Fair cover was a controversial handbra nude photograph of the then seven-months pregnant Demi Moore taken by Annie Leibovitz for the August 1991 cover of Vanity Fair to accompany a cover story about Moore....
. As a groundbreaking work, the photograph of her pregnant pose was an iconic one for Moore, Leibovitz and women in general who now view public representation of pregnancy as socially acceptable. It had a cultural impact by causing numerous celebrities to pose for photographs in advanced pregnancy, which has made pregnancy photos fashionable and created a profitable business for photographers such as Jennifer Loomis
Jennifer Loomis
Jennifer Loomis is an award-winning fine-art photographer and photojournalist, who is best known for her photography of nude pregnant women.- Early life :...
. The American Society of Magazine Editors
American Society of Magazine Editors
The American Society of Magazine Editors is an industry trade group for editors of magazines published in the United States. The group advocates on behalf of member organizations with respect to First Amendment issues, and serves as a networking hub for editors and other industry employees...
regards it as one of the best U.S. magazine covers ever, and it is one of Leibovitz' best-known works. Additionally, the photo served as a litmus test when Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
decency
Decency
Decency is the quality or state of conforming to social or moral standards of taste and propriety.-See also:*Taste *Communications Decency Act*Public indecency*Indecent exposure*Sodomy law*Norm *Grotesque body...
standards were first being legislated and adjudicated.