Margy Kinmonth’s latest feature documentary represents the third in a trilogy of films about artists and war, following Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War, which focused on the second world war artist of the title, and the more first world war-skewed War Art with Eddie Redmayne, which showed on ITV. This time the focus is on female artists and war – as the title suggests with its cringe-inducing pun on a slang term for makeup.
It’s a perfectly valid and potentially fruitful subject, but the analysis here is often frustratingly superficial. Kinmonth puts herself front and centre as the onscreen interviewer and narrator, so one has to blame her directly for the daftness of some her questions. For instance, she asks sculptor Rachel Whiteread: “I’m wondering, is there a difference in the perception of female artists to men, and what do women see that men don’t?” Whiteread politely demurs to tackle that one. “I think that’s an incredibly difficult thing to answer,” she replies. “I don’t think you really can make that distinction.”
