Art and Beauty, Beauty and Art...

The coming together of the world of visual arts and the world of beauty (and fashion) is nothing new. I still have the special edition Jeff Koons bottle that Kiehl's introduced a few years ago, and continue to be fascinated by the collaborations between NARS makeup and various visual artists, among other brands. After all, art is another way of expressing beauty.

Beyond working with artists as brands, skin care brand founders are sometimes artists themselves (such as Dr. Murad who loves to paint), or gallerists. Case in point, Barbara Polla, co-founder of Alchimie Forever and owner of the Geneva and Paris based contemporary gallery Analix Forever.

Her latest star is French drawer Julien Serve, the star of her stand at the recent Turin, Italy artfair Artissima.

Courtesy J Serve

Serve was born in 1976 in Paris, where he lives and works. He graduated from the Beaux- Arts Paris-Cergy. Julien Serve comes from painting but explores every artistic medium: photography, video and particularly drawing. In 2012, the artistic director of the Printemps de Septembre of Toulouse chose to show one of the artist's work "194 Flags". Serve recently participated in a collective exhibition at Magda Danysz Galleries in Paris and Shanghai for which he drew more than a hundred drawings freely inspired by sketches of major haute couture designers from the 21st century. Paul Ardenne, art critic and curator, decided to exhibit Julien Serve's new works in October 2015 on the occasion of Art No- mad Biennale.

Most interestingly perhaps to the US market, he recently created a series of portraits of some of the leading magazine editors in the beauty industry, adding media to the marriage of art and beauty.

Move over Drawbertson... or rather, make room for the French Serve!