Rorschach Renderings of Beauty Products

Since the 1890s, psychiatrists have been using klecksography (the art of creating images from inkblots) to analyse their patients, but it wasn't until Hermann Rorschach wrote his 1921 book Psychodiagnostic that the treatment made its way into the public psyche. By the 1960s, Rorschach's series of ten, ambiguously ink-blotted cards had become the most widely-used projected form of testing and, in spite of contemporary criticism of their objective validity, they remain the cultural touchstone of psychiatry: a visual rendering of the depth of the subconscious.

In honour of our dedicated beauty week, Agnes Lloyd-Platt and Victoria Spicer have applied everything from viscous nail polishes to sticky lipglosses onto acetate sheets to reinterpret the craft. "We used to do this when we were kids to make masks," explained Lloyd-Platt "I quite often see bird or bear faces in the reflections." And the joy of the Rorschach test is that the results are entirely subject to independent interpretation: "there are poisoned apples and a flamingo with a hat on," said Lloyd-Platt of the above image; "they're ovaries!" exlaimed editor Natalie Rigg. "I think a lot of them can be interpreted as rather rude, especially if the viewer has Freudian tendencies," continued Lloyd-Platt – and the series does thoroughly allude to the yonic, but equally speaks to the subjective nature of beauty itself. Here, we present the full series, exclusively for AnOthermag.com...