Through 200 objects, works of art, photographs, and ephemera, the exhibition 'Beauty Is Power' will reunite selections from Rubinstein's famed art collection featuring works by Picasso, Elie Nadelman, Frida Kahlo, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, Joan Miro, and Henri Matisse, among others.
organized by Mason Klein,
Curator at the Jewish Museum, with Rebecca Shaykin, Leon Levy
Assistant Curator.
First Museum Exhibition to Focus on the
Innovative Cosmetics Entrepreneur and Art Collector
New York, NY – Beginning October 31, 2014, the Jewish Museum will
present Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power, the first museum
exhibition to explore the ideas, innovations, and influence of the
legendary cosmetics entrepreneur Helena Rubinstein (1872-1965). By
the time of her death, Rubinstein had risen from humble origins in
small-town Jewish Poland to become a global icon of female
entrepreneurship and a leader in art, fashion, design, and
philanthropy. As the head of a cosmetics empire that extended
across four continents, she was, arguably, the first modern self-
made woman magnate. Rubinstein was ahead of her time in her
embrace of cultural and artistic diversity. She was not only an early
patron of European and Latin American modern art, but also one of
the earliest, leading collectors of African and Oceanic sculpture.
On view through March 22, 2015, the exhibition will explore how
Madame (as she was universally known) helped break down the status
quo of taste by blurring boundaries between commerce, art,
fashion, beauty, and design. Through 200 objects – works of art,
photographs, and ephemera – Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power
reveals how Rubinstein’s unique style and pioneering approaches to
business challenged conservative taste and heralded a modern
notion of beauty, democratized and accessible to all.
The exhibition will reunite selections from Rubinstein’s famed art
collection, dispersed at auction in 1966, featuring works by Pablo
Picasso, Elie Nadelman, Frida Kahlo, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, Joan
Miró, and Henri Matisse, among others, as well as thirty works from
her peerless collection of African and Oceanic art. Other exhibition
highlights include Rubinstein’s beloved miniature period rooms,
jewelry, and clothing designed by Cristóbal Balenciaga, Elsa
Schiaparelli, and Paul Poiret. Rubinstein’s savvy for self-promotion
will be seen in portraits of her made by the leading artists of her day,
from Marie Laurencin to Andy Warhol. Also on display will be vintage
advertisements, cosmetics products, and promotional films related
to her beauty business.
Picasso, one of Rubinstein’s favorite artists, completed over thirty
drawings of Madame in 1955. Twelve of these will be exhibited in the
United States for the first time. The drawings capture a range of
Rubinstein’s volatile moods, and depict many of her well-known
attributes – the clothes, the jewelry, the chignon, the imperious
manner and bearing.
Rubinstein amassed one of the most acclaimed collections of African
and Oceanic art of the early 20th century. She treated the work as
high art before it was common to do so, displaying the sculptures in
her homes and beauty salons. She delighted in works from a broad
range of cultures, and she especially loved the immense variety of
forms and types within each tradition. Some of the highlights on
display in the exhibition are: two exceptional Punu masks (Gabon);
three highly stylized Bakota reliquary figures (Gabon); four
celebrated Fang heads (Gabon); two impressive Bamana puppet
headdresses (Mali); a distinctive Lake Sentani figure (New Guinea);
and a Yoruba head (Nigeria) with an elaborate coiffure, thought to be
one of Madame’s favorites.
Rubinstein had a lifelong love of miniature rooms and commissioned
numerous doll-size dioramas, decorated in period styles. They
ranged from a Spanish Baroque dining room to an artist’s garret in
turn-of-the-century Montmartre. She installed her miniature rooms
in a gallery at her flagship New York beauty salon at 715 Fifth Avenue
for the education and delight of visitors and clients. Seven of these
miniature rooms will be seen for the first time in the United States in
fifty years.
In 1888, Rubinstein fled the prospect of an arranged marriage. By
1896 she had found her way from Krakow to Vienna to Australia,
where she established her first business, Helena Rubinstein & Co.,
producing skin creams. The exhibition title refers to one of the first
slogans Rubinstein used to promote her cosmetics. ‘Beauty is
Power,’ announced the headline of an advertisement that first
appeared in an Australian newspaper in 1904. The bold phrase is an
early indication of Rubinstein’s distinctive blend of commercial savvy
and inherent feminism.
At the turn of the century the use of cosmetics – associated with the
painted faces of actresses and prostitutes – was widely frowned
upon by the middle class. A model of independence, Rubinstein
rejected this, producing and marketing the means for ordinary
women to transform themselves. Her business challenged the myth
of beauty and taste as inborn, or something to which only the
wealthy were entitled. By encouraging women to define themselves
as self-expressive individuals, Rubinstein contributed to their
empowerment.
Inspired by the tradition of European literary salons, Rubinstein
conceived of her beauty salons as intimate environments where
progressive ideas were exchanged under the guidance of a
sophisticated patroness. After her initial success in Australia, she
opened beauty salons in the grandest districts of London and Paris.
At the outbreak of World War I she moved to the United States,
where she founded her first New York salon in 1915. Two
revolutionary events had recently occurred there: the Armory Show
of avant-garde European art in 1913 and a huge rally in 1911 of womensuffragists. Tens of thousands of women had marched in the rally,
with some wearing lip rouge as a badge of emancipation. It was
Rubinstein’s genius to develop a brand that appealed equally to the
cultured socialite and the average wage earner – a market created by
the influx of young immigrant women into the workforce.
By the 1920s Rubinstein was a wealthy and influential
businesswoman with salons worldwide, and was becoming known as
an art collector. She had little interest in the conventional standards
of connoisseurship. She bought what she liked and learned as she
went from the many artists she met, and delighted in mingling
Western and non-Western art together. Her eclectic tastes
distinguished her from the conservative and elitist culture prevalent
in fashionable circles.
By mid-century, Rubinstein maintained homes in London, Paris, New
York, the south of France, and Greenwich, Connecticut, all
functioning as ever more public platforms for the display of her
collections. She was known for her independent, deliberate
originality, collaborating with artists such as Salvador Dalí and
interior designers such as David Hicks to create outlandish décors.
Rubinstein’s fascination with different cultures and artistic
approaches was reflected in her clothes, art, furniture, and jewelry.
This kaleidoscopic variety of styles in the décor of her salons and
homes served to level snobbish aesthetic taste and expand the
notion of who and what could be considered beautiful.
Today the term “beauty salon” means a hairdresser or a day spa. But
the Rubinstein salon was a place designed entirely for women, where
a client could learn not only how to improve her looks, but also how
to reconceive her standards of taste, to understand design, color,
and art in order to express her own personality. Art and cosmetics
embodied Rubinstein’s overarching dual enterprise: to establish a
correspondence between modern art and personal beauty, both of
which she felt should be interpreted individually and subjectively.
Now we take such subjectivity for granted, but the sense of
individuality and independence Rubinstein fostered was new and
profound in the early 20th century. She offered women the ideal of
self-invention – a fundamental principle of modernity. One’s
identity, she asserted, is a matter of choice.
Image: Helena Rubinstein with African mask, c. 1935.
Press Contacts:
Anne Scher/Molly Kurzius/Alex Wittenberg - The Jewish Museum 212.423.3271 or pressoffice@thejm.org
Andrea Schwan - Andrea Schwan Inc.917.371.5023 or andrea@andreaschwan.com
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