Beauty Is Power

Walk past the lacquered panel doors of the Jewish Museum and enter a pale pink roomed filled with colorful portraits of Helena Rubinstein – business magnate, cosmetics entrepreneur, and global icon that revolutionized the cosmetics industry. Born in 1872 into a working-class Polish Jewish family, Chaja Rubinstein set sale for Australia at the age of 24 and abandoned her name for Helena Juliet. Upon settling in Melbourne, Rubinstein noticed that many Australians had reddish faces that required cosmetic attention – and from there her cosmetics business was born. Her milky complexion and charming good looks helped her sell her miracle face cream “Crème Valace” and open several beauty salons, and soon enough her empire was slowly beginning to grow from Melbourne to Paris, London and New York.

Inspired by the tradition of European literary salons, Rubinstein conceived her beauty salons as professional playgrounds for women who wanted to transform their look and to understand design, art, and color in order to express their own individualistic personality. When she first started in the cosmetics industry, it was mostly high-class women and prostitutes who donned heavy, bold makeup while middle class women were more laid-back and casual. Rejecting conventional beliefs, Helena Rubinstein set out to break barriers by exposing cosmetics to the average consumer, rather than appeal to just the actresses and prostitutes. Her emphasis on femininity and empowerment and the belief that all women have the ability to transform and better themselves revolutionized the cosmetics industry forever. Her vision challenged the myth that beauty and taste were inborn, and were not just acquired by wealth or status but from personal discovery and self-expression.

Helena’s vision was reflective of her famed art collection, which featured works by Pablo Picasso, Elie Nadelman, Frida Kahlo, Max Ernst, and Henri Matisse, as well as many works of African and Oceanic art. The “Beauty is Power” exhibition at the Jewish Museum reunites several selections from her art collection including her self-promoting self-portraits, vintage advertisements, cosmetics products, and promotional films related to her beauty business. The exhibit mixed business, art, fashion, and culture and recreated rooms from Rubenstein’s global beauty salons and shows parts of her eclectic and diverse art collection, which includes works of art ranging from numerous self-portraits to pre-Columbian sculptures.

To Helena, art and cosmetics embodied her dual enterprise: to establish a connective between art and personal beauty, both of which she firmly believed was to be interpreted individually and subjectively – and this exhibit was able to perfectly capture Helena’s vision. Helena firmly believed that each woman had her own individual, beautiful look and that it was possible for any ordinary woman to self-invest and market herself; in her case, makeup and fashion was the medium. For example, in all of the 8 portraits you can see similarities that show her flair, sense of style, and dominance and her natural affinity for the camera. In every single oil canvas painting shown at the exhibit, Helena has her raven-colored hair slicked back in a chignon, is adorned with huge statement jewelry (including necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings), has a full face of makeup on and is wearing bright lipsticks, and has her nails painted a very feminine pink. Personally, I found some of the works, notably Graham Sutherland’s Helena Rubinstein in a Red Brocade Balenciaga Gown (1957), to be absolutely stunning. The wide range of striking bold colors of her dresses and silhouettes mixed with her voguish and swanky appearance emphasized her dominance as a self-made woman – a woman who has beat challenges in the face of adversity and has seen her share of battles. All 8 paintings sufficiently captured Helena’s emphasis on empowerment and womanliness, distinctively blending commercial savvy and inherent feminism.

Her apparent eclecticism was also heavily present in the room adjacent to her portraits. At first, it was a bit strange to go from one room so heavily focused on beauty, grace, and “modernism-as-marketing” to a room filled with what to me seemed like meaningless sculptures from African, pre-Columbian, and Oceanic eras, but only upon close inspection did I realize that all of these pieces somehow related to themes of beauty and gradual transformation. For example, the Punu face mask bears a coat of white clay that was supposedly used as a moisturizer and exfoliator.

Overall, I was very impressed with the artwork from Helena’s collection, but slightly disappointed with the exhibition itself. The sculptures and paintings were beautiful and all bore a strong meaning, but that was all because of Helena’s personal taste not because of the curator. The exhibition itself was very small with a limited amount of artwork present. In addition, had I not spoken to a tour guide there, I probably would’ve been unable to piece two-and-two together. The exhibit failed to inform the audience of her upbringing – which I feel was very important in forming her identity – and failed to explain the challenges and obstacles Helena faced being a female Jewish immigrant in America in the 1920s. Also, the exhibition had no connecting transition from room to room so it almost looked like the exhibit was haphazardly organized. I had no prior knowledge that Helena’s art collection was so diverse that I almost walked right out of the room with the African sculptures because I assumed it was a totally different exhibition. Had it been mentioned somewhere, I probably would’ve been able to get a better understanding of her adaption of Cubism, Surrealism, artifacts, and even avant-garde art into her collection.

The “Beauty Is Power” exhibit clearly brought to light Helena Rubinstein’s vision and managed to truly emphasize that beauty is power and that women are in control of their own self-image. While the exhibition itself may have been better curated, it still sent a clear and strong message.