By Mason Klein
Yale University Press, £35
A catalogue of an eclectic modernist art collection alongside a cool, wry account of an extraordinary life, this book is a revelation. Every page shows the scope and depth of Helena Rubenstein's bold taste. Author and curator Mason Klein brings a scholarly eye to the dazzling collection with illustrations of Brancusi, Miró and Matisse alongside African and Oceanic Art. Among these timeless treasures feature the couturiers of day, Schiaparelli and Chanel, as well as the incongruous advertisements for Helena's alarming- looking treatments.
It is a stimulating mix. Klein's witty text and particularly his expert footnotes make this a colourful and compelling account of a life in the public eye.
Rubenstein was a self-made celebrity. With an inspired marketing strategy, she allied her products with the art world and created the image that made her millions and transformed the shady world of cosmetics into an international concern. Graham Sutherland, who painted her portrait in 1957, described an "empress -magnificent, minute and monosyllabic, with the force of an Egyptian ruler.'"
Beauty was for all - 'there are no ugly women, only lazy ones'
Her greatest creation was herself. She linked her charisma to her products and projected her own face and philosophy into the world.
Born Chaya Rubenstein into an Orthodox family in a small town near Krakow in 1872, the eldest of 12 children, she changed her Hebrew name to its nearest Greek equivalent, Helena, the eternal icon of beauty. But, unlike many Jews of her day, she stuck with Rubenstein. In fact, her Jewishness was central to her fiercely original concept of beauty.
It was a quest for autonomy, a path to self-expression and it appealed to progressive women. She promoted beauty as attainable for all, summarised in her brilliant, if self-serving axiom: "there are no ugly women, only lazy ones".
At the age of 18, Helena rebelled against the stricture of an arranged marriage - "father was furious" - and about three years later sailed for Australia. She could hardly have chosen a better location to launch her cosmetic cure-all cream, Valaze. Developed by her friend Dr Jacob Lykuski, it soon swept Australia where the ferocious heat afflicted the fair-skinned settler women. The promise of renewal had her Melbourne salon overwhelmed with customers.
Helena was ready for Europe and, in her London and Paris salons, she developed her entrepreneurial flair in parallel with the modernist art movements of the early 20th century.
The art displayed in Beauty is Power is dazzling. Apart from her astonishing range of portraits - everyone from Picasso (she appeared unannounced at his Provençal house) to Andy Warhol painted her - she possessed items representing the best work of the age. Guided by her husband, Edward Titus, she collected and accumulated with great stamina. When her salon opened in London, she hung it with white drapery. But, after watching a production of Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, she went back to the salon, tore it down and installed the vivid orange, azures and blacks of the "new art".
The book also shows how this titan of business remained subtle in her interpretation of beauty. Helena marketed the black exotic dancer Josephine Baker to promote her make-up and styling. Her ideas of what was lovely were not racially stereotyped.
In 1929, she arrived in America. There, her European views - and her Jewishness - were under pressure. Rival Elizabeth Arden was an elitist WASP who cultivated a tight circle including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Arden's look was prescriptively Anglo-Saxon and she and her "set" revelled in a casual but overt antisemitism.
As a champion of African art and the daring imagination of Modernist nudes, Helena defied them. Her products were for all skins and types. When she found she was barred from taking an apartment in Park Avenue because she was Jewish, she bought the building.
Her sisters ran her colossal, worldwide empire - the only one to stay in Poland died in the Holocaust. For Helena Rubenstein, beauty was indeed power - to collect and cultivate Modernism in the 20th century. Not bad for a self-made girl from Krakow.
Anne Garvey is a freelance writer