Helena Rubinstein (1872-1965)
Helena Rubinstein (1872-1965)
Marion Bertin
Above and beyond the reputation it has in the realm of cosmetics, the name Helena Rubinstein (1872–1965) remains an extremely important one in the world of Oceanic art as well. She was one of the few women to assemble her own major collection in the 20th century in a field almost completely dominated by men.
Helena Rubinstein, George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress, Washington DC).
Rubinstein was born in Krakow, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, into an Orthodox Jewish family of modest means. In 1896, she left Europe for Australia, where she opened her first beauty salon, the Valaze Beauty House, in Melbourne in 1902. After this first step in her career, she returned to Europe and settled in London where she frequented artistic and literary circles with her first husband, Edward William Titus (1870-1952). As a result of the connections she made there, she began to acquire works by contemporary artists and met the modern sculptor and collector Jacob Epstein (1880-1959). Both Epstein and Titus helped introduce her to African and Oceanic art. Epstein played an important role as an advisor and collaborator in the further development of Rubinstein’s collection.
Helena Rubinstein in the music room of her Paris apartment wearing an ermine-trimmed velvet suit by Christian Dior; on the piano a Punu mask and a u'u club from Marquesas Islands. Image courtesy of Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY, FIT Library Special Collections and College Archives.
In 1912, Helena Rubinstein and Titus relocated to Paris, where they continued to move in artistic and intellectual circles. Rubinstein frequented the many and various venues of the Paris art market including the Clignancourt flea market, specialist dealers like Charles Ratton (1895-1986) and Pierre Loeb (1897-1964), and the auction rooms of the Hôtel Drouot. She was present at several important auctions in the 1920s and 1930s, including the sale of the collection of George de Miré (1890-1965) in 1931. Rubinstein acquired several Oceanic objects through the collector and art critic Paul Chadourne (1898-1981), who was close to the Dada movement, at the Sculptures from Africa, America, and Oceania: the André Breton and Paul Eluard collection sale held in July 1931 and conducted by auctioneer Alphonse Bellier. Her acquisitions included a Maori tekoteko (lot 142) and a Nias Island adu zatua ancestor figure (lot 173), immortalized in photographs by Man Ray and now preserved at the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac in Paris. She acquired figures collected by Jacques Viot (1898-1973) in the Lake Sentani region of New Guinea from Pierre Loeb. The collector and businesswoman never kept a strict inventory and paid for most of her purchases in cash, making it difficult to trace the history of her acquisitions with much accuracy. Nonetheless, it can be said that the collection appears to have grown especially rapidly in the 1930s.
Figure, Lake Sentani, West New Guinea, 19th century, wood; height: 120 cm, Gordon Sze collection. © Photograph by Marion Bertin, Helena Rubinstein. Madame’s Collection exhibition, Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac (November 2019 - September 2020).
After her separation from Titus in 1915, Helena Rubinstein split her time between Paris and New York. Most of the Oceanic collection remained in Paris. In 1932, she purchased a building on the Quai de Béthune on Île Saint-Louis and entrusted its complete renovation to architect and decorator Louis Süe (1875-1968), who transformed Louis le Vau’s original interior into an Art Deco showcase. One room was dedicated exclusively to African art, and there were a few Oceanic works in it as well. In New York, Rubinstein acquired a triplex apartment at 625 Park Avenue in Manhattan in 1940, shortly after her marriage to Georgian Prince Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia (1895-1955). Twenty-six artists participated in its decoration, including Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), and Georges Rouault (1871-1958). Rubinstein also installed part of her collection in that space.
View of the living area with African and Oceanic artworks, 24 Quai Béthune, Paris, photograph by Dora Maar in 1937.
In her homes, as in her purchases and affinities, Helena Rubinstein was not constrained by convention or aesthetic conformity. Her tastes, like those of her friend and collaborator Jacob Epstein, were eclectic and encyclopedic, and tinged with a predilection for the baroque and the opulent. In “Madame’s” collection – a title she insisted on – Oceanic pieces were juxtaposed with a multitude of artworks from other areas that reflected the breadth of her personal taste. African and Indonesian art, Egyptian and Greco-Roman antiquities, antique European furniture, and modern art coexisted in her homes in London and Paris, as well as in her beauty salons. Her collecting activities were closely linked to her professional career, enabling her to “live amidst beauty,” as she liked to say. She also acquired an extensive wardrobe and a large collection of jewelry. Her collection bears witness to her financial and social success as a woman living in an era of emancipation that offered the fairer sex a new level of access to social and individual rights.
Helena Rubinstein with Prince Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia in their home at 300 Park Avenue, 1938, with a Rapa Nui sculpture visible in the firework © Photo by MCNY/GOTTSCHO-SCHLISNER/GETTY IMAGES
Rubinstein’s identity and image were shaped by her collection and the social circles she moved in. Throughout her life, she commissioned several photographic series of works from artists, including Man Ray (1890-1976) and Dora Maar (1907-1997), who immortalized her Parisian and New York interiors and created portraits associating her with her pieces. Her apartments also served as settings for fashion magazine publicity campaigns, including Vogue.
Helena Rubinstein died in New York in 1965. Her heirs decided to sell her collection, with the exception of her wardrobe, which was divided between her family and her employees. A series of public sales was organized in New York by Parke-Bernet, a former auction house that was acquired by Sotheby’s in 1964 to expand its sales on the other side of the Atlantic. Two thousand lots of her property were sold at a series of auctions in April 1966. Six catalogs were published in all to cover the entire collection: two for modern paintings and sculptures, two for African and Oceanic art, one for furniture, and finally, one for modern drawings and prints. Bruce Chatwin (1940-1989), director of Sotheby’s Department of Antiquities and Primitive Art, and David Nash – who began his career at the auction house as a warehouse worker, moved to the department headed by Chatwin, and later became the international director of the Impressionist and Modern Art department – were in charge of the African and Oceanic objects. They were assisted by Parisian dealer Henri Kamer (1927-1992). 361 lots were selected and sold in two sessions spaced some months apart to avoid oversaturating the market. A first group of pieces was sold at The Helena Rubinstein Collection. African and Oceanic Art, Parts One and Two sales of April 21 and 29, 1966, and featured what were considered to be the best objects. Both sales were held in the evening, a privileged position for African and Oceanic art in those times. A second group of pieces was then sold on October 3 of the same year.
Cover of The Helena Rubinstein Collection. African and Oceanic Art, Part Three auction catalog, October 3, 1966.
The auction of Helena Rubinstein’s collection was a major event for the international Oceanic art market. It was evidence of New York’s growing role as a center for the specialized tribal art market. The sale also set several price records. It in fact represented a kind of passing of the torch: the Oceanic objects, most of which were acquired by Rubinstein on the art market in Paris and other European auction houses, were now being sold in the United States, where most of the buyers were located. Among the buyers present in the room was California dealer Harry A. Franklin (1903–1983). He acquired the famous “Bangwa Queen” (lot 189), a Bamileke female figure from Cameroon, for the record sum of $29,000. In the field of Oceanic art, Franklin acquired an u’u club from the Marquesas Islands (lot 250), a Maori tekoteko acquired by Rubinstein at the Surrealist sale in 1931 (lot 253), and a Pentecost mask from Vanuatu (lot 258). A record price for Oceanic art was achieved by a Lake Sentani figure collected by Jacques Viot when it sold for $6,000.
Tsubwan mask from Pentecost (Vanuatu), formerly in the collections of Helena Rubinstein and Harry Franklin
Today, the name Helena Rubinstein remains synonymous with quality and is recognized as a highly prestigious provenance in the Oceanic art world. On May 13, 2019, the Oceanic part of Franklin’s collection was sold by Sotheby's in New York at the Pacific Art from the Collection of Harry A. Franklin auction. Some of the lots that Franklin had acquired in 1966 and had been held by his family since then set new price records again. This was the case for the u'u club from the Marquesas Islands (lot 9), with a wooden base by Japanese cabinetmaker and sculptor Kichizô Inagaki (1876-1951), which fetched $212,500, a record for this type of object. The Pentecost tsubwan mask (lot 33) brought $300,000, a record for an artwork from Vanuatu. Later in the same year, the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac presented an exhibition called Helena Rubinstein: Madame’s Collection. The curatorial teams conducted extensive research on the history of the collection and the subsequent trajectories of the Oceanic objects in it after 1966. The Oceanic pieces on display included a Lake Sentani figure, a Maori canoe prow from Aotearoa (New Zealand) now housed in the Brooklyn Museum, and a moai kavakava from Rapa Nui (Easter Island) currently in a Parisian collection. The publication of an important catalog accompanied this event, and provides enduring and eloquent testimony to the multiple meanings of the collection of a woman who dedicated her life to beauty, both through her profession and her passion for art.