In "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë beauty is greatly in the eye of the beholder, hence the perception of beauty is subjective and individual and varies from person to person. Yet the concept of beauty surrounds us and pervades our lives, playing and capitalizing on our insecurities. Constant exposure to curated images on social media fuels envy and compels us to undergo drastic measures to conform to an idealized standard, driven by a desire for flawless bodies or doll-like skin (blame also Margiela Artisanal's S/S 24 fashion show?).
The insatiable pursuit of beauty sometimes leads to unconventional practices, including the application on our bodies of hazardous substances almost to prove that pleasure can only be attained through pain. For some, it becomes a means to escape the relentless march of time and seek validation from others rather than oneself.
However, the preoccupation with beauty is not a modern phenomenon spurred by social media; it has persisted throughout history, as evidenced by the current exhibition at London's Wellcome Collection, titled "The Cult of Beauty" (running until April 28th).
The exhibition explores beauty across time and cultures, showcasing 200 items ranging from historical artifacts to artworks, films, and new commissions.
Curated by Janice Li, the exhibition is divided into three sections: The Ideas of Beauty, The Industry of Beauty, and Subverting Beauty. The exhibition aims to unravel the age-old question that has intrigued philosophers, artists, and scientists alike – what is beauty?
The first section looks at the cultural and historical factors shaping our perceptions of beauty over time. It also examines the connection between beauty and moral virtue, suggesting that facial features can reveal one's character. At the same time, beautiful features have long been seen as a gateway to the spiritual in different belief systems and the pursuit of youthfulness and longevity has also been linked to godliness, so a head of Egyptian Nefertiti with her kohled eyes welcomes the visitors, together with further examples of beautiful deities, from a 17th-century painting of the Black Madonna, the Virgin of Guadalupe, to the Hindu deity Krishna.
A colored engraving on vellum portraying Saint Rosa of Lima, tells instead a story of rejection of beauty and humbleness: to demonstrate that Christ is the most beautiful of all, Saint Rosa disfigured indeed herself by rubbing peppercorns onto her face and, after she became a nun, she flagellated herself.
This section also explores alchemy and the quest for eternal beauty, showcasing the pursuit of "drinkable gold" (Aurum Potabile) in the 16th century. This substance, associated with everlasting beauty, was believed to preserve youthfulness (gold is still present in modern-day luxury beauty products for its supposed anti-ageing properties). However, examples like Diane de Poitiers reveal the potential health risks associated with such practices: the 16th-century French courtier Diane de Poitiers purportedly consumed vast quantities of Aurum Potabile over the course of her life to preserve her renowned beauty, but forensic examination of her hair suggested this was ultimately to the detriment of her health.
Displays in this section include statues of Venus and Idolino, representing idealized male and female bodies, alongside a "Sleeping Hermaphroditus" to challenge notions of gender and beauty (the languorous hermaphroditus statues were at times castrated by their owners as they unsettled viewers...).
The focus then switches on hygiene, exercise, and beauty tools, initially developed for medical purposes, introducing visitors to corsetry, male grooming practices, and beauty patches.
Pain is conjured up by a waist cinching corset with rosebud design, and by the orthopedic corsets for bone or muscle realignment, but visitors will laugh at the 1819 caricature of a dandy being laced into a tight corset by two servants, satirizing extreme fashion trends of the time.
This caricature also introduces to male grooming and to the discovery of beard care through unusual accessories or objects, including a teacup and saucer with a built-in beard protector from the 1870-80s.
The most curious object in this section remains a a box of 1920s velvet beauty patches, originally used in 18th-century fancy dress.
Beauty patches, also known as mouches (French for "flies"), were initially worn to strategically cover smallpox or syphilis scars (a bit like merkins). Sex workers wore them to attract clientele, but, over time, they evolved into elite fashion accessories, with the position of the mouche assuming various meanings, from flirtation to political allegiance.
While their popularity waned with the smallpox vaccine in 1796, beauty spots made a comeback in the early 20th century as fashionable accessories in various materials such as silk, taffeta, leather and velvet.
The intersection of race and beauty is then explored, revealing how Western colonization influenced preferences for light skin. The performer Josephine Baker launched instead a range including the skin darkening "Bakerskin" (on display in the exhibition there is her beautiful Art Deco compact cuff).
Baker's popularity contributed to a "trend for blackness" and the curator draws here a comparison with Rihanna's Fenty Beauty, that in our times set a new standard for inclusivity with 40 foundation shades.
The continuous photographic project "Humanea" by Brazilian artist Angélica Dass aligns with the theme of an inclusive skin tone palette. Dalls challenges indeed the simplistic association of race and identity with skin colour alone. Using a unique approach, she matches pixels from each of her subjects' nose to a corresponding Pantone colour, creating a background that transcends traditional racial categorizations.
By merging photography with sociological research and engaging public participation, Dass endeavors to unveil the irrationality of racism in support of global human rights.
The power of hair and architecture is showcased in J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere's Hairstyles project, capturing 40 years of diverse intricate Nigerian hairstyles, while in Jennifer Ling Datchuk's "We Climb," a ladder braided with dark brown hair is adorned with porcelain beads that carry words of affirmation from her East Asian community. Created in the heat of the Stop Asian American and Pacific Islander Hate movement, it reclaims the ladder imagery used in racist propaganda during the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
The exhibit also explores Artificial Intelligence's impact on beauty with "An Algorithmic Gaze II" by Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm and the ARTificial Mind studio, an endlessly morphing human figure generated by AI through a 10-month-long learning process that never repeats, inviting us to meditate on the transient beauty of the human form and on the biases we taught AI to produce.
Besides, biases in beauty are scrutinized through fashion magazines, from unrealistic ideals to the groundbreaking representation of Black women on Vogue covers and disability awareness in Vogue UK.
The section wraps up with the modern concepts of self-exploration and self-awareness, self-imaging and self-perception with a look at the earliest mirrors - dating back to 4000 BCE in Iran and crafted from copper - and then looking at ancient Egyptian mirrors, compared to modern "mirrors", that is our smartphone screens, embodying the selfie culture that has the power to turn us into instant fashion icons and celebrities.
The second section, titled "The Industry of Beauty," looks at the connection between medicine and cosmetics, exploring the historical evolution of product innovation and commercialization that has shaped the contemporary beauty industry and had a significant impact on the perception of our bodies and self-image.
For makeup enthusiasts seeking a deeper understanding of its history, this section provides insights into early cosmetic products. From the first cosmetic palettes, initially used to grind and hold eye pigment as early as Neolithic times, to later versions resembling animals or figures, the exhibit draws parallels with modern-day eyeshadow palettes. Ancient Egyptian powder compacts and Renaissance cosmetics are analysed to provide further information on the landscape of the beauty business.
In the Renaissance era, apothecaries prepared recipes and made their cosmetic concoctions in workshops that looked like scientific laboratories. Women also crafted cosmetics at home working like chemists and botanists. The Renaissance home kitchen was therefore a hub for cosmetic and medicinal production and experimentation, with printed recipe books becoming bestsellers across Europe in the early 16th century, particularly targeting a female audience.
This aspect is tackled in the installation "Beauty Sensorium" (2023) by Renaissance Goo x Baum & Leahy that brings together historical references with reconstructions of Renaissance make-up recipes in organically shaped glass vessels containing coloured liquids and natural substances.
The section also looks into how commercialization and design have transformed pharmaceuticals and surgical procedures into the fully-fledged beauty industry prevalent today. The mass-marketing of beauty products gained momentum in the 20th century, with advertisements for lipsticks and mascara becoming ubiquitous. The turn of the century witnessed an influx of pharmacy products rebranded as skincare and makeup, driven by factors such as industrialization, the accessibility of affordable cosmetics, and women's increasing purchasing power.
Examining specific products like Burroughs Wellcome & Co.'s Hazeline Snow Cream, this section underscores the influence of print advertisements in shaping the image of beauty. The enduring legacy of such marketing strategies extended to other pharmacies-turned-beauty-brands, including the Japanese conglomerate Shiseido.
In this part of the exhibition artists like Juno Calypso challenge societal norms, beauty standards and invisible social pressures through incisive humor.
Juno Calypso's works feature her fictional alter ego Joyce trying to conform to the feminine image offered by the mainstream. Driven by an obsession with anti-ageing and beauty preservation, Joyce seems trapped in domestic spaces that she inhabits while wearing Linda Evans Facial Rejuvenating System, an electric face mask from the '90s that wouldn't have looked out of place in a horror or sci-fi B-movie.
Established beauty standards are also explored together with entrenched gender roles in the displays looking at contests from West London's Black beauty pageants in the 1960s or held in Brazilian prisons today, reflecting on judging panels, but also looking at more positive aspects.
Raphael Albert's portrayal of Black beauty pageants in 1960s and '70s London captures indeed a vibrant community amidst prevalent racism in British mainstream media. The photographs showcase how communities adapted and redefined beauty pageants, providing a space for African-Caribbean self-expression and celebrating beauty practices centered around salons.
In an exploration of the cult of beauty, the inclusion of body modification is imperative, and one artist delving into this theme is Shirin Fathi, a London-based Iranian artist. Fathi's project, "The Disobedient Nose," analyses the societal pressures on women to undergo rhinoplasty surgery, particularly in Iran, where the highest number of such surgeries is performed globally.
Contrary to conforming, Fathi challenges societal biases by assuming the role of a patient, repeatedly visiting beauty clinics and documenting her interactions with cosmetic surgeons. For this project she studied the 16th-century medical drawings at the Wellcome Collection to comprehend early facial modification procedures. Utilizing a plastic surgery training toolkit and silicon prostheses modeled after her own face, Fathi reverses the roles of artist and surgeon, prompting questions about the artistic sensibility of cosmetic surgeons and the potential for artists to play the role of a surgeon.
Fathi's models and surgery toolkits serve as a segue to the next display with the everyday beauty and personal care objects donated by local trans, non-binary, and intersex communities, accompanied by handwritten notes sharing intimate stories of their journeys.
The third and final section, "Subverting Beauty," invites immersion, reflection, and connection through three contemporary artworks: a short feature film, a monumental sculpture, and a multi-screen installation.
The film and portrait project "Permissible Beauty", written and performed by David McAlmont, responds to the absence of Black queer visibility in British national history through new portraits of six Black queer Britons, offering an expanded depiction of British beauty for the 21st century.
The three-metre-tall hanging sculpture "(Almost) all of my dead mother's beautiful things" by New York-based artist and masked persona "Narcissister" consists in a three-metre-tall anthropomorphic sculpture consisting of her late mother's belongings.
It crystallises the tension between the beauty her mother embodied and the artist's deconstructing of it, the paradox of accepting it and the transcendence of redefining it, while also hinting at the crushing weight of beauty ideals that are passed from one generation to another.
Xcessive Aesthetics, an international, interdisciplinary all-female architecture collective, closes this section with "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Beauty unravelled in the virtual scroll".
The installation consists in a room designed to evoke the sensory experience of a nightclub bathroom, a semi-public space where complete strangers might feel safe to connect with each other through shared experiences and a mutual affinity for beauty (imagine connecting with a complete stranger in a bathroom while looking yourselves in front of the mirror, and maybe complimenting one another on your makeup, sharing beauty tips, or taking "bathroom selfies").
The focal point of the installation is a setup resembling bathroom sinks with vertical and horizontal screens: the former explore the boundary between virtual and real beauty, covering topics like augmented reality, beauty filters, makeup tutorials, and plastic surgery tips, prompting reflections on digital identity. One screen also highlights non-Western beauty practices in collaboration with Latin American women's groups. The horizontal screens focus instead on personal beauty experiences in nightclub bathrooms. Despite critically examining potential harm in digital beauty spaces, the installation emphasizes the positive aspects of experimentation and community-building within these realms and combines beauty with social architecture and interior design.
There is definitely a lot to explore in the spaces dedicated to "The Cult of Beauty" and there are history and culture lessons to take away at the end of this long journey through gender norms, societal expectations, self-expression, self-acceptance, and the dichotomy between our existence in the physical world and our imagined personas in the digital universe.
But among the diverse palettes of colours, inventive concoctions and artistic applications, the essence of "The Cult of Beauty" remains clear - beauty resides within us, and that's a profound truth that encapsulates all there is to know.
Image credits in this post
All images in this post courtesy of the Wellcome Collection, London
Images 2, 5, 8-13. 18. and 19. Installation views from "The Cult of Beauty", Wellcome Collection, London
1. 12 Reasons You're Tired All The Time, Juno Calypso, 2013, Courtesy the artist and TJ Boulting
3. Ancient Egyptian bronze mirror, 800-100 BCE © Wellcome Collection / Science Museum Group
4. Bronze oil or cosmetic container in shape of female head 101-200 CE © Wellcome Collection / Science Museum Group
6. Feminine A La Couronne corset, 1900-1905 © Fashion Museum Bath
7. Mouches in box (English fancy dress), 1920s © Fashion Museum Bath
14. Miss Black & Beautiful Sybil McLean with fellow contestants, Raphael Albert, Hammersmith Palais, London, 1972 © RA Albert, Courtesy of Autograph, London
15. Beauty Salon, Raphael Albert, London, c. 1960s © RA Albert, Courtesy of Autograph, London
16. The Disobedient Nose: Fig. 1. The reconstruction of a nose 2022, Shirin Fathi, 2022 © Shirin Fathi
17. Permissible Beauty, 2022 © RCMG / Soup Co
20. Humanae, Work in progress by Angélica Dass, 2023 © Angélica Dass
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