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Welcome to the Pain is Beauty exhibition; you are about to view five pieces of work from 1975-2014 all of which convey through their specific art mediums the painful methods and routines that women go through in order to attain society’s standard of beautiful. Women have been objected and sexualized for decades through all forms of art and media, and unfortunately over the years the degree of objectification and sexualization has only escalated. By examining how these pieces change throughout the decades we can see a difference in popular routines or methods at the time the piece was produced. For example, Kruger’s piece that displays a woman wearing ice cubes is a different reference to pain than Hershman Leeson’s piece that shows a woman pointing to the places on her face using high quality make-up to make herself beautiful. All five of these pieces share the common theme of conveying to the viewer the necessity of seeing the truth behind what our society thinks will make women beautiful. Within this exhibition the central questions that these artists pose are: Why must women go through rigorous routines and procedures to be beautiful?, Why do women harm themselves to achieve beauty in society’s eyes?, and Why is it normal for women to never be satisfied with their looks? Each of these artists pose these essential questions to the viewer, which forces the viewer to be uncomfortable and wonder why it is the “normal” thing for women to do in society. They are forced to wonder why women put themselves through such painful experiences to achieve a standard of beauty fabricated by society, and why this is the common thing for all women to do. Together these images create different views directed at women that harm their own images to become someone else. Through these five pieces, this exhibition allows the viewer to face the uncomfortable reality of the phrase “beauty is pain”. This phrase has demonstrated a domino effect that has continued throughout the decades, making women torture themselves with the new ‘norm’ until we finally realize that pain is beauty.

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Lynn Hershman Leeson
Mixed media on canvas

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Untitled (Super rich/Ultra gorgeous/Extra skinny/Forever young), 1997

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Untitled (Super rich/Ultra gorgeous/Extra skinny/Forever young), 1997

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Barbara Kruger
Photographic silkscreen

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Lynn Hershman Leeson
Photograph, inkjet print

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Art must be Beautiful; Artist must be Beautiful, 1975

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Art must be Beautiful; Artist must be Beautiful, 1975

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Marina Abramovic
Performance art

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Marina Abramović - Art must be Beautiful; Artist must be Beautiful, 1975

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'Art must be Beautiful, Artist must be Beautiful' (Copenhagen, Denmark, 1975) is one of Abramovic's typical early performances. BeskrivelseMarina Abramović (*1946, Serbia) is one of the artists who made a decisive impact on the history of performance art and on the criticism of the representation of the female body in Western culture.

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I chose this photograph/silk screen for my exhibition because it is one of the few black and white pieces that requires deeper analyzation to realize all it has to offer, rather than revealing it all on the surface. Kruger is known for repetition in her work and collaging words on top of this photograph to create a silk screen combination makes it easy to repeat. She chose to have a zoomed in look on a presumably much larger photograph, and this decision allows us to speculate, but not be certain, that the subject is a woman based on the facial features. The ice cubes closest to the subject’s nose create a light that shows the glossy effect on the lipstick covered upper lip, which conveys to the viewer that she is suffering a physical form of pain to achieve beauty. The ice cubes on and surrounding the entire image show the repetitiveness of this method that removes puffiness from skin and leaves women with some type of glow making them look flawless. The woman experiences pain with over ten ice cubes on her face, which viewers immediately grasp by looking at the grimace on this unhappy woman’s face. This expression of pain is how this work communicates with the other pieces in my exhibition, which each show how a woman is undergoing pain to become beautiful. The red words “Untitled (Super rich/Ultra gorgeous/Extra skinny/Forever young)” Kruger incorporated creates a contrast with the black and white image, allowing viewers to physically read what they should be looking at.

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I chose this work for my exhibition because it shows a present day pain that women undergo to achieve society’s perception of beauty. Hershman Leeson is critiquing the pain that women suffer when they receive plastic surgery to make themselves “look natural”. Through collaging these different mediums, the formal qualities of this mixed media on canvas show over-repetition and layering. The artist creates a face that is repeatedly marked up in stark white that stands out against her pale skin, with words drawn representing what surgical work the subject desires. On the right side of the subject’s chin, we can see the word “lift”, conveying to the viewer that the subject believes she would benefit from a chin lift. Collaging with words here makes the overlapping mixed media photograph clearer to the viewer. The use of the word “Me” shows the obvious conflict that women struggle with, the idea that they do not successfully meet society’s standards of beauty. This piece communicates with the other four pieces of my exhibition because each of the pieces show the pain that women go through to be beautiful through different mediums. Specifically, this piece corresponds with Hershman Leeson’s other piece, “Roberta’s Construction Chart 1” created in 1975, because both works point the viewers’ eyes towards specific areas of the face with contrasting colors. This method forces the viewers to focus on the subject’s need for facial perfection and beauty.

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I chose to include this photograph in my exhibition because instead of looking at physical pain that women undergo to become society’s conception of beauty, it shows the painful mindset that women must have in order to achieve beauty. Hershman Leeson created this photograph to show that large companies, such as Dior, Maybelline, and Max Factor, force women to buy their products in order to achieve a sense of beauty. She shows the viewer that women must essentially mask themselves with products to become beautiful even if they don’t get plastic surgery. Herman Leeson chose to use black and white to convey to the viewer that women are not colorful, put together, or full without these essential beauty products. It is painful for viewers to see women, such as the woman in the photograph, create these masks as part of their daily routines. Even though this work is not showing physically painful methods or treatment, this piece communicates with other work by showing the painful mindset that women must have. Similarly to her other piece “Make Me Look Natural”, she uses direct lines, or in this case numbers, to show where something must go. The viewer is left seeing that the right half of her face is in the slow process the subject must carry out in order to become what these major companies and society tell her is beautiful.

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Art must be Beautiful; Artist must be Beautiful

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Art must be Beautiful; Artist must be Beautiful

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This piece was chosen for this exhibition because Abramović repeatedly says “art must be beautiful; artist must be beautiful” to engrave into the viewers minds that this is what she must undergo to be recognized. The torture endured to be beautiful is a constant reminder to Abramović and she shows the viewers this through the repetition of her violently brushing her hair to create a look that is as flawless as possible. She uses repetition and black and white to make her viewers see the obvious. She doesn’t use any other objects or movements throughout the performance, only the same brush with strokes that get increasingly violent as the performance continues. Abramović is known for her performances, specifically this piece in which she puts herself through a painful task that overwhelms her into eventually hitting herself with the brush desperately wanting to be beautiful. This piece fits well within this exhibition because it is a different type of medium that portrays the same message of “Pain is Beauty”. Each piece displays some type of pain so the artists can convey the message that our society has not changed, in fact it has actually gotten worse. This piece adds a more realistic quality of pain, in which the viewers can physically watch the act being committed, and similarly to the other artists Abramović makes the viewers experience discomfort because she feels that is the best way to get the audience involved.

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Jessica Ledwich
Photographs

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I chose to include this piece in my exhibition because it is a perfect example of an artist conveying to the viewer that pain is beauty. Ledwich exaggerated the routines that a woman goes through to achieve society’s perception of beauty throughout her series. This specific photograph was chosen from the “Monstrous Feminine series” because it not only shows the painful process of shaving one’s legs, but also shows the cord of the sander in water. This placement of the cord would suggest that the subject will be electrocuted and could possibly die, which drags the message from the image even further to death is beauty. Ledwich does not include the woman’s face in the image, only her legs and hands, which conveys that the person herself does not even matter, rather it is the perfection of beauty that enables a human being to be seen. The colors in the photograph are neutral whites that make the red polish on her fingernails and toes stick out to the viewer’s eye. The dramatic sphere that the sander makes exemplifies the pain that the subject tolerates to make her legs perfectly smooth. This piece by Jessica Ledwich fits well with the other pieces in this exhibit because it uses neutral colors to demonstrate the painful object that is causing the subject to suffer.