Martha Rosler
Cargo Cult, 1967-1972
Martha Rosler (American, born 1943), Cargo Cult, 1967-1972, photomontage printed as photograph, 39 1/2 x 30 1/4 in. Schwartz Art Collection, Harvard Business School, 1998.22. © Martha Rosler.
In her Body Beautiful series, also known as Beauty Knows No Pain, the artist Martha Rosler effectively uses photomontage to critique the way advertisers often reduce women to their body parts and promote a specific standard of beauty. As critic Holland Cotter has observed, in this work, Rosler “shows faces of fashion models being crated for shipping: a Western ideal of beauty sent abroad.”