Panel: Defining Chic: Then and Now

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by Francesca Granata

Next Tuesday May 15 I will participate in a panel in conjunction with the exhibition “Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Costume Institute. The panel Defining Chic: Then & Now is moderated by Julie Gilhart (fashion consultant) with Leandra Medine (The Man Repeller), Scott Schuman (The Sartorialist), and Lynn Yaeger (Vogue.com Contributing Editor).

Fashion Photography on View

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duffy_aladdin sane_1973
duffy_aladdin sane_1973

By Laura McLaws HelmsBrian Duffy's "Aladdin Sane," 1973

Exhibiting fashion photographs in museum and gallery settings has become increasingly common in recent years. Combining two fields that have had difficulty being accepted as ‘fine arts’, fashion photography only moved off the page and onto the wall within the last 15 years — the 2004 Museum of Modern Art show “Fashioning Fiction in Photography since 1990” was their first exhibition of fashion photography. As iconic fashion photographs have become part of the museum cannon, auction prices for such works have soared with Irving Penn’s Woman in Moroccan Palace (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), Marrakech (1951) selling for a record-breaking $409,740 at Christie’s last December. It can be of little surprise that museums all over the world are exhuming the archives of a variety of fashion photographers for retrospective shows.

Jean-Paul Goude's "Animatronic Grace"

Goude’s photographs of Grace Jones

The multi-talented Jean-Paul Goude, whose accomplishments in photography, film and video, art direction, illustration and brand development over his 40 year career have made him an icon of consummate creativity, is the focus of a retrospective exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. The first such show of his work, “Goudemalion,” covers many aspects of his multi-faceted career. Opening with elements from his most ostentatious creation, the Bicentennial parade in Paris commemorating the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution on July 14, 1989, the visitor is first greeted by a life-size spinning doll and then, in the main hall, a giant locomotive that journeyed down the Champs-Elysées. While the side galleries start with his early fashion illustrations in the 1960s, it is with his increasing interest in photography in the 1970s, when he was working as the art director at Esquire, that his inimitable style becomes solidified. Known primarily for his work with muse and former girlfriend, the Jamaican-American singer Grace Jones, his pre-Photoshop cut-and-paste images of her, which distort her body into impossible, intimidating forms, are shown in both the original (spliced and refigured) and the final (airbrushed into unknown perfection). His fashion photographs are crammed onto the black walls of four smaller rooms — simply mounted and unframed, they range from the overtly sexy images of the ‘70s to the more obviously stylized and surreal photographs of later decades. One wall is given over to the fun series he has been taking since the 1980s of fashion designers — including Azzedine Alaïa, Valentino and Jean Paul Gaultier. Bright and colorful, the images pop against the black walls and low lighting. As this retrospective includes sculpture, performance art, animatronics and television adverts for clients such as Chanel, it goes far beyond just fashion photography – but by incorporating all of these different media, this retrospective helps to show how one singular vision can be adapted and translated across many fields, and also marks his influence in defining the brash, surrealistic photographic style of post-modernism in the 1980s. Goude's photographs of Grace Jones

On a much smaller scale is the first show of Paolo Roversi’s work at the Wapping Project Bankside in London. The Italian-born, Paris-based Roversi has been shooting fashion since 1973, when Peter Knapp, the Art Director of Elle, brought him to Paris. Roversi is particularly known for his use since the early 1980s of large-format Polaroid film for most of his photographs. The works on view were all taken between 1988 and 2004, and were primarily shot in front of a rough burlap backdrop in his studio. A small gallery, the Wapping Project Bankside has been divided into three spaces, with twelve black and white images hanging in the first — his soft focus aesthetic brings a certain tenderness to the various images, an ethereality, regardless of whether they are a group portrait of a shoot crew, a topless male model or his camera. Most of the images in the other two rooms are of his muse, Guinevere van Seenus, including a series of six 13” x 9.5” nudes that are so lightly printed that they almost appear to be drawn with soft pencil. In an interview he gave with Dazed Digital at the opening, Roversi said of his portrait taking process: “You live a special moment together, an emotion together. Without this, the picture is boring. If you don’t live that moment together, the picture will never be strong.” [1] Diametrically opposed to the colorful exuberance of Goude’s photographs, Roversi’s images are more in keeping with the quietness of an Old Master still life and are well suited to the clean, openness of the modern gallery.

Roversi's photograph of Natalia Vodionova, via British Vogue

Goude and Roversi both first began shooting in the late 1960s, a decade that is commonly seen as the period when fashion photography went from being rather staid and inhabited by intensely elegant swans, to being more youthful and documentary-like in style. In London three photographers were felt to be the lead galvanizers of this trend — David Bailey, Terrence Donovan and Brian Duffy. Bailey and Donovan continued to lead successful careers long after that decade and have become (especially in Bailey’s case) icons of the era, while Duffy faded from memory. Rather unusually, this was a personal choice of his — a successful advertising photographer in the 1970s, he burned out and set fire to most of his negatives in his back garden in 1978. After his son rediscovered the remnants 25 years later, Duffy became the focus of a BBC documentary in 2010, The Man Who Shot the 60s (which can be viewed here), which followed the makings of the first ever gallery show of his work in 2009 as he was dying of a degenerative lung disease. A same-titled retrospective exhibition of his work is touring museums worldwide at the moment, having started at the Idea Generation Gallery in London before moving to the Museo Nazionale Alinari della Fotografia in Florence and now to the Monash Gallery of Art in Australia. Trained as a fashion designer, he had an inherent understanding of clothes and his graphic, loose black and white images of miniskirts and vinyl boots are era defining, as are his portraits of ‘60s celebrities, like Michael Caine and Christine Keeler. Moving into color in the ‘70s, he continued to shoot fashion, especially for Elle in France, yet his most well known photograph is the album artwork for David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane album (1973). His images became increasingly glossy and slick from the 60s to the 70s; less documentary in approach and more stylized. Especially when seen in conjunction with the BBC film, this exhibition is intriguing on multiple levels — as a comprehensive and engaging group of photographs, as a social document, and as a personal memoir.

Duffy's photograph of Barbara Miller and Jean Shrimpton, 1973

As a counterpoint to these rather large retrospectives was another fashion photography exhibition, also titled “The Man Who Shot the 60s”, which was on view at the Pushkin Society in London for three days in March. Showcasing the work of Ron Falloon, who had a studio in London from 1962 to the end of that decade, this small exhibition included just a dozen images. Several photos show Twiggy mugging for the camera in her Pop Art decorated flat, while Jean Shrimpton poses more traditionally in a gown. Enjoyable primarily for their subject matter, his images lack the consistent eye and sense of balance of Duffy’s — it is unlikely Falloon’s work, which he had stuffed under his bed for thirty years, would garner much attention were it not for the seemingly insatiable interest by the public in the now mythic 1960s.

Falloon's photograph of Jean Shrimpton

The vast differences in style, technique and quality between these four photographers illustrate how wide a field fashion photography has been and continues to be. Though fashion exhibitions are now beginning to be seen as easy blockbusters for museums, it is unlikely that many photographers’ work could translate into major shows — “Goudemalion” successfully uses the main galleries of the museum because his oeuvre includes so many different disciplines, creating a sense of dynamism and filling the space. Fashion photography’s key place within the cultural history of the West in the last sixty years, with its often provocative subject matter, makes it an ideal choice for exhibition, and with the internet bringing to light the work of many forgotten photographers, it seems inevitable that there will continue to be many exhibitions focusing on this field.

[1] http://www.dazeddigital.com/photography/article/12546/1/paolo-roversi-the-wapping-project

Indisciplined Curation

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by Francesca Granata Sabrina Gschwandtner, Knitknit Covers

Tuesday April 17th, I am chairing a panel on curation at Parsons the New School for Design. I hope you will be able to attend!

Focusing on curatorial practices that do not fit neatly within discreet categories of fashion, art, and design, the roundtable discusses the process of curation across a variety of platforms and disciplines, from the three-dimensional spaces of museums to the pages of magazines and from the public sphere to online platforms. The panel investigates how the meaning of curation has drastically changed: How the term “curator” went from identifying the keeper of a collection to describing a wider range of activities across a variety of sites. Borrowing W.T. Mitchell’s concept of “indiscipline”—“a moment of breakage or rupture”—it seeks to show how these shifts have occurred across disciplinary boundaries and have questioned such boundaries in the process.

The roundtable participants include Harold Koda (Curator-in-Charge of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), Sarah Lawrence (an academic curator and dean of the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons the New School for Design), and Sabrina Gschwandtner (a New York–based artist, writer and curator). It is chaired by Francesca Granata, Assistant Professor of Fashion Studies in the School of Art and Design History and Theory.

The panel takes place on April 17th from 6:30–8:00pm in the Kellen Auditorium at 66 Fifth Avenue (at 12th street). The event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited.

Diana Vreeland After Diana Vreeland: The Discipline of Fashion Between Museum and Curating

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by Francesca Granata Figure 1

An incredibly exciting day of talks characterized the Italian symposium “Diana Vreeland After Diana Vreeland: The Discipline of Fashion Between Museum and Curating,” which was organized by Maria Luisa Frisa and Judith Clark at the Universita` Iuav di Venezia. Most of the morning talks touched upon the great relevance of Diana Vreeland for fashion curating—thus bringing a commentary to the wonderful exhibition “Diana Vreeland After Diana Vreeland,” curated by Clark and Frisa at Palazzo Fortuny in Venice.

One of the most directly relevant talks was by Harold Koda—curator-in-charge at the Costume Institute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art—who started his career assisting Diana Vreeland and spoke about how Vreeland brought a certain glamour and theatricalization to fashion exhibitions, often at the cost of historical accuracy. Koda, however, traced the ways curators (including himself) eventually engaged in the balancing act of retaining the dynamic quality of display and presentation brought forth by Vreeland’s approach while keeping historical accuracy in the way the garments were exhibited.

Figure 2

Another theme which transpired was the relation between the process of editing and curating, one which was obviously central to the proceedings, since Vreeland started consulting at the Costume Institute only after having been famously fired from Vogue, which she had glamorized in a similar vein.

The exhibition engaged in re-appropriating and re-interpreting Vreeland’s curatorial innovations. Frisa said the idea for the title came to her while visiting Sherry Levine’s exhibition in New York, as it is—as the title suggests—a very reflective exhibition: an exhibition about exhibition-making. Among Vreeland’s curatorial vocabulary that the exhibition decoded and recoded was her love for armor, and for horses—boldly presented at Palazzo Fortuny by a horse covered in toile. Another visually engaging re-appropriation of Vreeland’s vocabulary was her use of tights or elaborate wigs to cover the mannequins’ heads.

Figure 3

Among the most interesting point which Judith Clark made in relation to the relationship between exhibitions and magazines was the idea that in the context of a magazine you can play with proportion and dramatize a detail of a dress simply through close-up, whereas in the context of an exhibition you have to do it through lights or props—something Vreeland certainly mastered. Another idea which places on a continuum Vreeland’s work as consultant for the Costume Institute and of editor was the fact that meaning is not always best communicated through the gown itself—something which is certainly true for fashion photography.

Drawing a parallel between the Met’s Costume Institute and the Victoria and Albert Museum, Amy de la Hay brought an interesting and very little known example of an early take on dynamic and dramatic fashion exhibitions, which predated Vreeland: The 1969 “Fashion: An Anthology,” curated by Cecil Beaton. Once again equating magazines to exhibitions, de la Hay pointed out how fashion exhibitions became more dynamic and less static at the same time fashion photography did. Equally fascinating was Alexandra Palmer’s discussion of the early curators at the Costume Institute: Polaire Weissman, and later, Stella Blum. Blum was the curator while Vreeland consulted for the Institute, and Palmer discussed Blum’s difficult job of negotiating between Vreeland’s input and her own role as curator.

Figure 4

A particularly thought-provoking intervention was provided by a discussion IUAV Professor Mario Lupano had with Stefano Tonchi. The latter, who was editor of the New York Times’s T Magazine and currently edits W, equated processes of curation to those of editing. Both involved selection as a form of narrative. Among the various themes Tonchi discussed was the centrality of fashion to contemporary culture and particularly visual culture—its connection to the other arts, cinema, and design, which he explored with Frisa in his exhibition “Excess: Fashion and the Underground in the 1980s.” Another important point brought up by Tonchi was the analogy between theater and exhibitions, as both are involved in the creation of a spectacle. (Tonchi was speaking in Italian, thus using the word “spettacolo,” which does not have the same implication as the Debordian word “spectacle.”) Another important point, which is tied to the metaphors of exhibition as a form of theater is that of the audience—one which was surprisingly not discussed by curators. The idea of integrating other media in the process of curation, as well as of magazine making, is one that Tonchi introduced and was fortuitously fully unpacked by Kaat Debo (Director of the ModeMuseum in Antwerp) in her discussion of the various exhibitions done at the museum—the multi-media experimentations culminating with their collaboration with SHOWstudio on occasion of Walter Van Beirendonck’s exhibition.

Figure 5

The final panel, chaired by the tireless Marco Pecorari and Louise Wallenberg of the Centre for Fashion Studies in Stockholm (and including myself), discussed the idea of academic curation. Pecorari discussed the great divide which characterized academic and museum professionals up through the 1990s—one which, as the symposium pointed out, has been overcome. Gabriele Monti and Jenna Rossi-Camus, curatorial assistant to the Vreeland’s exhibition discussed their experience as emerging curators, while Marie Riegels Melchior brought some very interesting points on the differences and tensions between dress and fashion curation I was asked about the process of teaching curation, something which is integral to the new masters in Fashion Studies at Parsons, for which I teach. The masters offers courses in fashion curation and conservation—two intimately related areas—by Shannon Bell Price (Associate Research Curator at the Costume Institute) and Sarah Scaturro (Textile Conservator at Cooper-Hewitt). I also briefly touched on my interest in placing fashion in the context of greater visual and material culture. This interest is very much informed by Frisa’s and Tonchi’s work and their thought-provoking books and exhibitions, thus I am starting to wonder whether there might be something culturally specific in placing fashion in greater visual and material culture.

These ties between fashion, design and art are something I am hoping to bring up again in a forthcoming panel on Tuesday, April 17th at Parsons. Titled “Indisciplined Curation,” the panel focuses on curatorial practices that do not fit neatly within discreet categories of fashion, art, and design. It includes Harold Koda (Curator-in-Charge of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), Sarah Lawrence (an academic curator and dean of the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons the New School for Design), and Sabrina Gschwandtner (a New York-based artist, writer and curator).

All Photos: Francesco de Luca

fig. 1 Exhibition View

fig. 2 DIANA VREELAND’S ARCHIVE. Collection of Michael H. Berkowitz, Fondazione Ottavio e Rosita Missoni Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo - Centro Studi di Storia del Tessuto e del Costume, Venezia, The Diana Vreeland Estate, Maria Luisa Frisa, Kenneth Jay Lane, Katell le Bourhis Collection. Luigino Rossi

fig. 3 Semi-formal robe, China, first half of the XIX secolo. Collezione privata Cecilia Matteucci Lavarini Peacock (Pavo cristatus). Collezione Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia

fig. 4 Henri Matisse, Costumes for the Ballets Russes de Le Chant du Rossignol di Igor Stravinsky, 1920. Martin Kamer, Svizzera

fg. 5 THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WOMAN. Wig, Angelo Seminara: a reference to Diana Vreeland's Exhibition, The Eighteenth-Century Woman (16 dicembre 1981-5 settembre 1982)