I made a comparison between chryselephantine statues and fashion in a previous post, but seeing this antiquarian's window shop in New York made me ponder once again about the connections between these statues, fashion and the exploration of new female forms and also seemed a coherent follow up to yesterday’s Art Deco post.
The window shop in the picture somehow represents the perfect synthesis of the most popular types of chryselephantine statues (though some of the statues in the window are actually porcelain imitations of chryselephantine statues), from the hieratic (that is representing mysterious women, dancers mimicking theatrical movements often inspired by the Ballets Russes or by films/costumes) to the naturalistic (female athletes), from the erotic (women smoking, girls in stockings, women naked under a parted fur coat) to the stylised (that is displaying a sort of connection with movements such as Cubism, the Bauhaus and so on).
I’ve always been fascinated by the women represented in chryselephantine statues, by their slender bodies and elegant and elaborate attires, by these athletic femme fatales almost threatening a world ruled by men, so different from the conventional images of women, portrayed until then as mothers and domestic angels.
The statues in the window shop made me think also about Erté’s fixation with the female form and the way he designed dresses and costumes that looked like extensions of the female body, but also about his series of paintings entitled "AlphaErté bet Suite" or Erté's Alphabet.
In this series - that he completed after 40 years - Erté created letters out of the female body, coming up with a unique language of Art Deco and fashion.
I wonder why Erté's alphabet hasn't inspired yet any collections to contemporary fashion or jewellery designers. Time to rediscover Erté and his fashionable language maybe?
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Posted by: Merchant Account Seattle | October 24, 2010 at 03:03 AM