In yesterday and in Friday’s posts I mentioned Georges Braque and last night I was actually pondering a bit about him and the influence he had in fashion.
Rather than “influence” we should maybe talk about inspirations that, interestingly enough, seem to follow Braque’s different artistic stages.
Braque passed from Impressionism to Fauvism in the early years of 1900s. Then, from 1909, he developed, together with Picasso, Cubism.
Experiments with collages and papier collé followed and, after recovering from being wounded in World War I, Braque focused on less schematic work and textured surfaces, turning later on to a more realistic interpretation of nature, while still using certain aspects of Cubism.
Little by little, the artist also moved onto different art forms, making lithographs, engravings, sculptures and jewellery (the latter would maybe need a post on its own on Braque and Heger de Loewenfeld...).
In 1957, Rome-based shop Caprice offered its clients a Spring/Summer collection that featured shirts with prints inspired by Braque's works like the one portrayed in the second image in this post, that called to mind the artist's patterns and paintings.
In more recent years Braque inspirations resurfaced in Moschino’s Cheap & Chic Autumn/Winter 2009 collection.
Rosella Jardini included surrealist ruffles in photo-like prints (View this photo) that recalled Braque’s early experiments and studies in light and perspectives, his visual illusions and artistic representations, reductions of architectural structures to geometric forms and his technique of fragmenting the image to make it look three-dimensional (remember the 1908 painting "House at L'estaque"? View this photo).
Other designers explored instead Braque’s Cubist influences via surface elaborations rather than prints.
Martine Sitbon's Rue du Mail’s Spring/Summer 2009 collection showed a sort of derivation from Braque in the neutral palette that called back the artist’s monochromatic and neutral colour palette (mainly used by Braque to make sure the viewer didn’t get distracted from the conception of space, but focused on the subject matter of the painting).
Yet, another connection with Braque in this collection was the 3-D Cubist style of some garments created using origami folds, appliquéd panels on organza, cut outs and collages of stripes and beads calling to mind the Cubist method of simultaneous perspective and fragmentation.
If you would like to study Braque further and apply his works to your fashion designs, you can maybe check out the exhibition that opened at the Kunstmuseum Ahlen last November (on until 6th February).
Another exhibition ("The Great Upheaval: Modern Art from the Guggenheim Collection, 1910–1918") focusing on the years leading up to World War I and featuring Braque’s works together with Umberto Boccioni, Marcel Duchamp, Robert Delaunay, Kazimir Malevich, Franz Marc, Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian’s, will instead open on 4th February at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
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