You may have already seen online various images showing one of the latest projects by Zaha Hadid Architects - the City of Dreams Hotel Tower in Cotai, Macau.
Designed by Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher, the building was commissioned by Melco Crown Entertainment, a developer and owner of casino gaming and entertainment resort facilities in Asia.
By the time they will finish building the structure in 2017, the tower will have forty floors, 150,000 square metres, and 780 guestrooms, plus suits and sky villas, event facilities, restaurants, a spa and sky pool.
Yet these numbers and details pointing towards hyper luxury are definitely not the most interesting elements of this building.
From a merely architectural point of view, the City of Dreams tower results attractive for its rectangular outline that forms a monolithic block, pierced by a series of voids that give the solid structure the impression of being made in a liquid or soft moldable material.
This dichotomy between rigidity/stability and illusionary moldable variation proves intriguing, drawing attention to the façade as well, with its external exoskeleton that gives dynamism to the structure thanks to an irregular network based on digitally manipulated and extruded surfaces and geometries.
Contrasts between rigid and soft materials have often been used in fashion, but it would be intriguing to take further (maybe aided also by new digital means and tools...) a research into moldable and variable surfaces and textiles.
Many of the Spring/Summer 2014 collections promise to take you to exotic paradises, with prints of palms, fronds and tropical sunsets populated with pink flamingoes.
Yet the word "exotic" assumes different meanings and can point not just towards tropical paradises, but also towards something excitingly different, or simply forgotten for quite a long time.
If you're looking for something quite exotic and pretty unusual don't go further than costumes for operas based in faraway countries.
The list is long and features among the others Delibes' Lakmé and Puccini's Madama Butterfly or Turandot. For something slightly more obscure, check out these sketches for an opera of Persian subject that Italian freelance journalist and translator Serena Di Virgilio spotted for me at the Music Museum in Bologna.
The sketches (some of them are slightly reminiscent of the drawings Alexandre Benois made for the Ballets Russes' Le Pavillon d'Armide in the early 1900s) are dated around 1740 and they are not accompanied by any further information about the opera in question.
Judging from the date and the subject, they may refer to Siroe, re di Persia (Siroes, King of Persia), an opera in three acts by George Frideric Handel, with an Italian-language libretto by Nicola Francesco Haym, after Metastasio's Siroe (the opera premiered in 1728).
The plot revolved around the conflict between the Persian king Cosroe and his son Siroe, with secondary plots involving Emira, the daughter of a king defeated by Cosroe, and hoping to revenge her father, and princess Laodice, both in love with Siroe.
Looking at the sketches and the exquisite details, beautiful colours and elaborate decorations, the name of the opera they were destined to is almost secondary, don't you think so?
All images in this post courtesy and copyright Serena Di Virgilio.
During Milan Design Week Kvadrat is going to present an armchair that will make many Adventure Time fans dream about floating in the cloud-like land of the Lumpy Space. Yet the armchair in question was inspired by a real landscape - the Painted Desert in Arizona - and was created through a painstakingly long process by Richard Hutten, well-known for his pieces suspended between art and design.
Hutten stacked over 500 layers of carefully selected and colourful Divina fabrics to create the chair. Each layer was drawn separately and cut one by one with a CNC machine. The result is a the Layers Cloud Chair, a unique handmade piece that will be showcased at Kvadrat’s exhibition "Divina. Every colour is divine", launching in April during Milan Design Week.
Is this the first time you make a piece using the textile not as the cover, but as the main "protagonist" of the piece? Richard Hutten: Yes, that was the whole concept - to use it as the construction material rather than as the surface or the cover, I wanted to build something with this material as I never did it before. As you may guess, it is not an economic piece and it's not suitable for mass production, but it's more like a one of a kind piece. It's also quite heavy, and bizarre as well, since it's roughly 250 Kg of solid wool.
For this piece you employed Divina fabric, what kind of characteristics has it got? Richard Hutten: It's a little bit like felt and it's very soft and tactile, when you see it you really want to touch it!
It is fascinating to know that each layer was drawn separately and cut one by one, can you tell us more behind the actual process to make the piece? Richard Hutten: I can tell you that we spent more hours on it than on chairs destined to be mass produced, because, while the idea was simple and very straightforward, the process of making it and the execution were really complex aspects. We had to draw each layer separately and, to obtain the final shape, we also had to make sure that each layer was a different size. Besides, each colour was different because we wanted to get a nice gradient. The layers were cut on a CNC machine and sometimes it wasn't working and we had to sort out the problems, so it was a long process and it took us one and a half month of manual production to build one chair.
Which was the most challenging aspect of making the Layers Clouds Chair? Richard Hutten: Every detail was pretty difficult and you could call it a chair of numbers: we employed 840 square metres of material, 545 layers of fabric, roughly 100 colours, and 400 hours of drawing and engineering. Every aspect was important, every detail had to work perfectly. At times it was a nightmare, and we really had to fight to obtain the final piece, but we got there eventually and it was totally worth the fight!
The colours are also very beautiful - how did you come up with this inspiration, the Painted Desert? Richard Hutten: The Painted Desert is currently on my wish list of places to go. It was really a tough process to find the proper colours for the chair to make it look visually striking. The Divina material comes in 120 colours and we used almost 100, in 1,000 colour combinations. Like I said this is genuinely a chair of numbers!
Will you be presenting any other products during Milan Design Week or will you be involved in any other events? Richard Hutten: We have a few events and presentations lined up: for Dutch Originals we did a series of side tables; then there's an exhibition at the Museo Poldi Pezzoli entitled "The Soft House" and we're showing our carpets there, plus a miniature exhibition about Dutch chair design from the past century where there are a dozen of my chairs as well. We're also launching a new chair for Artifort. A while back I did for them the "Apps" sofas inspired by the icons on a smartphone screen and now we're doing a chair called "Halo". It's a metal chair, so it's the complete opposite of the Layers Cloud Chair, even though we used the circle as the main theme also in this case.
You're also one of the finalists of the Rijksstudio Award at the Rijksmuseum with your project "Playing with Tradition", can you tell us more about it? Richard Hutten: Normally, I don't participate in awards, but the museum director is a good friend of mine and invited me to join in. The dish I designed for them moves from the same concept of the "Playing with Tradition" rugs. I was already working on a similar project for the prestigious pottery company Royal Delft that makes all the famous Dutch blue porcelain pieces, so I decided to apply this concept to a dish from the Meissener porcelain manufacture in their art collection. Maybe I will win, maybe I won't, but Rijksstudio remains a genuinely interesting project. The idea to make the artworks at the Rijksmuseum accessible to everybody is super, it's a big source of inspiration for many artists and designers, so that's really good!
The Layers Cloud Chair by Richard Hutten for Kvadrat will be showcased during the "Divina: every color is divine" event at Arcade, Via San Gregorio 43 / Via Casati 32, 2014 Milan, from 8th April 2014. Richard Hutten's pieces will be on display during Milan Design Week at the following events/locations: Artifort, Fiera Milano, Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Hall 16/ Stand F30; The Soft House, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Via Manzoni 12; Dutch Originals, Cream Lab, Via Savona 53; Concern, Supermodels, Via Giovanni Ventura 5, Lambrate.
A while back I did an interview with an Italian designer and asked him about the knitwear in his collection.
He replied me in a a rather vague way, so I asked him if he had used an Italian historical mill I knew to make his piece, and he suddenly became quite angry and replied in an unnecessarily nasty tone, "I'd rather not tell you", an answer that made me feel a bit annoyed at him since he almost implied that the company that had actually made his pieces wasn't worth as much as he was.
I felt the same after reading over and over again in the last 24 hours the news about one design from Marc Jacobs' Autumn/Winter 2014 collection.
The design in question consists in a pale ankle-length pink dress made with a series of organza flower motifs hand-stuffed with yarn, a type of fabric commissioned by Jacob's studio that costs $11,000 a metre.
According to the information released the "Puffy Clouds Embroidery Dress" (could it be inspired by Will Cotton's imaginary cotton candy landscapes populated at times by pop icons à la Katy Perry?) was made in a "Swiss embroidery mill".
Three people worked on the fabric for one week and the dress will be lent out on a limited basis to celebrities and magazines. At the end of the season, it will be retired to the fashion house archives, but wealthy people out there will be able to buy it for $28,000.
Now, what genuinely made me curious and partially annoyed me at the same time, was the bit referred to the "Swiss embroidery mill".
You indeed wonder if, like my interviewee, Jacobs is too proud to release the name of the company that made the fabric, or if there is something else behind anonymity.
While there are a few companies producing Swiss embroidery in Europe, most of them are actually based in India.
If that is the case, you easily wonder if the "Swiss embroidery mill" label means "a Switzerland-based mill producing Swiss embroidery", or "a mill based in an exploitable part of the world that produces Swiss embroidery".
Which leads us to wonder if the dress is so expensive because it is made by hand by properly paid workers, or if fashion is not only being inspired by art, but by the modern art market in which the inflated prices paid by some rich and clueless collectors have caused artists with no real talent to become new Michelangelos, allowing their mediocre works of art to reach stellar prices.
Maybe that's the case with this dress, at least until Marc Jacobs explains us where is the supposed Swiss embroidery mill and maybe films for us the happy workforce labouring over the puffy puffy clouds.
Anyway, to get a bit more knowledgeable about Swiss embroidery, I'm embedding here a book entitled Swiss Embroidery and the Lace Industry, a special report published in 1908 and written by W.A. Graham Clark, a Special Agent of the US Department of Commerce and Labor.
The report focused on the manufacture of cotton goods, lace and embroidery in Switzerland and the exports towards the United States. Key points such as low wages of the workers and the juxtaposition between hand operated and power machines (shuttle or schiffli machines) are considered, and the agent also explains the process behind lace and embroidery making, adding a short analysis of embroidering accessories and yarns as well.
Additional essays report about the state of the embroidering industry in other countries, such as France and Germany, and British India. In 1906, a consul writes, Calcutta exported to the United States chikon embroideries for $42,072, which meant that two thirds of all chikon work exported from India went to the United States.
Even then the men and women who did this work received very little for their labour: the consul from British India reports that an artisan may have worked 10-12 hours a day to produce an article that required six days to make and that was then sold for less than £1, while the artisan only received 33 cents (bear in mind we are at the beginning of the 1900s).
Though dated this is an interesting introduction to Swiss embroidery and to some issues linked to lace production.
Read it and let's hope that, in the meantime, Jacobs will provide us with further information about his fancy lace mill in the land of pink clouds.
Until then, to paraphrase the cloud-shaped Lumpy Space Princess out of Adventure Time, "Lump off, Mark!"
Somehow you feel like tragicomically laughing at the state of our very sad and rather mad world. By pure coincidence I recently heard that House of Fraser may be start selling soon a childrenswear collection by a Glasgow-based streetwear brand (with a penchant for advertising videos featuring alcohol abuse and other assorted shenanigans...) that mainly employs prints that could be considered as pastiches of everything trendy, vulgar and meaningless (ah, finally tops with inverted crosses for kids - an absolute must for Rosemary's baby...), and discovered that the most unqualified person with absolutely no journalistic training writes about fashion for three different Italian publications. Yet these aren't the most unbelievable things around.
The New York-based research institute worked out its results from studies made by an advisory panel that includes professors, government officials and attorneys interested in ethical business practices. Following a rather obscure rating system defined on the Ethisphere Institute’s site as "the Ethics Quotient™ framework", the panel analysed the companies and assigned different scores in different categories - ethics and compliance program, reputation, leadership and innovation, governance, corporate citizenship and responsibility, and culture of ethics. As the Ethisphere site states, the chosen companies "truly go beyond making statements about doing business 'ethically' and translate those words into action".
In many ways you get the impression that ,while their panel of experts may be full of amazing professional people, they may not know the final meaning of the word "ethics" and of the adjectives derived from it.
There is no arguing indeed that most fashion retailers show innovation, reputation and leadership, but, when it comes to social responsibility and sustainability, most manufacturers of clothes simply do not care, as for most of them, it's not human beings who count, but it's human beings (read: them) who count money.
In this case it seems that "ethical" is a rather general adjective covering specific areas, including training, legal compliance, and the amount and quality of the refreshments at a shareholders' meeting. But, as used by this research institute, the term doesn't seem to cover the conditions of garment factories in countries such as Bangladesh, India or China (just to mention a few and not to mention illegal factories in Europe...). It is indeed surprising that no really ethical fashion company following certain standards of manufacturing, production and labour, appears in the list, but brands and mass retailers who were previously the subject of investigations about pouring chemicals into China's rivers (H&M, Nike, and Adidas) or who have been caught using exploited labour (H&M, Gap, Nike, Adidas, Marks & Spencer...) do appear in Ethisphere's ethical list (for this or the previous years).
This is actually the fourth time H&M makes it to the "Most Ethical Companies" list. The Swedish chain has actually been trying to clean up its act for a while now and in April will be launching two allegedly sustainably-produced collections - Conscious and Conscious Exclusive. But for two collections that are conscious, there are another 48 that are polluting the world, exploiting people, putting at risk the workers who make those clothes or the person who wears them.
Transparency is currently very trendy: Fashion Revolution Day organised for 24th April 2014 will be commemorating the victims of the Rana Plaza factory complex that collapsed in Dhaka, Bangladesh, last year (official death toll: 1,133 people; plus 2,500 people injured/permanently disabled). The campaign is currently asking people to wear an item of clothing inside out, photographing it, share it with the hashtag #insideout and ask the company that produced it to tell us more about the people who manufactured that specific item.
Yet, while this is an interesting idea, it is extremely unlikely that a company may reveal you where they made a garment, or the real labour costs and the methods employed to manufacture it. It is even less likely that, asked where they produce not even their "It" bags, but the small metallic parts or metal logos that adorn their garments and accessories, famous fashion houses will tell you "Oh, you know, just random factories in Italy where illegal Chinese workers are exploited".
Quite interestingly and bizarrely enough, while the results about the World's Most Ethical (WME) Companies list were unveiled, H&M was busy retiring a menswear vest that was deemed as anti-Semitic and received complaints by some consumers.
The garment in question featured a skull in the centre of a Star of David. You could argue that there was no intention to offend Jews, but this was just the result of the umpteenth attempt at appropriating random religious symbols for fashion purposes probably done by a very ignorant trendsetter/designer/team of designers working with cut and paste techniques (rather than by somebody with a genuine knowledge and respect for religion - see Lea Gottlieb using in her swimwear, Jewish symbols including the Star of David and the Menorah), but that vague Neo-Nazi feeling remains.
Mark Gardner, director of communications at the Community Security Trust, an anti-Semitism watchdog, stated about the vest: "The assumption is that the designer and H&M did not mean to offend Jews. Nevertheless, fashion statements can work in diverse ways and if you randomly saw somebody wearing this in the street, then you might well believe it to be antisemitic and purchased from a neo-Nazi website or similar."
Guess only in this mad world you could be ethical and Neo-Nazi at the same time...
There has been a lot of talk in the last few weeks about Yves Saint Laurent as the new film shot by Jalil Lespert and chronicling the life of the couturier from 1957 on, was released this year (note - release dates vary: if you're in the USA you will have to wait till June to watch it).
But if you fancy going back in times and rediscovering the couturier in a childish kind of way, don't look further than the Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent Foundation site. Here you will indeed be able to find a section of paper dolls Yves Saint Laurent created as a teenager.
The designer actually took things pretty seriously: rather than just treating the dolls as an ephemeral game, he actually created an entire fashion house that he named "Yves Mathieu Saint Laurent Haute Couture", that he fictionally but aptly based in Place Vendôme, Paris.
He then proceeded to cut out of his mother's magazines (Vogue, Jardin des Modes and Paris-Match) silhouettes of his favourite models - including Bettina (Simone Micheline Bodin), Suzy Parker and Ivy Nicholson - and made for them wardrobes with day, cocktail and evening dresses.
The Foundation still preserves 11 dolls, nearly 443 garments and 105 accessories dating from 1953 to 1955. The number of garments is proof that Saint Laurent had tremendously clear ideas about his future, but they also show his exquisite taste for details, colours, prints (flower motifs prevail), and, on a strictly technical level, for ample volumes and sharp cuts.
There is also a great variety for what regards the items: you get dresses, but also trousers, tops, jackets and coats. Some of the designs were also given fancy names such as "Magneto", "Lassie" or "Macadam".
One of the most interesting things about the paper dolls project is actually the fact that he even came up with a programme to accompany his paper catwalk shows with a list of suppliers - including textile manufacturers Bianchini, Ferier, Abraham, Bucol, Mayer, Toninelli, furs by Revillon, jewellery by Scemama, shoes by Perugia, gloves by Alexandrine, hairstyles by Carita and makeup by Elizabeth Arden. In a nutshell, he was ready even then to present his collection to journalists, buyers and customers.
There is definitely no way the dolls and their wardrobes may be dismissed as a childhood game as Saint Laurent seemed to have a perfect knowledge of what you needed to be a real fashion designer.
The dolls may still have an educational purpose: they could indeed be used to show young fashion design students the determination and preparation that some of the designers who truly made history had, or they could be employed to unleash the creativity of children and grown ups as well. If you fancy joining the game, browse the paper doll project here and pick your dolls and wardrobes here.
Mention Soviet posters and your mind will immediately conjure up images of hammers and sickles, workers struggling and the rising sun of the revolution. But posters can have different aims and objectives and, while some may be interpreted as symbolic representations of power and visual propaganda, others may also be employed to understand the evolution of certain images over time and the developments in fields such as culture, graphic design and technology. An exhibition currently on at the GRAD: Gallery for Russian Arts and Design tries to do that through the graphic art of Soviet film posters.
Entitled "Kino/Film: Soviet Posters of the Silent Screen", the event is organised in collaboration with Antikbar and is co-curated by Elena Sudakova, Director of GRAD, and film critic and art historian Lutz Becker.
Soviet cinema lived its golden age between 1924, with the release of Lev Kuleshov's The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West, and the early '30s with films such as Alexander Dovzhenko's Earth, considered by critics as the last great Soviet film.
"Kino/Film" includes over 30 works by Aleksandr Rodchenko, the brothers Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg, Yakov Ruklevsky, Aleksandr Naumov, Mikhail Dlugach and Nikolai Prusakov, with excerpts of famous films - such as Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925), Aleksandrov and Eisenstein's October (1928), Pudovkin and Doller's The End of St Petersburg (1927), Pudovkin's Storm Over Asia (1928), and Vertov's The Man with the Movie Camera (1929; famous for being known as "an experiment in the cinematic communication of visible events, executed without the aid of intertitles, without a script, without theatre, without sets and actors") - projected across surfaces in the gallery to provide links for the visitors between innovative techniques employed on the big screen (montage, repetition and asymmetric viewpoints) and in graphic design. While the films were in black and white the posters advertising them featured indeed bold and bright colours, and dynamic typographical elements.
"Kino/Film" is a also good opportunity to rediscover that generation of directors - Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov and Vsevolod Pudovkin included - who, in the early 1920s, a period of artistic ferments and cultural cross-fertilisation in Russia, committed themselves to a new art form and were keen to experiment and innovate.
What kind of selection criteria did you follow to pick the posters for this exhibition? Elena Sudakova: We selected our material based on the visual parallels we wanted to draw between poster design and film-making of this era. Rather than starting with one piece, we began with a group of works which changed as the concept became clearer, and then we added the film clips into the mix.
Like in other countries, early cinema in Russia was considered as a novelty, a form of entertainment. Yet some of the scripts provided by Russian filmmakers were theatrical when it came to the plot and quite modern when it came to the narrative structure - think for example about Aelita. Would you say that the early Russian films were quite innovative compared to those of other countries? Elena Sudakova: Yes, the Russian film-makers brought many innovations: from their use of montage to the way in which they challenged narrative structure; from their employment of untrained actors to their inventive use of the camera equipment itself. In some cases, early films seemed to reunite different prominent artists who worked on the posters but on the costumes as well (the Stenberg Brothers for example), was this a unique characteristic of the Soviet film industry? Elena Sudakova: This is not something that was happening among the artists involved in the GRAD exhibition. The Stenberg Brothers have a brief history designing costumes for some theatre productions, but not for the films whose posters they produced.
Which posters display more connections with Constructivism, Malevich's Suprematism, and the avant-garde? Which posters tackle instead the Soviet mystique of the machine considered as a way out of poverty and backwardness? Elena Sudakova: Many of the poster artists studied at the VKhUTEMAS (from 1927 onwards named VKhUTEIN), one of the most important art schools in the USSR. This was the Russian equivalent of the Bauhaus, where they were taught by all the greats of the avant-garde. Naturally they were influenced by the philosophy of these movements, as well as by their visual representation. The Stenbergs produced a Constructivist manifesto, while Prusakov created an abstract, clearly Suprematist-inspired advertisement for the Second Film Poster Exhibition of 1926.
Does the exhibition explore also the way the government subsidised films and how the Party Conference on Cinema (1928) eventually turned cinema into an effective political weapon? Elena Sudakova: The presence of posters in the exhibition produced to advertise foreign productions show how these were used to subsidise domestic industry. GRAD is producing a catalogue of the exhibition that will contain a scholarly essay tackling the political background more fully.
As art curators and experts on Russian art, what fascinates you about Soviet film posters in general? Elena Sudakova: I find it fascinating how the artistic milieu of this period in the Soviet Union was so extremely interdisciplinary, and wanted to put together an exhibition focusing on both films and posters and their relationship. Many of the artists who created these posters also had a background in architecture, stage design or photography. There was a great creative effervescence and no medium was seen as too small or unimportant: art was moving away from the easel and into everyday life. This led to many talented young artists trying their hand at poster design and creating a whole new visual vocabulary based on the innovative on-screen techniques used by directors such as Eisenstein or Vertov. The designers eschewed Hollywood-style glamour featuring romantic narrative images for bold new designs using cinematic montage, repetition, asymmetric viewpoints, dramatic foreshortenings and bold colours. These factors led to the distinctive and highly influential style of Soviet film posters.
Contemporary graphic designers are rediscovering promotional posters of Soviet films, what do you think attracts them - their colours, typographic styles, photomontages, verticality, distorted images or avant-garde/Constructivist images? Elena Sudakova: Avant-garde design and film making from this period have been highly influential for many generations of artists outside Russia, and they continue to be an inspiration. Both introduced montage as a new form of art and influenced such legendary figures as Hitchcock and Greenaway. The dynamism of the images and the juxtaposition of unexpected elements make these posters much fresher and more exciting than most film advertising today.
While working on an exhibitions curators often discover things they didn't know about certain artists or works, did you find out new elements on the cinematic techniques employed by early film makers? Elena Sudakova: We learned much about the techniques used to produce the posters. Although many of the images themselves seem almost photographic, the printing techniques in the Soviet Union were not advanced enough at the time to use photographic stills on a large scale. The artists had to draw the posters by hand on the lithographic stone, and the Stenbergs used a make-shift projector to trace the photographic stills onto the lay-out. Changing the distance between projector and wall altered the image size, but more importantly, changing the angle of the projection produced effective distortions and alterations of perspectives. These processes helped to create their striking and pioneering designs.
Which posters among the ones that will be exhibited is the most popular one and which is the rarest or less known? Elena Sudakova: The print runs for these adverts were often as high as 20,000 copies, however very few are still in existence today. The Stenbergs’ monumental poster for Eisenstein's October for instance, was made of nine segments pasted together into the final composition. We will be showing a rare single segment in the exhibition; the remaining parts are lost, presumed destroyed. The only known complete version is held in the collection of the Russian State Library.
Which is your favourite Soviet film poster and film and why? Elena Sudakova: Of course some of the posters represent great masterpieces of cinema history, such as Battleship Potemkin, but others advertise more obscure productions. The Three Million Case for instance was a Soviet comedy based on popular American slapstick movies. Although the film itself has little artistic value, the poster design is extremely striking, with the heroine’s oversized head looming above two vignettes in which another characters scales a building, with disorienting effects. It speaks volumes about how talented these artists were that they had the ability to turn even average material into great design.
Will visitors be able to see clips of films during the exhibition? Elena Sudakova: Yes, there will be montaged film sequences playing in the exhibition. The clips chosen are those from films advertised in the posters on display, in order to highlight the visual language shared by the two media.
It can be hard choreographing ballets derived from traditional literary texts, but it may be even harder working on choreographies revolving around real stories of physical and psychological extremes. Yet Marguerite Donlon is not scared.
Donlon created as her 34th and final choreography for the Ballet of the Saarland State Theatre company an ambitious piece entitled "Shadow". Presented in a double bill with "Anastasia" - created in 1967 by English choreographer Kenneth MacMillan to the music of Bohuslav Martinů and revolving around the story of a young woman convinced of being the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II - "Shadow" is based on Donlon's "Schatten" (2006).
"Shadow" is inspired by writer Virginia Woolf, playwright Sarah Kane and musician Kurt Cobain - three tormented artists characterised by destructive personalities. While the setting of the first ballet is a mental institution, Donlon's "Shadow" takes place in a minimalist yet claustrophobic space, and has its climax when the three dancers representing Kane, Cobain and Woolf enter into perspex boxes that symbolise their isolation and annihilation, and their own shadows are left to dance on the stage under a snowstorm of red petals.
"Shadow" has the splintered and stylised aesthetic of Kane's works and the sparse sets at times call to mind the white spaces on Kane's pages, resembling or implying the scattered and tortured thoughts of the speaker (think about 4.48 Psychosis and you get an idea).
Donlon translated through abstract slow and fast movements the struggles, psychosis and quests for identity of the main characters, while fashion designer Laura Theiss collaborated again with Donlon on the costumes for this new piece.
Though "Anastasia" and "Shadow" focus on different themes, you could argue that both the pieces have got something in common, for instance topics such as identity and tortured personalities: what prompted you to put the two pieces together on the same bill? Marguerite Donlon: Just as you pointed out, the two pieces do have quite a lot in common. They take a close look at a young woman in a crucial moment of her life. And while one one them chooses the way from a suicide attempt back to life, discovering who she wants to be, the other one decides to end her life, being fully aware of who she is and what her work as an artist means to her. Anastasia and Sarah Kane were two different persons living in totally different situations and both of them have a fascination that inspired Kenneth MacMillan in 1967 and me now to create a choreography focusing on these complex personalities.
"Shadow" is a very literary piece as well since it is inspired by Virginia Woolf and Sarah Kane's works: how difficult it is for a choreographer to translate into body movements the written messages, thoughts and writings of these authors? Marguerite Donlon: It’s not difficult at all as I consider the human body the best instrument to express emotions. What Kane, Woolf and Cobain conveyed in their texts were their experiences, hopes, fears and everything they were going through emotionally. What the three of them shared is a broad range of individual observations and a very personal emotional response to it. Everything they wrote had an attitude and told us clearly how they felt about what they were writing about.
What fascinates you about these tortured figures? Marguerite Donlon: In characters like them you find a multitude of different thoughts and emotions. The abundance of sensitivity makes them such a fascination. It’s not the fact of dealing with a tortured soul, but rather dealing with a complex character that attracts me.
Choreography-wise which movements did you employ to express the drama in the lives of these artists? Marguerite Donlon: Like always I developed a very individual vocabulary for each of the characters. How they move is an expression of how they feel, so this has to be very personal. In close collaboration with the dancers we find certain attitudes of how the body should "work". Obviously with such torn characters as Kane, Woolf and Cobain there are a lot of movements tearing the body into different directions on the one side, and very subtle, carefully tentative moments on the other.
This is the last choregraphy you created for the Saarbrucken audience, where will you be heading next and is there a company you would like to work with? Marguerite Donlon: I am in contact with several companies, regarding future plans. Of course I would like to work with any company with dedicated dancers.
Were you familiar with the main themes of Woolf's writings and Kane's plays before working on the costumes for this piece or did you have to do a lot of researches before starting your work? Laura Theiss: When you work on such projects, it doesn't matter how much you already know about something, since you always have to do a lot of researches to genuinely understand the work you are going to translate into the costumes. In my case I read all I could find about Kurt Cobain, Virginia Woolf and Sarah Kane to be able to understand not only their work but also their lifestyles and the time they lived in. I had to find some similarities in the three characters that allowed me to reunite their emotions and personalities in the costumes, so I opted for very light blue/bleached denims and, for their shadows, identical clothes in dark grey. The dancers interpretating the shadows had less detailed clothing made in heavy jersey, so that the fabrics allowed them to mimick the movements of the protagonists, while prompting them to move in a less dynamic way.
For the previous piece you worked a lot with Marguerite, following the choreographies and so on. What about this new piece, did you feel more confident and did you still follow a lot of rehearsals? Laura Theiss: I did feel more confident. The experience I gained in the first project helped me a lot. While working on the first project I learnt that the stage lights can hide lots of details and that small decorative elements have to be much bigger and slightly over the top compared to usual catwalk clothes. I still spent a lot of time watching the rehearsals to understand the piece, but I obviously spent more time in the atelier working on the costumes. All the pieces were made in the Atelier located in the theatre. The Head of the Costume Department there is Markus Maas and, every now and then, we invited Marguerite Donlon to the Atelier so that she could follow the costume making process - Marguerite has excellent taste!
In which ways did you reinterpret the works of Sarah Kane in your costumes? Laura Theiss: The main part of the performance was about Sarah Kane's works. So, after the first researches, I started making a moodboard with costumes that had to be inspired by the '90s - so mainly jeans and T-Shirts. Sarah Kane was an anti-fashion person, she didn't particularly care about the clothes, that's why I tried to have a less costumy approach than usual and reference more street styles, while attempting in some ways to preserve certain meanings and messages.
There are a lot of slashes on the costumes and they directly link the garments to physical injuries, but also to the light/shadow theme as well. Are the slashes the only symbolism you employed in your costumes or were there other symbolisms as well? Laura Theiss: There is space for the audience's own interpretation. In my opinion the light colour for the three protagonists symbolises heaven, while the cuts hint at physical injuries. I actually opted to cut the shirts in a complicated way. The shirts were shredded into strips that were then placed on the dummy to allow the pattern cutters to work in an easier way since the sketches weren't enough to visualise the most complex details of the costumes. Then we stitched the shirts back together leaving some slashes open. Each T-shirt was different to fit the dancer's body, personality and style. Dancers had another T-Shirt underneath in a nude or red shade. Some T-Shirts were embellished with safety pins. In the part with the wind machines all dancers wore shirts with horizontal cuts on the front and some of the female dancers were wearing men's shirts in red, black or nude chiffon fabric. The trousers were a different story: we bought various denims, but we had to adjust them all to allow the dancers to freely move in them. Some dancers tried at least ten pairs of jeans before finding one they could actually move in and perform comfortably!
Do you feel that from now on you will be working more on costumes than on fashion designs? Laura Theiss: I would be happy to design more costumes for ballets or maybe even try theatre performance in future. However, I do love fashion and will of course continue with my own label. I am finishing my new collection right now and have another exciting project to focus on - designing knitwear for childrens label Thats Not Fair in London.
Anastasia Choreography: Sir Kenneth MacMillan Music: Bohuslav Martinu, Sixth Symphony , Electronic Music by Fritz Winckel and Rüdiger Rufer Set and Costume Design: Bob Crowley Light: John B. Read Preparation: Gary Harris Conducted by Thomas Peuschel
Shadow Choreography: Marguerite Donlon Music: Claas Willeke and Sam Auinger Stage : Marguerite Donlon , Christian Held Costumes: Laura Theiss Light: Fred Pommerehn Video: Dorothee de Coster , Aileen Dietrich Piano : Michael Christensen
With the Saarland State Orchester
The next "Anastasia"/"Shadow" performances will be held on 11th and 15th April 2014. Check out the Saarland State Theatre site further dates.
In March 1959 the Italian edition of Grazia magazine launched a series of touring catwalk shows open to the public in collaboration with the cotton mill Legler. The shows included sixty dresses created by famous Italian designers.
All the garments were different, but there was a unifying element - the quality of the fabrics. Legler had indeed patented Spring/Summer fabrics that wouldn't stress or stain, but dried quickly and didn't have to be ironed, key points to save time to many women in those days.
The prints of the textiles came in colourful and bright patterns, and stripes were a recurrent motif as the examples included in this post show.
The first dress with bold red and white stripes and characterised by a sort of cape-like motif around the shoulders was designed by Shuberth and was dubbed "Vacanze Romane" (Roman Holiday). Biki called her dress "Laguna" (Lagoon) and added a yellow chiffon scarf to emphasise the waist.
The third model in this post is Carosa's "Taormina" and was characterised by blue vertical stripes separating sections with a floral print. The last image shows Giuliano's model: called "Primo Incontro" (First date) it featured large and functional pockets decorated wih long ribbons.
The most interesting thing about this event organised by Grazia and Legler was the fact that the catwalk show didn't encourage the readers to buy the dresses, but to make them after buying the fabric, so the people going to see the shows (that touched quite a few cities from the South to the North of Italy) were actually allowed to copy the models (after buying the pattern - and the pattern was usually affordable) and alter them as much as they wanted.
What if the touring catwalk shows open to a public of DIY passionate people keen on learning and reproducing the models adding their own creative input to them were a desirable solution for the much criticised modern fashion industry?
The late Agostino Bonalumi is definitely among the artists who may provide fashion designers with interesting inspirations. Readers of this site may find some connections between him and Paolo Scheggi.
A master of abstract art and a friend of Piero Manzoni, Enrico Castellani and Lucio Fontana, Bonalumi was born in 1935. Inspired by Fontana's studies of space, throughout the '50s he developed a unique style that prompted him to consider the canvas in the same way an architect would consider a building – as a form that becomes shape, and not as a white space that should be filled with colours.
While his first works included objects - such as shirts, underwear and metallic tubes - applied or glued to the canvas, in the '60s he started working with monochromatic surfaces trying to create a new visual code by producing a series of works that he considered as Picture-Objects. These artworks incorporated indeed structures and frames, that, placed at the back of the canvases, caused them to stretch and deform.
From 1965 he started breaking the symmetrical rigidity of some of his earlier pieces in favour of free forms, unbalancing the canvas by allowing his objects to three-dimensionally protrude from the flat surfaces.
Bonalumi added more sinuous forms and shapes when he started using oil cire nylon fabric instead of canvas and, at a later stage, steel wire.
Bonalumi participated in the Venice Biennale in 1966, 1970 and 1986; in 1980 the Palazzo Te in Mantova mounted a major retrospective of his work.
His most important artworks remain "Blu abitabile" (1967), "Grande ambiente bianco e nero" (1968), and "Ambiente pittura dal giallo al bianco e dal bianco al giallo" (1979).
Bonalumi has also got a connection with costume and set design: in 1970 he designed both the sets and costumes for Susanna Egri’s ballet "Partita", staged at the Teatro Romano of Verona, and, in 1972, the scenes and costumes for the ballet "Rot" with music by Italian avant-garde composer Domenico Guaccero, held at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome.
I'm embedding in this post the video "Agostino Bonalumi: All the Shape of Space 1958- 1976" that also features an interview with him. Some of Bonalumi's artworks will be on display at the Miart fair in Milan at the end of March.