The milky white porcelain and gold details of the perfectly sculpted bust entitled "La Vierge de Sèvres" by Hubert Barrère, contrast with the colourful paintings and illustrations hanging on the walls of the Paris-based Galerie Magda Danysz (78 Rue Amelot).
Barrère's piece is just one of the many artworks tackling a centuries-old love affair between art and fashion at the exhibition "Direction Artistique" (until 14th February 2015).
Rather than trying and solve the age-old conundrum – is fashion art? – curators Barbara Polla and Magda Danysz invited artists, creators and intellectuals to respond to Frédérique Mory's collection.
The latter features drawings by fashion masters that the curators juxtaposed to paintings, photographs, illustrations and objects by Hubert Barrère, Gael Davrinche, Leslie Deere, Mounir Fatmi, Maro Michalakakos, Frank Perrin, Sabine Pigalle, Matt Saunders, Julien Serve and Zoë Sheehan Saldaña.
While admiring drawings and sketches by Gianfranco Ferré for Dior, Christian Lacroix and Karl Lagerfeld, visitors won't come to the banal conclusion that not all fashion is art, but that some designers can definitely be called artists.
They will instead be allowed to discover (or rediscover) contemporary artworks somehow linked to the fashion theme, and will be asked to look at them in connection with the fashion sketches and maybe to write in their own minds an entertaining dialogue between the various pieces exhibited.
Among the most intriguing artworks in the show there is Barrère's corset made in collaboration with artisans from Sèvres, the city of porcelain.
This piece is particularly interesting as it tackles one specific sub-theme of this exhibition, the importance of the body in fashion and art, while reuniting at the same time history, religious art, craft and fashion.
Barrère's first inspiration came from the right wing side of the Melun Diptych (1450) by Jean Fouquet, portraying the Virgin Mary and Child surrounded by angels (the Virgin was later recognised as portraying Charles VII's mistress Agnès Sorel View this photo). The designer also looked at a craft inspiration - the 18th century Sèvres milk cups in the shape of a breast with a pink nipple at the bottom (in 1787, Louis XVI surprised his wife Queen Marie Antoinette with the gift of a pleasure dairy - The Laiterie at Rambouillet; some of the Sèvres milk cups were said to have been molded from the Queen's breast View this photo).
The piece transforms a "torture device" like a corset into a "pleasure object", reuniting fragile elegance (porcelain) with eroticism, but also hinting at the objectification of fashion and of the female body.
Can art learn anything from fashion then? Probably. But, while leaving the exhibition, visitors will probably hope that fashion first learns from art to slow its rhythms down a little bit. After all, it takes a lot of time to produce a garment worthy of the "art" title.
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