In yesterday's post we looked at an exhibition at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid offering visitors new perspectives on painter Francisco de Zurbarán. Let's continue the thread for another day by looking at another exhibition currently on (until 12th October 2015) at the same museum that ties in with Zurbarán and paintings, but focuses more on fashion.
"Vogue Like a Painting" features a selection of photographs from the Vogue archives that could be linked with, compared or juxtaposed to portraiture, landscape and interior paintings.
Curator Debra Smith cleverly looked not at photographs imitating a specific portrait or work of art, but at moods and attitudes, coming up with a sort of homage to painting via fashion photography.
There are actually a limited numbers of photographers whose work can be compared to that of painters and most of them have studied art or have been painters themselves, as Smith underlines, and that's the main reason why their work is so unique.
The selection - comprising 61 images from different times - can be considered as an investigation into fashion and art through different decades and stylish approaches.
The list of photographers featured in the event is wide and includes (just to mention a few ones) Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott, Cecil Beaton, Erwin Blumenfeld, Grant Cornett, Patrick Demarchelier, Horst P. Horst, Steven Klein, Peter Lindbergh, Sheila Metzner, Erwin Olaf, Irving Penn, Paolo Roversi, Tim Walker and Yelena Yemchuk.
The event also includes a few gowns, among them the monumental "Queen Orchid" dress by Guo Pei, the designer behind Rihanna's Met Gala gown.
The first room features literal interpretations of the theme with photographs that look like portraits and with two images by Erwin Blumenfeld (View this photo) and Michael Thompson that respectively re-create Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Earring (View this photo) and Zurbarán's Saint Isabel of Portugal (View this photo).
The second space - the "Versailles Room" - looks at women in society, with models often photographed in grand interiors (quite a few pictures in this section were actually taken in Versailles) and wearing rich gowns.
The "Garden Room" pays homage to the museum, the nature theme, sitll lifes and Impressionist paintings, while the red corridor that closes the event features one of the most beautiful compositions of the entire event, an untitled image by Clifford Coffin taken in 1949 and portraying four models in swimsuits and colourful bathing caps sitting with their backs to the photographer. This famous photograph looks like a Surrealist painting, according to the curator, almost suspended between Dalí and Magritte.
Visitors with a good knowledge of art will be able to spot links with many more artists including William Hogarth, John Everett Millais, John Singer Sargent, Paul Gauguin, and John Hopper, even though one of the main aims of the event is also making us ponder a bit more about the differences between printed and digital images and threfore between timeless shots and temporarily trendy photographs.
Though featured in a magazine that mainly chronicles the ephemeral and transitory, these images are carefully devised compositions, created at times in theatrical settings and with dramatic chiaroscuro effects that make you realise how hip street style and fashion pictures taken with an excellent digital camera and portraying cool people and celebrities in designer clothes outside fashion shows or stylishly pouting as they sit in the front row, can't be considered as art. It takes indeed talent, skills, knowledge and a passion for painting to create beautifully composed timeless shots.
Image credits for this post
Michael Thompson, Carmen as Zurbarán's Saint Isabel, 2000
Camilla Akranis, A Single Woman 2010
Clifford Coffin, Untitled 1949
Clifford Coffin, Untitled, 1954
Grant Cornett, Untitled, 2014
Petere Lindbergh, One Enchanted Evening, Taormina, Sicily, 2012
Paolo Roversi, Stella, Paris, 1999
Sheila Metzner, Model Uma in Patou dress and hat, 1986
Tim Walker, The Dress Lamp Tree, 2004
"Queen Orchid" Gown by Guo Pei
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