So, the rumour became a confirmation today: the Met Museum finally sent out to the media the press release stating that the Costume Institute's Spring 2018 Exhibition (May 10 – October 8) at The Met Fifth Avenue and Met Cloisters will focus on fashion and the Catholic imagination.
The event will be a dialogue between religious art and fashion pieces inspired by religion and will feature works from the Met's own collection of religious art, plus papal robes and accessories from the Sistine Chapel sacristy that will highlight the influence of liturgical vestments on designers, and 150 designer garments inspired by Catholic iconography or style.
There wll be a wide range of designers, among them the "usual suspects", that is designers that we mentioned in our extensive posts about fashion and religion (thank you Met Museum for taking us seriously) including Elsa Schiaparelli (as you may remember, Schiap used St Peter's keys in her designs as early as 1939), Balenciaga, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Gianni Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, Jean Paul Gaultier, Givenchy and Pierpaolo Piccioli for Valentino.
While it will be interesting to see what Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), the interdisciplinary architecture and design firm, will create for the exhibition design, there is one point that remains rather dubious.
The exhibition is indeed entitled "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination", a title that bizarrelly echoes the volume Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs by Paul Koudonaris, published by Thames & Hudson in 2013, recombined with the title of Father Andrew Greeley's book The Catholic Imagination.
Koudonaris's volume focused on the skeletons that were sent from Rome to Germany to combat Protestant Reformers and offer replacements for relics lost when churches were ransacked. The skeletons were collectively known as Katakombenheiligen, that is "catacomb saints", and were considered sacred items, even though in most cases it was almost impossible to be entirely sure that the bones really belonged to the body of a martyr. The skeletons were covered by nuns in intricate embroideries, colourful gems and decorative textiles.
Rather than proper copyright issues (even though there may be some involved) maybe we can talk here of two products that generate confusion. If the book had been a novel, the situation would have been less confusing, but the volume tackles in some ways the links between fashion and religion as it puts emphasis on the lavish styles in which the skeletons were dressed. You may argue there will be no confusion in the end, as one title refers to an exhibition, and the other to a book, but it will be annoying once the catalogue (published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press) will be out on major retailers à la Amazon as in that case the similar titles may generate some problems, disorienting consumers.
You wonder if this is just a coincidence, they had finished the ideas at the Met, they didn't have the time to think about another title or maybe they loved the book so much that they stole its title, but avoided mentioning it as an inspiration (yes, very postmodernist...).
You would have expected a bit more effort from Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute, & Co, and the similarity between the title of the event and the book title also makes you wonder if this will be a well-researched event or if the exhibition will just be skating on the surface of a topic that is much wider and deeper and has also got some links with copyright issues, as we have seen in a previous post. As for us, as stated in another piece, we're off the fashion and religion bandwagon as too many people have just jumped on board today and it will get even crowded come May 2018.
Image credits in this post:
1. El Greco, Cardinal Fernando Niño de Guevara (1541–1609), ca. 1600, oil on canvas; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 (29.100.5). Evening Coat, Cristobal Balenciaga for House of Balenciaga, Autumn/Winter 1954–55.
2. Follower of Lippo Memmi, Saint Peter, mid–14th-century. Elsa Schiaparelli evening dress, 1939.
3. Byzantine processional cross, ca. 1000-1050. Gianni Versace evening dress, A/W 1997–98.
4. Cover of the volume "Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs" by Paul Koudonaris, published by Thames & Hudson in 2013.
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