There's something uncannily fascinating in those TV shows featuring the industrial production lines of major food companies. Though many of the products shown are very unhealthy, it is actually oddly satisfying seeing vast expanses of caramel being mixed in stainless steel vats, thousands of yummy chocolate sweets on conveyor belts and marshmallows being extruded through a machine.
To be honest, the making of something is usually more fascinating than the final product and that happens mainly because when something is unfinished it still leaves you with hundreds of possibilities. Behind the scenes film specials show us, for example, hilarious moments with actors forgetting their lines and laughing with the crew or directors revealing how they shot a scene; while the making of a live performance or a fashion show provides us with much needed adrenaline-charged moments or anxiety-inducing breakdowns.
Behind the scene documentaries of exhibitions are the same: curators doing their background researches, the pieces arriving at a museum or at major biennial event and, maybe, an artist's tantrum about something going wrong, end up being more interesting than the final event as they reveal unexpected human sides and juicy secrets. But there is an aspect that they never show you when they do "behind the scene" specials of exhibitions: the moment when a team decides the title of an event. So you're left wishing you could see a meeting in which the people involved started to come up with ideas to learn how they pick a title, if there are any major doubts or rows or if everybody unanimously agrees about the chosen title.
For example, it would be very interesting to know how the Met Museum in New York and the Costume Institute at the Met pick the titles for their events. As you may remember from a previous post, the Costume Institute's 2018 Spring exhibition "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination" seemed to be the result of a clash of two different titles, Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs by Paul Koudonaris, published by Thames & Hudson in 2013, and Father Andrew Greeley's book The Catholic Imagination (2000).
Technically this is not a matter of copyright infringement, but it shows a surprising lack of imagination that you wouldn't expect from a major museum (is it indeed so hard to find a title that doesn't derive from somewhere else?). Besides, the lack of originality in a title may end up being confusing for consumers: "Heavenly Bodies" was not just the title of the exhibition, but of the catalogue as well, and a quick research on Amazon shows several items with that same title.
But it looks like they did it again: everything is almost ready for this year's exhibition, a tribute to the late Karl Lagerfeld that will feature more than 150 garments with the designer's sketches accompanying most of the pieces. This time the title is shorter and more compact: "Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty" (on view from May 5 through July 16, 2023; a relatively short time for such a monumental event).
Choosing a title for an event represents a key decision, it must make an impression and affect audience expectations in a positive way, and usually curators pick titles that sell well. In this case, it is short, so people will easily remember it; besides, it fits easily on posters, brochures and on the cover of the exhibition catalogue, so it looks like it may work. Yet this title is reminiscent of a 2011 minor exhibition that took place in London and that was entitled "Dior Illustrated: René Gruau and the Line of Beauty".
This may be an accidental situation, yet there are similarities between the two figures: Gruau was an artist and illustrator and Lagerfeld was an artist, fashion designer, photographer and illustrator. Actually, his inventive illustrations and sketches were the starting point for all his collections, they represented indeed the primary mode of the designer's creative expression translated by his seamstresses into three-dimensional garments. So this aspect reunites the two figures.
The exhibition's press release presents an explanation for the title: inspiration comes from William Hogarth's book The Analysis of Beauty, which describes the author's theories of art and aesthetics centered around his concept of the line of beauty, also defined "serpentine line", defined as "an S-shaped curved line appearing within an object or as the boundary line of an object, representing liveliness and movement".
According to the press release, "while Hogarth viewed straight lines as representative of stillness and inactivity, Lagerfeld took inspiration from both the straight and serpentine line in equal measure".
The exhibition starts therefore with an emphasis on Lagerfeld's two-dimensional drawings, and then develops following two lines that represent conceptual expressions of Lagerfeld's sketches - the serpentine line and the straight line, which designate opposing yet complementary forces in his work.
As the press release explains, "The serpentine line signifies Lagerfeld's historicist, romantic, and decorative impulses, while the straight line indicates his modernist, classicist, and minimalist tendencies." In a way, this division echoes the dichotomy between the Apollonian and Dionysian philosophical concepts and juxtapositions, with Apollo representing harmony, progress, clarity and logic, and Dionysus representing disorder, intoxication, emotion and ecstasy.
As the exhibition progresses, though, this division splinters becoming more complex, as announced in the press release: the two main lines are further divided into nine "sublines" representing aesthetic and conceptual dualities showcased in his designs for Chanel, Chloé, Fendi, and Karl Lagerfeld - feminine and masculine, romantic and military, rococo and classical, historical and futuristic, ornamental and structural, canonical and countercultural, artisanal and mechanical, floral and geometric, and figurative and abstract.
There will also be "garments that represent moments of convergence, wherein the competing aesthetics of these contrasting dichotomies are united and reconciled," (so, basically, designs that will contradict the concept behind the exhibition...).
The last line explored will be the "satirical line", also divided in two parts: "the first will include garments that communicate Lagerfeld's razor-sharp wit expressed through ironic, playful, and whimsical embroideries; the second will feature ensembles that mirror the late designer's self-image through various representations of his immediately recognizable black-and-white 'uniform'".
It is surprising how they managed to derive from one simple word - line - so many complex divisions and sublines and hopefully they will also devise a coloured map like the one for London's tube to allow visitors to find their ways through this maze of lines. But this word is not the only problem, there is indeed another word in the title - beauty - that isn't that convincing.
This word has indeed appeared in quite a few titles of exhibitions not just at the Costume Institute but also at Met – "Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed" (2001), "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty" (2011) and "Dangerous Beauty: Medusa in Classical Art" (2018-2019). Sure, you must be quick and concise in titles, but using a word continuously (even at intervals of 10 years) risks of sounding banal or repetitive.
Besides, "beauty" is an abused word in our times: it evokes the hundreds of beauty lines launched by all sorts of people every year, from influencers to celebrities; it echoes our collective obsession with our personal individual looks, but also with our deep desire to filter out what we perceive as our defects and conform to a concept of beauty we are collectively sold, mainly via social media.
In Lagerfeld's case, you wonder if they may have come up with a more complex title that may have also hinted at the fact that he was a controversial figure. The German-born designer was a record breaker: his career in fashion spanned over 60 years and his tenure at Chanel lasted for four remarkable decades, something that is definitely inconceivable for younger designers who, after being appointed amid great fanfare at a fashion house, end up lasting there only a few seasons.
Lagerfeld was unique, he had a great knowledge and talents, but he was also a controversial figure: he was capable of grand gestures, but also of great hate as the late André Leon Talley recounts in his biography The Chiffon Trenches (2020). After shedding 90 pounds to be able to wear Hedi Slimane's super thin suits for Dior Homme, and after discarding his signature fans, an accessory he used to hide his double chin, in favour of dark sunglasses, multiple rings on his fingers and fingerless leather gloves to hide age spots, Lagerfeld often openly proclaimed his dislike for women who were above the traditional catwalk model size (in 2012 he called singer Adele "a little too fat").
Quite often documentaries and interviews about him were riddled with nonsensical or obnoxious quotes: in 2018 he stated in an interview with Numéro that he was fed up with the #MeToo movement. In that interview he also defended stylist Karl Templer accused of having pulled down models' underwear on a set, and suggested that models should know what they are getting into, stating in an almost Shakesperian tone: "If you don't want your pants pulled about, don't become a model! Join a nunnery, there'll always be a place for you in the convent. They're recruiting even!"
In death we often tend to forget the bad things someone may have said and prefer to remember them only by their good deeds, and in many ways this exhibition does the same (but some institutions are choosing to show also unpleasant details about designers: the Victoria & Albert Museum's exhibition about Chanel, opening in September, will also address Coco Chanel's pro-Nazi activities).
So, tout est pardonné, and "a line of beauty" splintered in too many sublines will provide us with a new way to explore Lagerfeld's opera omnia.
Will the Costume Institute start coming up with more intriguing titles on day? Who knows, maybe next time they will get a Thesaurus or ChatGPT will come to their rescue. Actually, asked to provide ideas for a title for a Karl Lagerfeld exhibition, the bot came up with a variety of titles - "Karl Lagerfeld: Mastering the Art of Beauty" and "Karl Lagerfeld's Timeless Beauty: A Retrospective" among the others.
Requested to change the word "beauty" and to include references to art and fashion illustration, it came up with "Karl Lagerfeld: Capturing Elegance Through the Ages", "Karl Lagerfeld: The Art of Timeless Glamour", "Karl Lagerfeld: Sketching Fashion into Art" and "Karl Lagerfeld: Fashion Sketches and the Art of Expression". In the case of the latter ChatGPT also went on to explain its choice, "This title highlights Lagerfeld's passion for fashion sketches and illustrations, while emphasizing the idea that fashion can be a form of artistic expression. It suggests that the exhibition will showcase Lagerfeld's unique approach to fashion and the creative process involved in his work."
Asked to provide a title that also highlighted the fact the designer was a controversial figure, the system produced instead "Karl Lagerfeld: Provocative Visionary of Fashion", "Karl Lagerfeld: The Polarizing Maverick of Fashion" and "Karl Lagerfeld: The Enigmatic Provocateur of Haute Couture".
Sure, most of these titles are too long and do not offer a unified vision to develop a cohesive exhibition, but these are just test trials to play around with Artificial Intelligence and dispel our frustration at not being able to see a "behind the scene" event with a board meeting in which the people involved start a quarrel around exhibition draft titles.
Maybe one day there will be a documentary about the making of an exhibition with inglorious massive quarrels about exhibit titles included. Till then, we can go back to watch large vats of caramel being mixed together - yes, they are totally unhealthy, but strangely mesmerizing and definitely less complicated than hair-splitting lines of beauty.
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