1997
TIME AND FASHION - FASHION BIENNIAL IN FLORENCE
On the cover of the February 1982 issue of Artforum, a photograph was published for the first time that would have been better suited for a fashion magazine: a model in an avant-garde creation by the designer Issey Miyake.
What might a high-fashion photograph on the cover of a leading visual arts magazine signify?
Is high fashion equated with art? Intellectual chic? A host of other associations stemming from the aggressive female look of the eighties, linked to sexual manipulation and the political history of the body?
In this case, fashion photography serves as a pretext for one of the key questions that characterised post-war art and theory.
As the authors of the editorial, Ingrid Sischy and Germano Celant, state, it is the question of how much and which languages of contemporary art have ‘managed’ to reach a broad audience. Therefore, the question concerns the relationship between elite and mass culture, as well as the contrasting characteristics and seriousness. And triviality, the unique and the multiple, aesthetic versus utilitarian value, etc.
Pop art is probably the movement that, to the greatest extent, dismantled these oppositions and illusions of distinction (which were products of the Cold War as much as of ideology).
The aforementioned issue of Artforum focused on areas where the convergence between visual art and mass media was most evident: pop music, advertising and strip cartoons.
The year 1982 strikes me as an interesting turning point, though perhaps entirely accidental. On one hand, because it marks the start of the eighties, a period of the peak
affirmation of postmodernist attitudes in contemporary theory, architecture, art, music, fashion... From this period, one of the fundamental achievements of this epoch enters
in grand style: eclecticism.
As Luc Ferry states, in it, everything can, in principle, coexist; or, if we prefer a different formulation, in it, nothing is predetermined as illegitimate. All styles, all epochs benefit from “open-ended diversity” – including avant-garde creations themselves.
Fourteen years earlier, Celant had initiated the theorisation of Arte Povera. Now, ’96, fourteen years after the aforementioned text in Artforum, Germano Celant and Inarid Sischv are the authors of this edition of the Florence Biennale, which takes as its theme the relationship between art and fashion.
In the nineties, the question of the hierarchical relationship between high and low values: we are witnessing a process of equalisation and proliferation of all linguistic categories. Visual arts, fashion, design, pop music, film, advertising and special effects are all fusing into a single, unique media language which manifests itself in many ways.
Kounellis's reconstructed installations (“Horses”, “Cactus”, “Golden Wall”...) become the scenography for the pop group Simply Red's video clip; Damien Hirst directs videos for the group Blur; Julian Schnabel, Robert Longo, and Larry Clark shoot feature films of high Hollywood production value.... The fashion designer Emilio Pucci exhibited his designs in the Italian pavilion at the last Venice Biennale... The editor of “Flash Art”, Giancarlo Politi, has recently launched a new review, ‘Interview' (an Italian remake of Warhol's Interview), in which interviews with celebrities (pop stars, politicians, fashion designers, philosophers, actors...) are illustrated with photographs of artworks. Art here is utterly de-contextualised, reduced exclusively to allusive illustration. In the contents of the issue, pages dedicated to advertising are listed on an equal footing with those of text. Everything is on the same level.
Similarly, ‘Time and Fashion’ transformed the city of Florence into a grand spectacle, placing contemporary art and fashion within historical and cultural venues that are inherently dedicated to classical art.
The event is organised into various thematic segments: ‘Visitors’, an exhibition by Luigi Settembrini and Franca Sozzani, with Gae Aulenti designing the display layout.
‘Visitors’ invite us to view installations by Armani in the Uffizi Gallery, Ferré in the Medici Chapel, John Galliano in the Casa Buonarroti, Gaultier in the Zoological Museum, Issey Miyake in the Palazzo Pitti Museum of Modern Art, Valentino at the Galleria dell'Accademia, and other designers across twelve different Florentine museums.
Fashion, as a realm of the ephemeral and superficial, is now placed in contexts that, at least symbolically, aim to represent the tradition of universal and eternal art.
Thus, we see Valentino's Red Evening Dresses displayed alongside Michelangelo's David... Inevitably, the question arises as to whether this amounts to a desacralisation of high aesthetic values. Is the pretentiousness of the fashion show being equated with the symbols of the highest achievements of the human spirit, or is it simply another spectacular image that functions precisely because of its paradoxical nature?
The exhibition ‘Art/Fashion’ by Germano Celant, Ingrid Sischy, and Pandora Tabatabai Asbaghi at the Forte Belvedere offers a new perspective: it showcases the historical continuity between art and fashion, from the avant-garde movements of the 1920s, when artists aimed to transform the totality of concrete reality through art and creative expression—creating, among other things, clothing—to the 1990s, when collaborations between contemporary visual and fashion designers are showcased. Throughout the exhibition, visitors can observe the evolution of the relationship between art and fashion.
The historical section documents the real fusion between styles of dress and artistic movements [Cubism, Orphism, Constructivism, Futurism, Surrealism], and then presents interventions in the field of fashion by post-war artists (such as Fontana, Capogrossi, Alviani), and through the works of Pop and Fluxus artists (Warhol, Lichtenstein, Nam June Paik, Beuys), illustrates aspects of the sociological and cultural changes characterising the relationship between these categories. For artists of the 1990s (Beverly Semmes, Oliver Herring, Jan Fabre, Jana Sterbak...), the phenomenon of the influence of the mechanisms of the fashion system and ‘technologies of appearance’ becomes a subject of reflection and criticism, as it inevitably affects the processes of ‘construction’ of identity and interpersonal relationships in contemporary society.
A particularly intriguing part of this exhibition demonstrates the critics' aim to “reconcile’ fashion and contemporary art through the actual collaboration that was intended to occur between the artists and fashion designers: Gianni Versace & Roy Lichtenstein, Helmut Lang & Janny Holzer, Azzedine Alaïa & Julian Schnabel, Jil Sander & Mario Merz, Miuccia Prada & Damien Hirst, Rei Kawakubo & Oliver Herring, Karl Lagerfeld & Tony Cragg. This takes place at Belvedere Park, which offers a panoramic view of Florence, featuring seven pavilions (varying in colours and sizes relative to the urban landscape) designed by the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki. Each pavilion aims to embody a complete environment – a fusion of architecture, fashion, and art – creating the impression of a visual hyperspectacle.
The nineties are characterised by the merging and overlapping of sensory and visual effects, a continual fusion and confusion of images and content that stimulate and engage different levels of perception.
The unusual blending of linguistic qualities between the work of artists and fashion designers emphasises the need for new perceptual experiences, which arise from dialogue and the intersection of different disciplinary territories.
The exhibition ‘New Persona / New Universe’, conceived by Germano Celant and Ingrid Sischy, held in the vast space of Stazione Leopolda (a 19th-century railway station), further emphasises the aspects of spectacle, both through the curators' selection and the installation itself, which simulates an ‘intergalactic design’ based on an idea by Denis Santachiara.
This exhibition explores, through a variety of media and languages, the phenomenon of merging and confusion of gender differences and the blurring of the clear boundaries between the individual and the universe, which has become more evident following the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope and the consequent identification of trillions of new galaxies beyond our own. Naturally, as we near the end of the millennium, the question arises about the methods of constructing and the directions of development for a new collective and individual identity.
The exhibition showcased new works by artists, photographers, musicians, and fashion designers: Vito Acconci, Giorgio Armani, Walter Van Beirendonck - W. & L.T, David Bowie, Chanel, Dinos and Jake Chapman, Ann Demeulemeester, Gucci, Calvin Klein, Karl Lagerfeld, Ines van Lamsweerde, Manolo and Arnaldo Ferrara, Robert Mapplethorpe, Alexander McQueen, Missoni, Tony Oursler, Giuseppe Penone, Charles Ray, David Rokeby, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, Studio Azzuro, Juergen Teller, Carrie Mae Weems, Vivienne Westwood, Yohji Yamamoto.
Theatricality, extravagance, and perfect production have become the defining features of the system (of fashion and art) that functions at a high, institutional, and elite level within contemporary mass-media society.
In this context, it is very easy to criticise the ‘artistic’ installations of fashion designers who operate more on the level of superficial spectacle, using the formal language of avant-garde art movements such as the ‘minimalist’ installations of Armani and Calvin Klein, or Missoni's installation in the spirit of Buren and Arte Povera.
One can also question the selection of artists at the exhibition, particularly why many young artists (Sylvie Fleurie, Tobias Rehberger, Andrea Zittel, etc.), who explore the relationship between fashion, art, and contemporary society, are not included.
The key features of this phenomenon are strategies of promotion and spectacle, as both art and high fashion align perfectly with contemporary culture. After all, as Benjamin H.D. Buchloh notes in a text in the latest issue of Antorum, the fashion of this artistic season is FASHION as a new subject for the theoretical analysis of current cultural and social contexts.
Within this project, three additional major exhibitions were realised: one on the Italian fashion designer Emilio Pucci, one on the fashion photographer Bruce Weber, and “Metamorphosis”, an exhibition of costumes by Elton John.
In Prato, at the Luigi Pecci Museum of Contemporary Art, the exhibition ‘Habitus, Abito, Abitare’ was organised, conceived by Michelangelo Pistoletto and Bruno Corà, as an interactive laboratory or a ‘work-in-progress’ project where the public was invited to intervene and participate in various ways within the environments or installations of young or established Italian and Austrian artists, fashion designers, sound artists, and architects. The exhibition ‘Habitus, Abiti, Abitare’ more romantically sought to explore the relationship between fashion, art, urban planning, architecture, design, sociology, politics, and economics, emphasising direct interpersonal communication and the individual creativity of the subject in the contemporary telematic environment.
The museum's exhibition halls have been transformed into dedicated ‘workshops’ where visitors are encouraged to leave their own ‘Artistic Mark’, thereby contributing to the installation. On Pistoletto's initiative, guests can also relax with a Thai massage from Suwan Laimene’e, purchase recycled models by the Italian designer Pietra, spend a day with some of the Turin-based design group “Snodo” in a “living-home” installation, or take part in a project ‘Paura’ (“Fear”) by the ‘Fabrica’ group of Oliviero Toscani, which explores the sources of individual and collective fears. Also featured in the exhibition are Marcus Gaiger, Chris Sacher, Henrik Kreutz, Claudia Weinhappl, Monica Wuher and Tina Bepperling.
Published in the magazine ProjektArt, Novi Sad
1997
TIME AND FASHION - FASHION BIENNIAL IN FLORENCE
On the cover of the February 1982 issue of Artforum, a photograph was published for the first time that would have been better suited for a fashion magazine: a model in an avant-garde creation by the designer Issey Miyake.
What might a high-fashion photograph on the cover of a leading visual arts magazine signify?
Is high fashion equated with art? Intellectual chic? A host of other associations stemming from the aggressive female look of the eighties, linked to sexual manipulation and the political history of the body?
In this case, fashion photography serves as a pretext for one of the key questions that characterised post-war art and theory.
As the authors of the editorial, Ingrid Sischy and Germano Celant, state, it is the question of how much and which languages of contemporary art have ‘managed’ to reach a broad audience. Therefore, the question concerns the relationship between elite and mass culture, as well as the contrasting characteristics and seriousness. And triviality, the unique and the multiple, aesthetic versus utilitarian value, etc.
Pop art is probably the movement that, to the greatest extent, dismantled these oppositions and illusions of distinction (which were products of the Cold War as much as of ideology).
The aforementioned issue of Artforum focused on areas where the convergence between visual art and mass media was most evident: pop music, advertising and strip cartoons.
The year 1982 strikes me as an interesting turning point, though perhaps entirely accidental. On one hand, because it marks the start of the eighties, a period of the peak
affirmation of postmodernist attitudes in contemporary theory, architecture, art, music, fashion... From this period, one of the fundamental achievements of this epoch enters
in grand style: eclecticism.
As Luc Ferry states, in it, everything can, in principle, coexist; or, if we prefer a different formulation, in it, nothing is predetermined as illegitimate. All styles, all epochs benefit from “open-ended diversity” – including avant-garde creations themselves.
Fourteen years earlier, Celant had initiated the theorisation of Arte Povera. Now, ’96, fourteen years after the aforementioned text in Artforum, Germano Celant and Inarid Sischv are the authors of this edition of the Florence Biennale, which takes as its theme the relationship between art and fashion.
In the nineties, the question of the hierarchical relationship between high and low values: we are witnessing a process of equalisation and proliferation of all linguistic categories. Visual arts, fashion, design, pop music, film, advertising and special effects are all fusing into a single, unique media language which manifests itself in many ways.
Kounellis's reconstructed installations (“Horses”, “Cactus”, “Golden Wall”...) become the scenography for the pop group Simply Red's video clip; Damien Hirst directs videos for the group Blur; Julian Schnabel, Robert Longo, and Larry Clark shoot feature films of high Hollywood production value.... The fashion designer Emilio Pucci exhibited his designs in the Italian pavilion at the last Venice Biennale... The editor of “Flash Art”, Giancarlo Politi, has recently launched a new review, ‘Interview' (an Italian remake of Warhol's Interview), in which interviews with celebrities (pop stars, politicians, fashion designers, philosophers, actors...) are illustrated with photographs of artworks. Art here is utterly de-contextualised, reduced exclusively to allusive illustration. In the contents of the issue, pages dedicated to advertising are listed on an equal footing with those of text. Everything is on the same level.
Similarly, ‘Time and Fashion’ transformed the city of Florence into a grand spectacle, placing contemporary art and fashion within historical and cultural venues that are inherently dedicated to classical art.
The event is organised into various thematic segments: ‘Visitors’, an exhibition by Luigi Settembrini and Franca Sozzani, with Gae Aulenti designing the display layout.
‘Visitors’ invite us to view installations by Armani in the Uffizi Gallery, Ferré in the Medici Chapel, John Galliano in the Casa Buonarroti, Gaultier in the Zoological Museum, Issey Miyake in the Palazzo Pitti Museum of Modern Art, Valentino at the Galleria dell'Accademia, and other designers across twelve different Florentine museums.
Fashion, as a realm of the ephemeral and superficial, is now placed in contexts that, at least symbolically, aim to represent the tradition of universal and eternal art.
Thus, we see Valentino's Red Evening Dresses displayed alongside Michelangelo's David... Inevitably, the question arises as to whether this amounts to a desacralisation of high aesthetic values. Is the pretentiousness of the fashion show being equated with the symbols of the highest achievements of the human spirit, or is it simply another spectacular image that functions precisely because of its paradoxical nature?
The exhibition ‘Art/Fashion’ by Germano Celant, Ingrid Sischy, and Pandora Tabatabai Asbaghi at the Forte Belvedere offers a new perspective: it showcases the historical continuity between art and fashion, from the avant-garde movements of the 1920s, when artists aimed to transform the totality of concrete reality through art and creative expression—creating, among other things, clothing—to the 1990s, when collaborations between contemporary visual and fashion designers are showcased. Throughout the exhibition, visitors can observe the evolution of the relationship between art and fashion.
The historical section documents the real fusion between styles of dress and artistic movements [Cubism, Orphism, Constructivism, Futurism, Surrealism], and then presents interventions in the field of fashion by post-war artists (such as Fontana, Capogrossi, Alviani), and through the works of Pop and Fluxus artists (Warhol, Lichtenstein, Nam June Paik, Beuys), illustrates aspects of the sociological and cultural changes characterising the relationship between these categories. For artists of the 1990s (Beverly Semmes, Oliver Herring, Jan Fabre, Jana Sterbak...), the phenomenon of the influence of the mechanisms of the fashion system and ‘technologies of appearance’ becomes a subject of reflection and criticism, as it inevitably affects the processes of ‘construction’ of identity and interpersonal relationships in contemporary society.
A particularly intriguing part of this exhibition demonstrates the critics' aim to “reconcile’ fashion and contemporary art through the actual collaboration that was intended to occur between the artists and fashion designers: Gianni Versace & Roy Lichtenstein, Helmut Lang & Janny Holzer, Azzedine Alaïa & Julian Schnabel, Jil Sander & Mario Merz, Miuccia Prada & Damien Hirst, Rei Kawakubo & Oliver Herring, Karl Lagerfeld & Tony Cragg. This takes place at Belvedere Park, which offers a panoramic view of Florence, featuring seven pavilions (varying in colours and sizes relative to the urban landscape) designed by the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki. Each pavilion aims to embody a complete environment – a fusion of architecture, fashion, and art – creating the impression of a visual hyperspectacle.
The nineties are characterised by the merging and overlapping of sensory and visual effects, a continual fusion and confusion of images and content that stimulate and engage different levels of perception.
The unusual blending of linguistic qualities between the work of artists and fashion designers emphasises the need for new perceptual experiences, which arise from dialogue and the intersection of different disciplinary territories.
The exhibition ‘New Persona / New Universe’, conceived by Germano Celant and Ingrid Sischy, held in the vast space of Stazione Leopolda (a 19th-century railway station), further emphasises the aspects of spectacle, both through the curators' selection and the installation itself, which simulates an ‘intergalactic design’ based on an idea by Denis Santachiara.
This exhibition explores, through a variety of media and languages, the phenomenon of merging and confusion of gender differences and the blurring of the clear boundaries between the individual and the universe, which has become more evident following the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope and the consequent identification of trillions of new galaxies beyond our own. Naturally, as we near the end of the millennium, the question arises about the methods of constructing and the directions of development for a new collective and individual identity.
The exhibition showcased new works by artists, photographers, musicians, and fashion designers: Vito Acconci, Giorgio Armani, Walter Van Beirendonck - W. & L.T, David Bowie, Chanel, Dinos and Jake Chapman, Ann Demeulemeester, Gucci, Calvin Klein, Karl Lagerfeld, Ines van Lamsweerde, Manolo and Arnaldo Ferrara, Robert Mapplethorpe, Alexander McQueen, Missoni, Tony Oursler, Giuseppe Penone, Charles Ray, David Rokeby, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, Studio Azzuro, Juergen Teller, Carrie Mae Weems, Vivienne Westwood, Yohji Yamamoto.
Theatricality, extravagance, and perfect production have become the defining features of the system (of fashion and art) that functions at a high, institutional, and elite level within contemporary mass-media society.
In this context, it is very easy to criticise the ‘artistic’ installations of fashion designers who operate more on the level of superficial spectacle, using the formal language of avant-garde art movements such as the ‘minimalist’ installations of Armani and Calvin Klein, or Missoni's installation in the spirit of Buren and Arte Povera.
One can also question the selection of artists at the exhibition, particularly why many young artists (Sylvie Fleurie, Tobias Rehberger, Andrea Zittel, etc.), who explore the relationship between fashion, art, and contemporary society, are not included.
The key features of this phenomenon are strategies of promotion and spectacle, as both art and high fashion align perfectly with contemporary culture. After all, as Benjamin H.D. Buchloh notes in a text in the latest issue of Antorum, the fashion of this artistic season is FASHION as a new subject for the theoretical analysis of current cultural and social contexts.
Within this project, three additional major exhibitions were realised: one on the Italian fashion designer Emilio Pucci, one on the fashion photographer Bruce Weber, and “Metamorphosis”, an exhibition of costumes by Elton John.
In Prato, at the Luigi Pecci Museum of Contemporary Art, the exhibition ‘Habitus, Abito, Abitare’ was organised, conceived by Michelangelo Pistoletto and Bruno Corà, as an interactive laboratory or a ‘work-in-progress’ project where the public was invited to intervene and participate in various ways within the environments or installations of young or established Italian and Austrian artists, fashion designers, sound artists, and architects. The exhibition ‘Habitus, Abiti, Abitare’ more romantically sought to explore the relationship between fashion, art, urban planning, architecture, design, sociology, politics, and economics, emphasising direct interpersonal communication and the individual creativity of the subject in the contemporary telematic environment.
The museum's exhibition halls have been transformed into dedicated ‘workshops’ where visitors are encouraged to leave their own ‘Artistic Mark’, thereby contributing to the installation. On Pistoletto's initiative, guests can also relax with a Thai massage from Suwan Laimene’e, purchase recycled models by the Italian designer Pietra, spend a day with some of the Turin-based design group “Snodo” in a “living-home” installation, or take part in a project ‘Paura’ (“Fear”) by the ‘Fabrica’ group of Oliviero Toscani, which explores the sources of individual and collective fears. Also featured in the exhibition are Marcus Gaiger, Chris Sacher, Henrik Kreutz, Claudia Weinhappl, Monica Wuher and Tina Bepperling.
Published in the magazine ProjektArt, Novi Sad
INSTAGRAM
@EXPERIMENTS.FASHION.ART