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Aerosoul, Kirsten Glass, 2000 |
THE BIG EXHIBITION at the Barbican this autumn gives audiences the chance to see some of the most potent repercussions of art’s collision with contemporary fashion.
Rapture: Art’s Seduction by Fashion since 1970 is a diverse and provocative collection exploring the turbulent relationship between art and fashion over the last 30 years. Comprising traditional media as well as installation and video, the exhibition spans the work of 45 key British and American artists.
The exhibition is the fruit of almost three years planning by Chris Townsend, a lecturer at Royal Holloway’s Department of Media Arts, University of London. His interest in the way that artists react to and communicate through popular culture forms the basis for his work on Rapture. The “conceptual underpinning” of the piece is Frank Moore’s To Die For, the sensational 1997 portrait study of Kate Moss as the severed head of Medusa.
To Die For epitomises the strength of feeling with which some in the art world view the excesses of fashion. Moss’s head, effusing snakes that snap at paper money, appears to have broken a bottle of Gucci’s Envy perfume in its fall to the floor. Moore painted the piece for Gianni Versace – who “hated Gucci". |
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Study for ‘Beauty’,
Mark Quinn, 2000 |
Chris Townsend finds that the piece “transplants a fashion icon into a myth of transformation – both the petrifications enacted by Medusa and the transformation of mortal to hero.” He also chose the painting “because it requires a deal of contextual irony to read the picture as more than straightforward violence against woman.” Visitors to the exhibition are advised to have their sense of contextual irony to hand at all times.
Rapture playfully explores the way that in order to create new and seductive images for modern audiences, artists, photographers, models and fashion designers have increasingly found themselves transgressing their roles. Among many media, he explores shopping, graffiti, text, the absent body, anthropology and violence in his survey of this explosive interface, between two glamorous and obsessive worlds.
Works by renowned figures such Nan Goldin, Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Duggie Fields and Cindy Sherman serve to contextualise the historical intimacy of art and fashion. The principal focus, however, is placed upon the most exciting creativity of the last decade, and showcases work by E V Day, Karin Kimmel, Kirsten Glass and Marc Quinn.
Kate Moss’s key presence at the exhibition is announced by Quinn’s life-size sculpture of her wearing Alexander McQueen, a piece originally commissioned by Vogue magazine in 2000, which opens proceedings. Following features include Mark Borthwick’s photographs of Chloe Sevigny modelling clothes by Martin Margeila, Tracey Emin’s advertising campaign for Vivienne Westwood, and Madonna photographed in her Jean-Paul Gaultier corset by Jean-Baptiste Mondino. The final piece is E V Day’s remarkable ‘exploded dress’.
An accompanying book, Rapture, by Chris Townsend has been published by Thames and Hudson.
Click here for details of the Rapture exhibition |
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