McQueen Savage Beauty Exhibition

Well, dear readers I have at long last made the trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to view the McQueen retrospective Savage Beauty now up through July 31st. I must say, crowd control aside, it was captivating to say the very least. The rooms were set-up by themes and contrasted starkly with one another between sheer opulence and stark materials.

For months we have been bombarded with the show stoppers....the McQueen avant garde creations that really pushed the envelope. I too was guilty of that in my previous posts. But it was in some of the restrained galleries that one could have a quiet moment to take in a work and see the nuanced genius of the man. You could sense that while McQueen had a penchant for fantasy and the macabre he was at the very core a craftsman (trained as a tailor) and was well versed in the history of art. Don't get me wrong, I love his darker moods, flirting with fetish and the Gothic...who doesn't like a good Poe or Fonthill Abbey reference...but I digress.

In the first gallery, dedicated to McQueen's tailoring roots entitled The Romantic Mind, you are confronted by these re-invisioned Napoleonic jackets. The text provided made it crystal clear that it was his deep knowledge of construction that allowed him to later deconstruct and reinterpret forms and silhouettes. But it was in the Romantic Nationalism gallery that I was stopped dead in my tracks by this gown...

This Empire infused confection was a highlight of the Fall/Winter 2008 collection entitled The Girl Who Lived In The Tree. While McQueen is quoted as saying "I don't really get inspired [by specific women]" but more by "Iconic women" his references from this period in history are evident.

Madame Recamier by Francois Pascal Simon Gerard

Madame Grassini in the Role of Zaire by Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun

Portrait of Madame de Stael by Anne-Louise Girodet de Roucy-Triosson

The Grande Odalisque by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Details of the ensemble from the Fall/Winter 2008 collection

It was definitely one of those moments where something modern can transport you in a flash to an age of Empires, Orientalism, conquest and romance. I could do fifty related posts on the exhibition as it is a veritable feast. While the exhibition catalogue is good it does not contain all the works in the show and cannot capture the lushness of the installation. We are sad to see McQueen go but he has left his mark with an astonishing fashion legacy.

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty

Last year when I heard the shocking news about the death of fashion genius Alexander McQueen I wrote the requisite dismayed blog entry. In that post I hopothesized about the retrospective that would be held in his honor at some point in the future....details were announced today.

Dress from the fall/winter 2010 collection. Photo: Solve Sundsbo/The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty will run at The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute from 4 May-31 July 2011. A preview was held in London today at the Ritz Hotel to coincide with London fashion week. Anna Wintour and Samantha Cameron were in attendance for the preview and press conference.

Ritz Preview. Photo: Yui Mok/Press Association, via Associated Press

The retrospective at the Met will include some 100 works covering the designer's astounding 19 year career. The catalogue is available on pre-order but will not be released until 31 May 2011. I leave you with these juicy and haunting images from the publication and a BBC interview with Anna Wintour.

Gown, Widows of Culloden. Photo: Solve Sundsbo/The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Gown from the Voss Collection. Photo: Solve Sundsbo/The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Ensemble, Its a Jungle Out There. Photo: Solve Sundsbo/The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dress, Horn of Plenty. Photo: Solve Sundsbo/The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Ensemble, Plato's Atlantis. Photo: Solve Sundsbo/The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Ensemble from the Voss Collection. Photo: Solve Sundsbo/The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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God Save McQueen!

I like many was stunned today to hear of the passing of fashion superstar Alexander McQueen... apparently by his own hand. Many thoughts swirled through my mind in terms of his vision and what will now become his legacy... There has always been a dispute regarding what is high art, decorative art and (gasp) fashion, but at the end of the day art is transformative, changing how we see ourselves and the world. To distill it into an object I would look back to McQueen's shoes from last season...

This particular pair moves somewhere between beauty and the macabre. Sleek and bejeweled while sinister, transforming the model into a towering clawed glamazon. The result is akin to folly but brings a feeling of sheer delight. Naysayers will find fault with anything but also fail to embrace fashion's long ties to surrealism. Enter Elsa Schiaparelli and her infamous shoe hat and lobster dress.

In terms of "high art" (ahem) the correlation I make is to the glass high-heel appendages Matthew Barney had crafted for Aimee Mullins for his Cremaster Cycle. Mullins who herself modelled for McQueen, FYI. Barney's appendages create an air of power and modernity, transforming Mullins into a futuristic superwoman.

If I had to venture a guess we will see retrospectives of McQueen's work at the Met or the V&A within the foreseeable future. We shall leave it to the curators to to draw the deeper comparisons about McQueen's oeuvre, until then we will feel the void.