Monday 29 March 2010

Fashion and Art: the crossover







We had a double whammy lecture today, Fashion and Art and Fashion photography and the north.

I was looking forward to the lecture, I knew we would be introduced to plenty of creative people: people I have come across before and new people I haven’t. We were first looking at fashion and art.

I come from both an art background and a fashion background, they naturally crossover whether it be through literal ways, anyone remember the season when Vivienne Westwood had the help from school children who designed artwork that Vivienne used for her collection? Well, this was a literal connection, but naturally what we all see and involve ourselves with influences parts of our lives- I find this is how my natural crossover came from with regards to art and fashion.

At the beginning of the lecture we discussed ways which we though art and fashion were and became connected;

Fashion and art;
-they are both creative subjects-help each other
-fashion has a widespread publicity-art wants this
-influential to each other
-fashion is a representation of social culture and politics
-fashion has a different history to make reference to
-fashion is more accessible
-fashion-commercial more so than art
-both areas seek financial backing
-art-respect-art has an aura
-art seems to have more depth and credibility

After our thoughts Adam broke down the concept down into categories. Firstly looking at the fashion exhibition. It’s interesting to think about how images in certain places are looked at differently, for instance Steven Meisel’s Versace adverts were seen in an exhibition, in a gallery but they were also used for commercial use. When thinking about this, I believe, when looking at the ads in a magazine your mind looks at the image in a different way-you tend to look at the image with a sense of want and commercial reasoning, but in a gallery space at an exhibition you tend to question the image more so than in a mag or newspaper- the meaning of the image is unpicked in your mind.

We were shown some examples where fashion and art have been side by side. The exhibition at the National Gallery, ‘Face of Fashion’; and exhibition at the V&A ‘Imperfect Beauty’ for example. It was nice to look at who at these exhibitions were really being exhibited and shown.

Throughout the lecture we were introduced to many creative people in the industry, some highlighted I want to research more, for instance Martha Rosler for her use of collage and Graham Dolphin for his media use and the way he ‘attacks’ beauty/fashion imagery.

The next section we looked at fashion and art, the crossover. We looked at works by Elsa Schiaparelli where she worked with surrealists; also Tracey Emin’s collaboration with Longchamp creating limited addition handbags. The publication that celebrated the crossover initially was ‘Purple’ magazine: they seemed to pioneer fashion and art before anyone really caught on.

After this section we examined the fashion show. We obviously looked at Alexander McQueen’s fashion shows: also Viktor and Rolf and Hussein Chalayan- all these designers I absolutely love, so I really enjoyed discussing their work and looking at their shows. We looked at the fashion show with relation to substance designers (emphasising the process over product); science (designers who give intense attention to technology of fabrics); structure (unique clothing construction- form over function) and statement designers (the designers who use the show to help make a statement).

After this part of the lecture I realised I need to do a lot of research into some professional creative’s in the industry;

-Martha Rosler
-Sam Taylor Wood
-Graham Dolphin
-Vanessa Beecroft (specifically for our matchbox photo shoot)
-Dash Snow (found objects-Polaroid’s)
-Cindy Sherman (specifically for our matchbox photo shoot) identity of women
-Alexander McQueen (specifically at the show with Joel Peter - the mirror room)

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