Enfilade

Pale-blue shoes, silk satin with silver lace and braid, diamond and sapphire buckles, England, 1750s (London: V&A: T.70+A—1947; M.48+A—1962). Photographed on the mantelpiece in The Norfolk House Music Room, the British Galleries at the V&A.

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Press release from the V&A:

Shoes: Pleasure and Pain
Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 13 June 2015 — 31 January 2016
The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham, 11 June — 9 October 2016
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, 9 November 2016 — 12 March 2017
Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, Georgia, March — June 2017

Curated by Helen Persson

The transformative power of extreme footwear will be explored in the V&A’s summer 2015 fashion exhibition, Shoes: Pleasure and Pain. More than 200 pairs of historic and contemporary shoes from around the world will be on display, many for the first time. The exhibition will explore the agonizing aspect of wearing shoes as well as the euphoria and obsession they can inspire.

The V&A’s shoe collection is unrivalled, spanning the globe and over 2000 years. For Shoes: Pleasure and Pain, curator Helen Persson has delved into this, other international collections and the wardrobes of private individuals to select an exceptional range of shoes from a sandal decorated in pure gold leaf originating from ancient Egypt to futuristic looking shoes created using 3D printing.

Shoes worn by or associated with high profile figures including Marilyn Monroe, Queen Victoria, Sarah Jessica Parker, and the Hon Daphne Guinness will be shown as well as famous shoes, such as the ballet slippers designed for Moira Shearer in the 1948 film The Red Shoes. Footwear for men and women by 70 named designers including Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin, Jimmy Choo, and Prada will be on display. Historic lotus shoes made for bound feet and 16th-century chopines, silk mules with vertiginous platforms designed to lift skirts above the muddy streets, will also feature.

Exhibition curator, Helen Persson, said: “Shoes are one of the most telling aspects of dress. Beautiful, sculptural objects, they are also powerful indicators of gender, status, identity, taste and even sexual preference. Our choice in shoes can help project an image of who we want to be.”

The exhibition will be shown over two floors. The luxurious, boudoir design of the ground floor gallery will examine three themes: transformation, status, and seduction.

‘Transformation’ will present shoes that are the things of myth and legend, opening with different cultural interpretations of the Cinderella story from across the globe. It will explore the concept of shoes being empowering as passed down through folklore, illustrated by the Seven League Boots from the ‘Hop o’ My Thumb’ tale, and how this feeds into contemporary marketing for such things as football boots and the concept of modern-day, fairy-tale shoemakers, whose designs will magically transform the life of the wearer.

‘Status’ will reveal how impractical shoes have been worn to represent privileged and leisurely lifestyles—their design, shape and material can often make them unsuitable for walking—and how shoes also dictate the way in which the wearer moves, how they are seen and even heard. Shoes on display will include Indian men’s shoes with extremely long toes, noisy slap-sole shoes worn in Europe during the 17th century and the now infamous Vivienne Westwood blue platforms worn by Naomi Campbell in 1993. ‘Status’ will also demonstrate how historically shoe fashions originated from the European royal courts, while today the focus has shifted to famous shoe designers. Desirable shoes such as the ‘Pompadour’, worn by trend-setting women in the 18th-century French court will sit together with designs by the some of the most well-known names in fashion today, including Alexander McQueen and Sophia Webster.

Within ‘Seduction’, the shoes represent an expression of sexual empowerment or a passive source of pleasure. Like feet, shoes can be objects of fetishism. High Japanese geta, extreme heels, and tight-laced leather boots will be on display as well as examples of erotic styles channeled by mainstream fashion in recent years.

In contrast, the laboratory style setting of the first floor gallery is dedicated to dissecting the processes involved in designing and creating footwear, laying out the story from concept to final shoe. This will be enhanced by films and animations that peel back the layers of a shoe and reveal how they are made. The displays will show how makers combine traditional craftsmanship with technological innovation and how they unite function with art.

Designer sketches, materials, embellishments and shoe lasts, such as the lasts created by H. & M. Rayne for Princess Diana, will be on show, alongside ‘pullovers’ from Roger Vivier for Christian Dior. The section will highlight the makers’ ingenuity in creating innovative styles and dealing with the structural challenges of creating ever higher heels and more dramatic shapes and will feature filmed interviews with five designers and makers.

The exhibition will go on to examine shifts in consumption and production—with examples from an 18th-century ‘cheap shoe warehouse’, one-off handmade men’s brogues and trainers made in China. It will also look at the future of shoe design, with experiments of material and shapes, moulding and plastics. On display will be footwear that pushes the boundaries of possibility, including the form-pressed ‘Nova’ shoes designed by Zaha Hadid with an unsupported 16cm heel and Andreia Chaves’ ‘Invisible Naked’ shoes that fuse a study of optical illusion with 3D printing and high quality leather making techniques. The last section of the exhibition will look at shoes as commodities and collectibles. Six different people’s collections will be presented from trainers to luxury footwear.

Sponsored by Clarks, supported by Agent Provocateur, with additional thanks to the Worshipful Company of Cordwainers

Note (added 14 June 2016) — Venues updated to reflect the latest schedule.

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A preview of the accompanying publication is available via Issuu:

Helen Perrson, ed., Shoes: Pleasure and Pain (London: V&A Publishing, 2015), 176 pages ISBN: 978-1851778324, £25 / $40.

Beautiful, sculptural objects, shoes are powerful indicators of gender, status, identity, taste, and even sexual preference. Our choice in shoes can be aspirational, even fantastical—and projects an image not just of who we are, but who we want to be. Feet are made for walking, but shoes may not be. Featuring extensive new photography, this is a beautiful and authoritative guide to the history and culture of footwear. Iconic creations by celebrated designers sit alongside masterpieces by unknown craftsmen in this book.

Embracing both men’s and women’s footwear, from the Chinese lotus shoe to laser-printed contemporary shoes-as-sculpture, Shoes: Pleasure and Pain engages with the cultural significance of shoes—the source of their allure, how they are made, and the people who buy and wear them. Contributors from a wide range of disciplines consider subjects as diverse as ballet slippers and fetishism, shoes and ceramics, traditional shoemaking, and the obsessive shoe collector. The book also includes a comprehensive discussion of the history of shoe design, and case studies including Marie-Antoinette’s shoe collection and the footwear of the Maharajas.

Helen Persson is curator of Chinese textiles and dress in the V&A’s Asian Department.

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C O N T E N T S

Helen Persson, Introduction

Part 1: The Lure of Shoes
Hilary Davidson, Shoes and Magical Objects
Elizabeth Semmelhack, The Allure of Height
Rowan Bain, Status and Power in the Hamam
Divia Patel, Bling: Footwear of the Maharajas
Cassie Davies-Strodder, Shoes and Sex
Valerie Steele, Ballet Shoes and Fetishism
Rowan Bain, The Shoe and the Body

Part 2: Art and Innovation
Naomi Braithwaite, Shoe Design: Creativity and Process
Helen Persson, The Beauty of Shoemaking
Jana Scholze, Extreme Future
Sonia Solicari, The Shoemaker and the Ceramicist
Joanne Hackett, Plastic Galore
Christopher Breward, Men in Heels

Part 3: Shoe Obsession
Cally Blackman, The Rise of the Celebrity Shoe Designer
Giorgio Riello, Production for Consumption
Kirstin Kennedy, Cracowes and Duckbills
Helen Persson, Lotus Shoes for the Masses
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, Marie Antoinette’s Love of Shoes
Karin M. Ekström, The Show Cabinet: Collectors Case Study

Notes
Bibliography
Parts of a Shoe
Glossary
Index
Acknowledgements
Picture Credits

Press release for the upcoming exhibition at the BGC:

Fashioning the Body: An Intimate History of the Silhouette
Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 5 July — 24 November 2013
Bard Graduate Center, New York, 3 April — 26 July 2015

Curated by Denis Bruna

Whalebone corset. France, ca. 1740–60. Silk satin damask, braided silk, linen bows covered in silk and decorated with metallic thread, whalebone, linen lining. Les Arts Décoratifs, PR 995.16.1. Articulated pannier. France, ca. 1770. Iron covered with leather, fabric tape. Les Arts Décoratifs, depot du musée national du Moyen Âge-Thermes et hotel de Cluny 2005, Cluny 7875. Photographer: Patricia Canino.

Having garnered high acclaim at the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris in 2013, the exhibition Fashioning the Body: An Intimate History of the Silhouette will be on display at the Bard Graduate Center from April 3 through July 26, 2015. The exhibition will present the many devices and materials that women and men have used to shape their silhouettes from the seventeenth century to today, including panniers, corsets, crinolines, bustles, stomach belts, girdles, and push-up brassieres. The exhibition will also look at how lacing, hinges, straps, springs, and stretch fabrics have been used to alter natural body forms.

Curated by Denis Bruna, curator of pre-19th-century fashion and textile collections at the Musée des Arts décoratifs and professor at the École du Louvre, the exhibition will explore the history of what has long been ‘behind the scenes’ in clothing and fashion—far beyond the corset, the best-known device for shaping the figure. This show, which draws heavily on the Paris museum’s unrivaled costume collection, is the first of its kind, and the Bard Graduate Center will be its only venue in North America.

Although a broad array of silhouette-shaping garments has evolved over the course of fashion history, and techniques have been refined, the purpose of such garments has remained consistent: to flatten the stomach, compress the waist to the point of hollowing it out, support the bust, lift the breasts (and sometimes flatten them), and add curves to the hips. In short, comfort was superseded by appearance until about 1900, when couturiers such as Paul Poiret launched, however fleetingly, a vogue for ‘natural’ lines.

The tricks for fashioning women’s bodies have always confounded belief, from the earliest boned bodices through today’s push-ups. Spread across three floors of the Bard Graduate Center Gallery’s townhouse, Fashioning the Body opens with the seventeenth-century silhouette, exemplified by a rare women’s Spanish doublet, which was internally reinforced to be more rigid. Structured with armatures and other mechanisms, the garments of the eighteenth century enforced the erect posture prized first by the aristocracy and later by an influential bourgeoisie in order to convey a sense of superiority through the display of an idealized physical form. The epitome of the transformed female silhouette is the late eighteenth-century formal or court dress, examples of which will be on display alongside the undergarments that molded their distinctive silhouettes. In men’s fashion, the exhibition explores how padded jackets provoked arched torsos; how calf enhancers, stomach belts, and codpieces were worn; and how variations on these enhancements continued into the nineteenth century and beyond. The exhibition will also include garments for children, who wore corsets beginning in the seventeenth century.

Fashioning the Body continues into the nineteenth century, in which the corset held tyrannical sway, embodying the voguish insistence on a ‘wasp waist’, accentuated by the excessive ballooning of crinoline. After 1870 this kind of boned hoopskirt disappeared and was replaced by the bustle—also known as the faux-cul (fake buttocks), ‘shrimp tail’, or strapontin (jump seat)—which gave women an odd and sinuous profile reminiscent of a goose. Undergarments were never as abundant or as concealed as they were in the nineteenth century. The exhibition will continue with the brassiere and girdle, including examples used by men, and eventually the bust-enhancing and push-up bras of today. These devices were designed to create a plunging look for even the slimmest figures, reflecting the dictates of the canons of beauty at a time when bodies are modeled more by diets, body building, and surgery than by clothing.

In addition to complete outfits shaped by these hidden structural contraptions, the exhibition will also feature moving mannequins wearing mechanized reconstructions of panniers, crinolines, and bustles in order to show how the undergarments worked. The exhibition space will also include an area where visitors can try on specially made replicas of corsets, eighteenth-century panniers, and crinolines in order to understand the workings of these structures, which have played such an important role in the history of fashion.

Denis Bruna has a doctorate in history from the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. He joined Les Arts Décoratifs in 2011 as curator of textile and fashion collections before the nineteenth century. He is also a professor and director of research in the history of fashion, costume, and textiles at the École du Louvre. His research focuses on the history and iconography of the costume, dress, and customs of the body. He has published several books and was the curator of the 2012 exhibition Fashioning Fashion: Two Centuries of European Fashion 1700–1915.

The Bard Graduate Center is a graduate research institute in New York City. The Center’s Gallery exhibitions and publications, MA and PhD programs, and research initiatives explore new ways of thinking about decorative arts, design history, and material culture. Founded in 1993, the BGC is an academic unit of Bard College. Fashioning the Body is the third in a series of collaborations between the Musée des Arts décoratifs and the Bard Graduate Center, which included Chinese Cloisonné (2011) and Discovering the Secrets of Soft-Paste Porcelain at the Saint-Cloud Manufactory, ca. 1690–1766 (1999).

The Musée des Arts décoratifs, housed in the Louvre building, is a unique, private institution composed of a specialized library, teaching facilities, and an ensemble of prestigious museums, including the Musée Nissim de Camondo and the Musée des Arts décoratifs. The Musée des Arts décoratifs fulfills a unique role in the French cultural landscape. Its six thousand objects on view in 10,000 square meters of exhibition space highlight the skills of craftsmen through the centuries, the evolution of styles, technological innovation, and the creativity of artists in enriching our day-to-day environ- ment. It is the only museum able to pay tribute to all the great names that have forged the history of French taste, from Boulle, Sèvres, Aubusson, Christofle, Lalique, and Guimard to Mallet Stevens, Le Corbusier, Perriand, and Starck. The museum’s chronological itinerary guides visitors through all the major styles and movements, from Gothic to Louis XVI, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and modern design. Les Arts Décoratifs also boasts exceptional fashion and textile collections, among the finest in the world, and a vast collection of advertising posters, films, and objects. The wealth of these collections enables Les Arts Décoratifs to run a program of ten to fifteen thematic and monographic exhibitions covering every historic and contemporary aspect of the decorative arts.

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The Bard Graduate Center, in collaboration with Yale University Press, will publish an English-language version of the book that accompanied the exhibition in Paris, which is now out of print:

Denis Bruna, ed., with photographs by Patricia Canino, Fashioning the Body: An Intimate History of the Silhouette (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0300204278, $50.

This unique survey offers fascinating insights into the convoluted transformations employed by both men and women to accommodate the fickle dictates of fashion. With high design, wit, and style, Fashioning the Body tracks the evolution of these sartorial devices—from panniers, crinolines, and push-up bras to chains, zippers, and clasps—concealed beneath outer layers in order to project idealized figures. Women’s corsets constricted waists; exaggerated buttocks and hips counterbalanced jutting bust lines; and chic, aerodynamic silhouettes compressed breasts and flattened bellies. Yet masculine fashion has been no stranger to these tortuous practices. Men flaunted their virility by artificially broadening their shoulders, applying padding to their chests, and slipping codpieces over their groins. With more than 200 beautiful illustrations—including reproductions of superb historic advertisements—Denis Bruna reveals the industry and art of these contrivances meant to entice and beguile as well as assert status and power. Contemporary haute-couture designers Thierry Mugler, Jean Paul Gaultier, Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons, Christian Lacroix, and Vivienne Westwood are featured in this indiscreet tour of intimate fashion history.

From the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden:

Fantastical Worlds: Painting on Meissen Porcelain
and German Faience by Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck (1714–1754)
Zwinger, Dresden, 1 October 2014 — 22 February 2015

Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck, Meissen, 1734

To mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck, the Porzellansammlung of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden presents a comprehensive exhibition of this artist’s oeuvre, bringing together around 100 selected porcelain and faience exhibits from the Dresden Porzellansammlung, private collections and renowned museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum, Mannheim, and the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg.

Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck (1714–1754) was one of the most important ceramic painters of the eighteenth century. He began his career at the Meissen Porcelain Manufactory in 1728, but by 1736 had fled to escape restrictions on his artistic development and difficult working conditions in the painters’ workshops. His life then took an adventurous path to a succession of faience manufactories, starting with Bayreuth and moving on by way of Fulda to Strasbourg-Haguenau. Due to his exceptional artistic abilities, but also to his guile and lack of scruples, Löwenfinck eventually rose from lowly journeyman painter to manufactory director.

Inspired by the painted decoration on Chinese and Japanese porcelain in the collection of August the Strong, he created a fantastic world inhabited by vibrantly colourful, fabulous creatures. He later took these exotic motifs, as well as his knowledge of both East Asian and European flower painting, with him as he travelled, transferring them from one workplace to the next. As Löwenfinck did not sign his works, for a long time it was impossible to attribute them with any certainty: as a result, his oeuvre long remained completely unrecognised, even among specialists.

The life and works of this exceptional artist were the focus of several years of research conducted by the Porzellansammlung of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. The results of this project are now presented in a comprehensive anniversary exhibition. Systematic evaluation of archive sources, including manufactory reports and case files, shed light on previously little known aspects of social conditions in the porcelain and faience manufactories of the time, and enabled a fundamental and thorough reassessment of his work.

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From Arnoldsche Art Publishers:

Ulrich Pietsch, Phantastische Welten: Malerei auf Meissener Porzellan und deutschen Fayencen von Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck, 1714–1754 (Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2014), 384 pages, ISBN: 978-3897904200, 78€.

Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck (1714–1754) war einer der bedeutendsten Keramikmaler des 18. Jahrhunderts. Er begann seine Karriere 1728 in der Porzellan-Manufaktur Meissen, die er wenige Jahre später wieder verließ, um der Einschränkung seiner künstlerischen Entfaltung und den schwierigen Arbeitsbedingungen in den Malerstuben zu entfliehen. Sein abenteuerlicher Lebensweg führte ihn in verschiedene Fayence-Manufakturen, darunter Bayreuth, Ansbach, Fulda, Höchst und Straßburg-Haguenau. Aufgrund seiner außergewöhnlichen künstlerischen Fähigkeiten, aber auch durch Geschick und Skrupellosigkeit stieg Löwenfinck schließlich vom einfachen Malergesellen in die Position eines Manufakturdirektors auf. Löwenfinck ist bekannt für seine fantastische Welt bunt schillernder und märchenhafter Fabeltiere. Er beeinflusste und prägte nachhaltig die Keramikmalerei seiner Zeit und wirkte stilprägend auf viele andere Manufakturen des 18. Jahrhunderts in Europa. Aufgrund fehlender Künstlersignaturen ist sein Werk umstritten und wurde bislang kontrovers diskutiert.

Die vorliegende Publikation ist das Ergebnis eines mehrjährigen Forschungsprojektes der Porzellansammlung Dresden, mit der nun erstmals eine grundlegende Untersuchung der Biografie und des OEuvres Adam Friedrich von Löwenfincks vorgelegt wird.

On this summer at the Scottish National Gallery (more information to come in the spring). . .

Jean-Etienne Liotard
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, 4 July — 13 September 2015
Royal Academy, London, 24 October 2015 — 31 January 2016

Curated by MaryAnne Stevens, William Hauptman, and Christopher Baker

Jean Étienne Liotard, Laura Tarsi, ‘A Grecian Lady’, watercolour and bodycolour on ivory, ca 1745–49 (Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum)

A stunning exhibition celebrating one of the greatest artists of the eighteenth century. The work of Jean- Étienne Liotard (1702–89) has been rarely exhibited, and this is the first time it will be comprehensively celebrated in Britain.

Liotard enjoyed a long career, and his finest portraits display an astonishing hyper-realism achieved through a combination of incredible, intense observation and remarkable technical skills. He excelled at the delicate art of pastel, but also drew, painted in oil, created enamels, and was a refined miniaturist and printmaker. His activity was prodigious: Liotard wrote a treatise on painting, was a collector, a dealer, a traveller and an artistic innovator. In the age of Mozart and Casanova, he was a key international figure whose achievement deserves to be better known. Highlights of this important show include famous portraits, startling self-portraits, and brilliant experiments with genre and still-life subjects from the end of his career.

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Update (added 5 July 2015) — From the press release:

Evening dress by Roberto Cavalli, 2005
Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Press release (23 December 2014) from The Met:

China: Through the Looking Glass
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, 7 May — 16 August 2015

Curated by Andrew Bolton with Harold Koda, Maxwell Hearn, Denise Patry Leidy, and Zhixin Jason Sun

The Costume Institute’s spring 2015 exhibition, China: Through the Looking Glass, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 7 through August 16, 2015 (preceded on May 4 by The Costume Institute Benefit). Presented in the Museum’s Chinese Galleries and Anna Wintour Costume Center, the exhibition will explore how China has fueled the fashionable imagination for centuries, resulting in highly creative distortions of cultural realities and mythologies. In this collaboration between The Costume Institute and the Department of Asian Art, high fashion will be juxtaposed with Chinese costumes, paintings, porcelains, and other art, as well as films, to reveal enchanting reflections of Chinese imagery.

Yves Saint Laurent by Tom Ford, 2004
Photo: Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of A

“I am excited about this partnership between these two forward-thinking departments which will undoubtedly reveal provocative new insights into the West’s fascination with China,” said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the Met. “The artistic direction of acclaimed filmmaker Wong Kar Wai will take visitors on a cinematic journey through our galleries, where high fashion will be shown alongside masterworks of Chinese art.”

In celebration of the exhibition opening, the Museum’s Costume Institute Benefit will take place on Monday, May 4, 2015. Silas Chou will serve as Honorary Chair. The evening’s co-chairs will be Jennifer Lawrence, Gong Li, Marissa Mayer, Wendi Murdoch, and Anna Wintour. This event is The Costume Institute’s main source of annual funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and capital improvements.

“From the earliest period of European contact with China in the 16th century, the West has been enchanted with enigmatic objects and imagery from the East, providing inspiration for fashion designers from Paul Poiret to Yves Saint Laurent, whose fashions are infused at every turn with romance, nostalgia, and make-believe,” said Andrew Bolton, Curator in The Costume Institute. “Through the looking glass of fashion, designers conjoin disparate stylistic references into a fantastic pastiche of Chinese aesthetic and cultural traditions.”

Exhibition Overview

Chanel by Karl Lagerfeld, 1984
Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is The Costume Institute’s first collaboration with another curatorial department since AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion in 2006, a partnership with the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. China: Through the Looking Glass will feature more than 130 examples of haute couture and avant-garde ready-to-wear alongside masterpieces of Chinese art. Filmic representations of China will be incorporated to reveal how our visions of China are shaped by narratives that draw upon popular culture, and to recognize the importance of cinema as a medium through which we understand Chinese history.

The Anna Wintour Costume Center’s Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Gallery will present a series of ‘mirrored reflections’ through time and space, focusing on Imperial China; the Republic of China, especially Shanghai in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s; and the People’s Republic of China. These reflections, as well as others in the exhibition, will be illustrated with scenes from films by such groundbreaking Chinese directors as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Ang Lee, and Wong Kar Wai. Distinct vignettes will be devoted to ‘women of style’, including Oei Huilan (the former Madame Wellington Koo), Soong May-Ling (Madame Chiang Kai-shek), and Empress Dowager Cixi.

Directly above the Anna Wintour Costume Center, the Chinese Galleries on the second floor will showcase fashion from the 1700s to the present, juxtaposed with decorative arts from Imperial China, including jade, lacquer, cloisonné, and blue-and-white porcelain, mostly drawn from the Met’s collection. The Astor Court will feature a thematic vignette dedicated to Chinese opera, focusing on the celebrated performer Mei Lanfang, who inspired John Galliano’s spring 2003 Christian Dior Haute Couture Collection, ensembles from which will be showcased alongside Mr. Mei’s original opera costumes.

Designers in the exhibition will include Giorgio Armani, Vitaldi Babani, Cristobal Balenciaga, Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, Callot Soeurs, Roberto Cavalli, Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, Peter Dundas for Emilio Pucci, Tom Ford for Yves Saint Laurent, John Galliano for Christian Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, Valentino Garavani, Nicolas Ghesquière for Balenciaga, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Picciolo for Valentino, Craig Green, Madame Grès, Ground-Zero, Guo Pei, Adrian Hailwood, Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton, Charles James, Charles Jourdan, Mary Katrantzou, Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, Jeanne Lanvin, Ralph Lauren, Judith Leiber, Ma Ke, Mainbocher, Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Alexander McQueen for Givenchy, Missoni, Edward Molyneux, Kate and Laura Mulleavy, Dries van Noten, Jean Patou, Paul Poiret, Oscar de la Renta for Balmain, Ralph Rucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Paul Smith, Anna Sui, Vivienne Tam, Isabel Toledo, Giambattista Valli, Vivienne Westwood, Jason Wu, Laurence Xu, and others.

The exhibition, a collaboration between The Costume Institute and the Department of Asian Art, coincides with the Museum’s year-long centennial celebration of the Asian Art Department, which was created as a separate curatorial department in 1915. China: Through the Looking Glass is organized by Andrew Bolton, Curator, with the support of Harold Koda, Curator in Charge, both of The Costume Institute. Additional support is provided by Maxwell Hearn, Douglas Dillon Chairman; Denise Patry Leidy, Curator; and Zhixin Jason Sun, Curator, all of the Department of Asian Art.

Internationally renowned filmmaker Wong Kar Wai will be the exhibition’s artistic director working with his longtime collaborator William Chang, who will supervise styling. Nathan Crowley will serve as production designer for the exhibition-he has worked on three previous Costume Institute exhibitions including Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy (2008), American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity (2010), and Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations (2012). The design for the 2015 Costume Institute Gala Benefit will be created by Wong Kar Wai and William Chang with 59 Productions, and Raul Avila, who has produced the Benefit décor since 2007.

“William Chang and I are pleased to be working in collaboration with The Costume Institute and the Asian Art Department of The Metropolitan Museum of Art on this exciting cross-cultural show,” said Wong. “Historically, there have been many cases of being ‘lost in translation’–with good and revealing results. As Chinese filmmakers we hope to create a show that is an Empire of Signs–filled with meaning for both East and West to discover and decipher.”

The exhibition is made possible by Yahoo. Additional support is provided by Condé Nast and several generous Chinese donors.

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The accompanying publication will be distributed by Yale UP:

Andrew Bolton, with Adam Geczy, Maxwell K. Hearn, Homay King, Harold Koda, Mei Mei Rado, Wong Kar Wai, and John Galliano, with photography by Platon, China: Through the Looking Glass (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-0300211122, $45.

For centuries, China’s export arts—jade, silks, porcelains, and, more recently, cinema—have fueled Western fantasies of an exotic East and served as enduring sources of inspiration for fashion. This stunning publication explores the influence of Chinese aesthetics on designers, including Giorgio Armani, Christian Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, Karl Lagerfeld, Ralph Lauren, Alexander McQueen, and Yves Saint Laurent. Drawing upon Chinese decorative arts, cinema, and costume—notably imperial court robes, the close-fitting cheongsam, and the unisex Mao suit—their designs are fantastical pastiches of anachronistic motifs. As in the game of “telephone,” the process of cultural translation transforms the source material into ingeniously original fashions that are products solely of the designers’ imaginations.

In a similar way, contemporary Chinese film directors render fanciful, highly stylized evocations of various epochs in China’s history—demonstrating that China’s imagery is equally seductive to artists in the East and further inspiring today’s designers. Juxtaposing modern fashions and film stills with their forebears in fine and decorative arts and historical dress, this book reveals the rich and ongoing creative dialogue between East and West, past and present.

Andrew Bolton is curator in the Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 

Looking ahead to the fall at The National Gallery in London:

Goya: The Portraits
The National Gallery, London, 7 October 2015 — 10 January 2016

Curated by Xavier Bray

Francisco de Goya, Self Portrait in His Studio, 1793–95 (Madrid: Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando)

Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) is one of Spain’s most celebrated artists. He was considered a supremely gifted portrait painter and an excellent social commentator who took the genre of portraiture to new heights through his ability to reveal the psychology of his sitter. This landmark exhibition—the first ever focusing solely on his portraits—will re-appraise Goya’s genius as a portraitist and provide a penetrating insight into both public and private aspects of his life. It will explore Goya’s ambitions and development as a painter, and his innovative and unconventional approach to portraiture which often broke traditional boundaries.

The exhibition will trace Goya’s career from his early beginnings at the court of Charles III in Madrid to his appointment as First Court Painter to Charles IV, through the difficult period under Joseph Bonaparte and then Ferdinand VII, which nevertheless saw some of his finest work, and then his final years in France. By bringing together more than 50 of his most outstanding portraits from around the world, including drawings and miniatures, and organising them in a chronological and thematic sequence, the show will enable viewers to engage for the first time with the full range of Goya’s technical, stylistic and psychological development as a portraitist.

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Note (added 4 August 2015) — The full press release is available here.

The catalogue is distributed by Yale UP:

Xavier Bray, with Manuela Mena Marqués and Thomas Gayford, Goya: The Portraits (London: The National Gallery, 2015), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-1857095739, $60.

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) was one of the greatest portraitists of his time. The first large-scale book devoted to the topic, this handsome volume features portraits that shed light on Goya and his subjects, as well as on the politically turbulent and culturally dynamic era in which they lived. Whether portraying royalty, philosophers, military men, or friends, these works are memorable both for the insight they provide into the relationship between artist and sitter, and for their penetrating psychological depth.

Xavier Bray traces Goya’s career from his beginnings at the Madrid court of Charles III to his final years in Bordeaux, played out against the backdrop of war with France and the social, political, and cultural shift of the Enlightenment. More than 60 remarkable portraits, including drawings and miniatures, reveal the full range of Goya’s technical and stylistic achievements, while also depicting sitters with a previously unparalleled humanity. His break with traditional, late-18th-century conventions allowed him to achieve a new modernity in portraiture that paved the way for artists such as Matisse and Picasso.

Xavier Bray is chief curator at Dulwich Picture Gallery. Manuela Mena Marqués is chief curator of 18th-century paintings at the Museo del Prado, Madrid. Thomas Gayford is a former research assistant at Dulwich Picture Gallery.