Arts & Culture Magazine - March/April 2008 - (Page 28) figures in religious art and characterization in portraiture. During this time, improved shipping and banking techniques opened up Europe to trade with the Far and Middle East. One such route was aptly called “The Silk Road.” It was a time when the merchant princes of Europe competed with each other for prestige with their sudden huge fortunes. Many became patrons of the arts and were acutely aware of the psychological power of costume. Fabrics became a symbol of state power. Between June 7 and June 24, 1520, on a plain near Calais, France, Henry VIII of England met with Francis I of France to discuss an alliance against the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Henry, eager to outvie Francis, threw up a palace covering 12,000 square yards. This pavilion was made with cloth of gold (real filaments of gold sewn with silk to make the fabric). Nothing of note was achieved at this fete, apart from the slaughter of 22,000 sheep. This historic occasion has come down to us as the meeting upon the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Contemporary art and fashion continue to inform each other while celebrating conspicuous consumption, power, beauty and the genius of innovative design. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian painter and designer Vladimir Tatlin, a pioneer of Constructivism—a severe geometric form of abstraction—created projects for dresses and overcoats. His colleague Aleksandr Rodchenko, a constructivist sculptor, photographer and designer, produced attire influenced by American overalls that had multiple pockets to hold precious instruments. This design was adopted and gradually altered by Mao Zedong during the long march of 1934-36. In the November 2007 issue of Vogue, British artist Damien Hirst, in collaboration with the Levi Strauss Corporation, printed paintspattered jeans in the style of Abstract Expressionism. “Warhol Factory X Levi’s X Damien Hirst Jeans” by Damien Hirst and Adrian Nyman will be in your stores soon. The following month, a Vogue spread featured the beautiful Spanish actress Penelope Cruz. Her onyx black duchesse silk dress by John Galliano for Dior, with its brocade bodice and two-tiered dress—one tier falling to the floor and the other to the thighs—takes its inspiration in part from Francisco Goya’s painting The Marquesa de Pontejos in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. In a broader sense, the British designer Vivienne Westwood continues to appropriate the Baroque age of Gainsborough in her haute couture gowns full of billowing silk, outrageous shoes and hats. The debt to the Neo-Classical “a la Grecque” tradition is evident in the fineart-inspired dresses recently designed by Anne Klein and the evening dresses of Michael Kors seen in the January issue of Elle magazine. Fashion is overt sexuality concretized by covert art. It is primarily, but not exclusively, a feminine art, and for being so, a phantasmagoria shaped by utility. In short, it is a pellucid fable, a bright performance for the heart, so that our minds can escape the numbing realities of the known, dull and expected. Couture is an art form that is more sought after than needed, and when needed, more important that the provocations that deny its importance. Without it, the world would be bereft of its unique aesthetic of arousal and anticipation. At an elevated level, couture is a positive force because it idealizes woman at a time when sexual politics have made fashion the only possible vehicle of such idealization. Besides, even an impoverished woman enjoys opening fashion magazines to have dreams of such beauty and to be enriched by them. 28 : : arts and culture magazine www.artsandculturemag.com
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