What's on the Fashion Calendar for March

March offers a number of exciting museum exhibitions related to fashion. The host cities span the globe:  from Los Angeles to Paris and between.

Peggy Moffitt wearing Rudi Gernreich
Photo from MOCA West Hollywood (Pacific Centre)

The Total Look: The Creative Collaboration between Rudi Gernreich, Peggy Moffitt, and William Claxton opened this past weekend in Los Angeles at the MOCA West Hollywood Pacific Centre. This exhibition celebrates the collaboration between fashion designer Rudi Gernreich, his model and muse Peggy Moffitt, and Moffitt's late husband, the photographer William Claxton, who created the distinctive images of Moffitt activating Gernreich's designs. The exhibition features selected looks from Moffitt's definitive collection, with films and photographs by Claxton of Moffitt modeling the clothes. "Fashion will go out of fashion" is one of Gernreich's many memorable declarations, but his designs continue to resonate, and still look modern 50 years after they were made. This exhibition will run until May 20, 2012.

Untitled #225, Cindy Sherman 1990
MOMA

A retrospective of the work of American photographer Cindy Sherman opened this past week at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This exhibition traces her career from the mid-1970s to the present, bringing together 171 key photographs from the artist’s significant series—including the complete ―Untitled Film Stills (1977–80), centerfolds (1981), and history portraits (1988–90)—plus examples from all of her most important bodies of work, ranging from her fashion photography of the early 1980s to the breakthrough sex pictures of 1992 to her 2003–04 clowns and monumental society portraits from 2008. In addition, the exhibition features the American premiere of her 2010 photographic mural. Of special note is a gallery devoted to her work made for the fashion industry which showcases her commissions from 1983 to 2011. The exhibition runs until June 11, 2012, but if you cannot make it, the MOMA website offers an interactive digital gallery here.

Prada coat 1994-95 for The Sea at the Phoenix Art Museum 

On March 3, 2012, the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona will present The Sea in the Ellman Fashion Design Gallery. This exhibition explores the far-reaching influence of the romance of the sea on fashion design and includes ensembles from the 19th century to the present time, including Emilio Pucci, Emanuel Ungaro and Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel. This exhibit runs until July 15, 2012.

Marc Jacobs at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs

Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs will open at Musee des Arts Decoratifs on March 9, 2012. This exhibition tells the stories of two men of fashion, separated by a century, Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs, and will highlight their contributions to the fashion world. Designed to be an analysis rather than a retrospective, this parallel Vuitton-Jacobs comparison is intended to provide new insight into the fashion system during its pivotal periods, beginning with its industrialisation and ending with its globalisation, focussing also on its artistic professions and crafts, technological advances, stylistic creations and artistic collaborations.

The Art of Kuboku and Hisako Takaku
at the San Diego Museum of Fine Art

San Diego Museum of Fine Art in California presents an exhibition called Dyeing Elegance: Asian Modernism and the Art of Kūboku and Hisako Takaku which opened earlier this month. The artist Kuboku Takaku (1908–1993) perfected the ancient Japanese technique of wax-resist dyeing to create textile paintings on obi, kimono, and screens, merging cubist and modernist styles.  His daughter Hisako (born 1944) is now one of the last living artists who preserves the knowledge of this painstaking dyeing technique, and her obi and kimono continue to be among the most chic and sought-after throughout Japan. In this exhibition 71 obi, kimono, and other textile paintings of Kuboku and Hisako Takaku have been borrowed from museums and collectors and are on display outside of Japan for the first time.

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Contemporary Drawing at the MOMA New York

Amelie Von Wulffen copyright 2009

To better understand the state of contemporary drawing practice, I visited the show "Compass in Hand: Selections from The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection" now on at the MOMA. Curator Christian Rattemeyer selected from this collection of 2500 drawings to present several hundred works. Contemporary artists from around the world are represented but are mostly clustered from New York, LA, UK, and Germany. Divided into abstraction and figuration, the work illustrates the fact that artists have stepped outside the traditional definition of drawing on paper to include the use of unconventional media, with many incorporating collage and appropriated images into their work. Really, anything goes these days!!

My favourite pair of images were by Elizabeth Peyton and David Hockney. Although somewhat traditional in style compared to what was on display elsewhere, the simplicity and elegance of their line was captivating to me. Another image that still haunts me is an emaciated horse and rider created out of cigarettes, although I cannot recall the name of the artist.

This exhibition is beautifully hung and there is lots of space to stand back and appreciate the work. If you are interested in contemporary drawing practice, this show is well worth a visit. And if you cannot make it to the MOMA before the show closes on January 4, 2009, the MOMA website includes an enlightening video with the curator.

Tim Burton Show at the MOMA

I went to the Tim Burton show at the MOMA hoping that I'd be inspired by the dark and quirky elements of his work. Sadly, this show has been squeezed into one of the smallest galleries in the museum and it was difficult to get close enough or to linger long enough to appreciate much of his work. Although the entrance was supposed to be time-ticketed, the attendants at the entrance were not checking tickets. As a result,  the gallery was packed to the rafters with people, many of whom had children in tow. I had my sketchbook with me but there was no chance to pull it out, because it was a battle to get near the work as it was.

With 700 examples of Burtons drawings, paintings, photographs, storyboards, puppets, macquettes, costumes, film clips and other material, I did gain a new appreciation for Tim Burton's skill as a multi-talented artist. I exited the gallery hoping that my favourite illustrations would be contained in the accompanying exhibition catalogue but they were not and I left empty-handed. If you go to the Tim Burton show, it is probably best to go as early in the day as possible so you can actually see and enjoy the work on display.

Tim Burton

MOMA New York, 11 West 53rd Street
November 22, 2009 - April 26, 2010

Retrospective Bust of a Woman by Salvador Dali at the MOMA

Tucked away in a corner on the fourth floor of the MOMA (in the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Painting and Sculpture Gallery) is this delightful sculpture called Retrospective Bust of a Woman by Salvador Dali. The accompanying exhibition tag describes the sculpture as follows: [It] "not only presents a woman as an object but explicitly as one to be consumed. A long phallic baguette crowns her head, cobs of corn dangle round her neck, and ants swarm along her forehead as if getting crumbs." Maybe it is just me, but I see Marie Antoinette during the Flour Wars.

This is one of a small grouping of surrealist sculptures on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York until January 4, 2010 in an exhibition entitled "The Erotic Object: Surrealist Sculpture from the Collection" curated by Anne Amland assisted by Veronica Roberts.

I lingered over these sculptures drinking in their quirky and often humourous point of view. Also on display is the infamous fur-lined tea cup by Meret Oppenheim and Taglioni's Jewel Casket by Joseph Cornell.

Weekend in New York

I am just back from a long weekend in New York.  I attended the American Style Symposium at FIT where I also viewed the American Beauty and the Day to Night exhibitions. Plus I managed to squeeze in visits to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) for the Tim Burton show and the Contemporary Drawing show, the Whitney Museum of American Art to see the Georgia O'Keefe abstracts, and the Frick Museum to see the drawings by Watteau, Degas and Boucher. It was four days filled with art and fashion and I'll be posting about these exhibitions in the coming weeks (in between catching up on my regular life, striking my show at Launch Projects, birthday celebrations and Christmas shopping). Happy Holidays everyone!