“Fashion does not paint anything in a museum & rdquor ;. The quote is from Karl Lagerfeld, a man who always rejected retrospectives. And who knows if with a little back or to heal in health, is the phrase that Andrew Bolton, chief curator of the Clothing Institute of the New York Metropolitan Museum, has chosen to enter the first of the rooms of ‘A Line of Beauty’, the exhibition that the New York art gallery dedicates from May 5 to July 16 to the German designer, to whose inspiration the famous and exclusive Met Gala in which Penelope Cruz is one of the co-chairs this year.
Both the sample and the gala, the event that the editor of ‘Vogue’ Anna Wintour has risen to become one of the most exclusive (and profitable for the Met) appointments to come surrounded by controversy. Because the tendency of Lagerfeld, who died in 2019, to make controversial statements earned him accusations of, among other things, fatphobia, misogyny and racism and xenophobia, and now they have also created a dark cloud over the Met.
If you ask Max Hollein, the museum’s director, about it, he assumes that Lagerfeld “was without a doubt a provocateur & rdquor ;, but he also defends that “it is important to see the exhibition as a celebration of his art, of his creative expression, and the scope of his public person& rdquor ;. And speaking of a prolific figure who developed a professional career of 64 years and He left his mark from Balmain, Patou and Chloé to Fendi or Chanel, In addition to his own eponymous line, Hollein recalls that he “bridged art and commerce with sophistication and, as an outstanding designer, understood that fashion is an art form but on the other hand it is a way of running a business and , also, of being able to invade through the commercial world & rdquor ;.
Hollein also urges “not to forget that when the Met was founded more than 150 years ago one of its functions was to inform the artisans of the time on how to make better art, better textiles, better costumes…& rdquor ;. And he defends that “an exhibition like this goes with the identity of the museum & rdquor ;.
lines and dichotomies
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The title of the exhibition is inspired by “The Analysis of Beauty”, an 18th century treatise in which the British artist William Hogarth identified the line of beauty as a sinuous one. But with Lagarfeld there were also straight lines. And Bolton, the commissioner, recalled in the presentation to the press this Monday that in Roman mythology the intersection of a straight line with a sinuous one is the symbol of Mercury, god of commerce and communication, “and Karl was in many ways the reincarnation of Mercury & rdquor ;.
Abandoning the chronological order, and through an enchanting labyrinthine structure created by Japanese architect Tadao Ando, Bolton has chosen to organize the exhibition in nine rooms. There, as if each one were small doll boxes, the mannequins at different heights show about 200 creations chosen from around 10,000 that Lagerfeld did, exposing dichotomies: the feminine and the masculine, the romantic and the military, the rococo and the classical, the artisanal and the mechanical, the historical and the futurist, the canonical and the countercultural, the ornamental and the structural, the floral and the geometric and the figurative and the abstract. There is also a room dedicated to “the satirical line”, where dozens of mobile phones show Lagerfeld laughing and some of the aphorisms that have already been branded as “Karlismos & rdquor ;.“I see in three dimensions & rdquor ;, Lagerfeld once said. And despite also highlighting the significance of the sketches that, as Bolton has said, “seem spontaneous but to the trained eye convey precise details and mathematical instructions& rdquor;, the show fails to convey that genius. The sketches take up minimal space under the mannequins. AND the exhibition has an air of an inert still life, despite a couple of videos where the designer is seen drawing, and others where the people in charge of the workshops that carried out this transfer from the two dimensions of paper to the three dimensions of creation speak. Nor are there large doors open to the multifaceted character of Lagerfeld, also a writer, editor, photographer or interior designer.