translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville,
270812: MUMOK Museum moderner Kunst Reflecting Fashion – Art and Fashion since Modernism
MUMOK Museum moderner Kunst
Reflecting Fashion – Art and Fashion since Modernism
15.06.12 – 29.09.12
Reflected, not staged
By Daniela Gregori
At the opening, the director appeared in a stylistically perfect Mondrian-Look, a classic outfit with which Yves St. Laurent caused a stir in the 1960’s. One might attest this to be a confirmatory comment on an exhibition interacting between art and fashion.
“Fashion”, says Barbara Vinken, literary scholar and fashion theoretician “is a statement in clothes about clothes”. But fashion is also the matter-of-course interface between fashion and everyday life – both reciprocally commenting on one another. In Vienna, around 1900, the dream was already dreamed about the penetration of art and life - and, similar to Germany and Henry van de Velde, artists in Austria such as Kolo Moser, primarily dealt with so-called reform dresses for domestic use. In contrast, Emilie Flöge created both representative as well as programmatic designs. That her couture was mentioned in a German magazine together with Gustav Klimt said a lot about their teamwork - both in theory and in practice.
But there was also this kind of convergence and reciprocity with fine arts in other cultural domains such as architecture, literature, theatre, film, and design. Yet fashion appears as the most valid, possibly even the most multifaceted of these combinations. Constructivism positioned bodies into the most differing colourful forms, and in Surrealism there was a wonderful encounter of a lobster and an evening dress – Elsa Schiaparelli had teamed up with Master Dali. In Regina Möller’s or Sylvie Fleury’s works biographical aspects come into play, and socio-critical positions appear in Christos “Wedding dress” with its apparently extremely heavy and tied up train or in VALIE EXPORT’s genital panic trousers.
This exhibition has nothing to do with luxury, labels and passion – staged opulently or in any other way – or other fashion phenomena but only with fashion, art and their reflection. Not more, not less, not dolled up - actually classic and therefore more intellectual than sensual.
Can an exhibition such as this one be too full? No question: one can approach the topic as rational as possible, but who doesn’t lament about having a wardrobe full of nothing to wear? Here, there is not one piece too much, and certainly not a classic.
MUMOK Museum moderner Kunst
1070 Vienna, Museumsquartier, Museumsplatz 1
Tel: +43 1 52 500
Fax: +43 1 52 500 13 00
Email: info@mumok.at
http://www.mumok.at
Opening hours: Daily from 10.00 hours to 18.00 hours, Thu from 10.00 to 20.00 hours.
270812
mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien
1070 Wien, Museumsquartier, Museumsplatz 1
Tel: +43 1 52 500, Fax: +43 1 52 500 13 00
Email: info@mumok.at
http://www.mumok.at
Öffnungszeiten: Täglich: 10.00–18.00 Uhr, Do: 10.00–21.00 Uhr
mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien
1070 Wien, Museumsquartier, Museumsplatz 1
Tel: +43 1 52 500, Fax: +43 1 52 500 13 00
Email: info@mumok.at
http://www.mumok.at
Öffnungszeiten: Täglich: 10.00–18.00 Uhr, Do: 10.00–21.00 Uhr