June 26, 2012

One Ticket to the Art Museum, Please


Fashion has recently proven itself as a fantastic addition to contemporary art. Why the sudden awareness, you wonder. Hasn't fashion always been considered art? Well, no, not to the prestigious art museums of the Musee Pompidou and Museum of Modern Art. Usually these museums will attract large crowds with showings of the "hottest young artists" or even icons of the Modern Art Era such as Andy Warhol, but recently, couture has been taken to a new level, with say, the "hottest young designers."

Alexander McQueen's "Savage Beauty"
All kinds of fashion now is called art. This label of "fashion art" is not only just reserved for the likes of Karl Lagerfeld and Alexander McQueen, no: all manners of fashion count, from old to classic to just plain absurd, everything and anything that is being displayed is considered contemporary art.

There is a big cash-off for this art: museums display the art to make high fashion accessible for everybody to see, yet designers still profit from the ticket sales in the galleries. No longer does this only service the extraordinarily wealthy and famous.

There are now displays all over the world:
- San Francisco's de Young Fine Arts Museum is displaying Jean Paul Gaultier's 120 most reknown ready-to-wear designs.
- The Metropolitan Museum  in New York City is displaying Prada and an assortment of other mainly New York based designers.
- The house of Gucci opened a private museum in a palazzo in Florence, Italy showcasing Salvatore Ferragmo's world famous designs.
- The British Museum in London is hosting "Savage Beauty," the late Alexander McQueen's designs which was a blockbuster hit last year in New York City.
- Les Arts Decoratifs in Paris are hosting designs by Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs.
- Design Museum Holon in Israel is showing Yohji Yamamoto.

These are not the only fashion-art showcases in the world at the moment, but just a sampling of what is being displayed. High fashion has become beautiful art, and it will not surprise me when, someday, there will be an abundance of museums dedicated simply to the collection of beautiful fashion pieces, and perhaps a "contemporary fashion museum."

What do you think about art and fashion mixing? Comment!

7 comments:

  1. uhh okay whatever you say this post just took up a waste of my time

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  2. Haha, fuck you anon. This is what true blogging is about, speaking your mind and exposing people to new things. You must be closed in a box. This is a great post, though I keep up with the art world a great deal it's a good day when I see museums showing designer retrospectives. Love love love it!

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  3. This post was great! I really enjoyed it! It makes me want to head up to Bay Area and take a look for myself

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  4. I saw the Alexander Mcqueen exhibition when it was in NYC. This was an amazing post, and now I'm dying to go visit these other exhibits.

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  5. ....and blah blah blah. Can we please hear something about stardoll????? and don't say theres no gossip make the fucking gossip!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  6. Someone's having a period squirt ^

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  7. When I visited Washington D. C. they had an exhibit in the Smithsonian featuring dresses worn by past first ladies. They were so beautiful! I could have spent hours just looking at the lovely gowns.

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Nice to see you back! Oh wait. .. .who are you again?