Right now, at the Gibbes Museum of Art, an Alexander McQueen ombre creation is rubbing shoulders with a Hokusai print, and a Molly Goddard dress with a Joan Mitchell. Fashion legend Dapper Dan, meanwhile, is brushing up against painter Barkley Hendricks.
These artworks and fashion pieces are among the many that the Charleston institution has paired for “Statement Pieces,” an exhibition exploring the centuries-spanning dialogue between the two fields. Co-curated by Gibbes’s director of curatorial affairs Sara Arnold and the VP of Barrett Barrera Projects Kelly Peck, the show spotlights artworks from the museum’s permanent holdings and designs from the latter consultancy.
Installation view of “Statement Pieces” at the Gibbes Museum of Art. Photo: David Johnson, courtesy of Barrett Barrera Projects and the Gibbes Museum of Art.
The show, Arnold told me over email, “offered an opportunity to recontextualize our collection, and to bring world-class fashion design to our galleries.” It’s a sentiment echoed by the museum’s director Angela Mack, who told me: “Embracing other art forms as opportunities to interpret or enhance our understanding of the visual arts only broadens our understanding and increases our ability to reach new audiences.”
Childe Hassam, (1920). Photo courtesy of the Gibbes Museum of Art.
The art-fashion couplings were devised with Arnold first selecting a group of artworks with stylistic throughlines, before Peck proposed some potential pairings. Peck also delved into the museum’s online database to identify artworks that might match objects she hoped to showcase.
“This was not simply a process of artwork dictating fashion or vice versa,” she told me. “Rather, it was a dynamic conversation between the collections.”
Left: Molly Goddard, Green Tulle Dress with Embroidered Flowers, Autumn/Winter 2017 Collection. Photo: Jonas Gustavsson / courtesy of the Gibbes Museum of Art. Right: Joan Mitchell, (1966). Photo courtesy of Gibbes Museum of Art.
The curators created the combinations, Peck added, based on visual similarities, whether in form, color, or texture, as well as research into the artist’s and designer’s bodies of work. “This ensured that the final pairings had both visual congruence and conceptual depth,” she said.
Indeed, most immediately, a visitor’s eye is drawn to the aesthetic connections between a garment and an artwork. The structured appendages on a red dress from Comme des Garçons’s Spring/Summer 2015 collection is echoed in the textured bulbs on a 2020 stoneware sculpture by Donté K. Hayes; the gold of a Gucci mini-dress is reflected in an 18th-century portrait by Benjamin West, in which landowner Thomas Middleton stands draped with a rich ocher fabric.
Donté K. Hayes, (2020) and Comme des Garçons Red Dress from Spring/Summer 2015 on view at “Statement Pieces” at the Gibbes Museum of Art. Photo: MCG Photography, courtesy of the Gibbes Museum of Art.
Sometimes, these graphic links surfaced shared approaches between designer and artist. For instance, Arnold highlighted how the partnering of Romare Bearden’s abstract canvas Untitled (Green) (ca. 1950s) and a severe Serena Gili ensemble turned up more than visual correlations. “A closer investigation of the artists’ practices reveals their shared intuitive approach,” she explained. “Each relies heavily on memory, family tradition, and an interest in experimentation and innovation.”
Serena Gili, Cashmere Beaded Top and Fiberglass Skirt (2012) and Romare Bearden, (c. 1950s) on view at “Statement Pieces” at the Gibbes Museum of Art. Photo: David Johnson, courtesy of Barrett Barrera Projects and the Gibbes Museum of Art.
A host of fashion designers featured in “Statement Pieces” have taken cues from art history—McQueen, Peck noted, was known for his “engagement with art”—but so too have artists relied on fashion to denote identity and authority.
Note, say, Thomas Sully’s portrait of Sarah Reeve Ladson, seen decked out in a fur-trimmed coat and colorful turban, nodding to her exotic sense of style and her association with the arts; or Barkley Hendricks’s Ms. Johnson (Estelle) (1972), in which the crisp lines of his sitter’s everyday wear convey “an attitude and ease of style,” in Peck’s words, and in turn a profound individuality.
Barkley Hendricks, (1972).
Photo courtesy of Gibbes Museum of Art.
“In some sense, fashion is an artistic medium we all engage with on varying levels daily,” said Arnold. “Bringing these fashion objects into conversation with paintings and sculpture or other mediums traditionally considered fine art not only expands how we define art but awakens us to how we look at all art, and the significant role it plays in our everyday lives.”
“Statement Pieces: Contemporary Fashion Design and the Gibbes Collection” is on view at the Gibbes Museum of Art, 135 Meeting St, Charleston, South Carolina, through April 27.
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
