Alexander McQueen – Art meets fashion | The inspirations of an avant-garde

The National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec presents until September 10 the exhibition Alexander McQueen – Art meets fashion, which pays tribute to the work of British designer Alexander McQueen. The latter marked the history of fashion with his sense of provocation, his spectacular parades and his non-conformism.

This exhibition created by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is presented for the first time in Canada. It explores the designer’s creative process, combining Alexander McQueen’s 69 sets (from the collection of Regina J. Drucker) with works of art from different eras, from antiquity to the present day. This association between art and fashion is a real success, because it happens in a very natural way, especially when you know that McQueen used clothing to make it a committed medium.

The designer’s inspirations were multiple, ranging from Greek mythology to the Roaring Twenties and the Renaissance. He had a fascination for the human condition, nature, life, death, the environment and overconsumption.

According to Clarissa M. Esguerra, Curator of Costume and Textiles at LACMA, Alexander McQueen was a forward-thinking designer who still inspires designers today. “Its know-how, its silhouettes, its collections are extremely rich and complex, because each creation tells a story with artistic or historical references. That’s the genius of McQueen, and that’s what we see in this exhibition,” she says.

“LACMA is an encyclopedic museum and we wondered how we could present McQueen’s ensembles with works that inspired him, whatever the era,” she says. There are, for example, works by Francisco de Goya and Pablo Picasso on bullfighting that echo McQueen’s creations.

The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) added a Quebec touch to the exhibition by including works by Quebec artists such as Clarence Gagnon, Marcel Saint-Pierre, Holly King, Patrick Bernatchez and Claire Savoie.

“In this Pierre Lassonde pavilion, we had space to add works from our collection, which demonstrates how universal Alexander McQueen is in his choice of themes that still resonate today, be it the status of women, the cycle of life or climate change,” explains Maude Lévesque, exhibition curator at the MNBAQ.

A scenography that impresses

The scenography of the exhibition is very neat, which will seduce visitors, because the projections on the ground, the music and the light effects surprise us from the first room, and throughout the course, composed of six major emblematic places. with very different atmospheres.

One of the most impressive halls is The small street, where you are plunged into darkness in a dark London alley. It presents dresses and ensembles from different collections, including that of autumn-winter 2008-2009, The girl who lived in the tree, which evokes a fairytale punk princess who leaves the branches of her tree to explore the terrestrial world. A magnificent black strapless dress caught our attention, it is embroidered with illustrations by Arthur Rackham (British painter who illustrated many children’s books) for Dream of a summer night and, right next to it, we have associated photography Lush by Quebecer Holly King, who seems straight out of McQueen’s universe. Fabulous.

In this same room, we also explore the Scottish origins of the designer, who condemned British colonialism with the collection The Widows of Culloden (fall-winter 2006-2007).

The room The cabinet of curiosities is devoted to the history of fashion, since the designer was inspired by dresses of the XVII^e and of the XVIII^e century, then in the room The workshop we call back that Alexander McQueen was an apprentice in Savile Row, a street in London that is a benchmark for tailors.

McQueen had a perfect command of pattern construction, as well as cuts and sewing techniques. He has always innovated with digital printing on clothing, we see it through the printing of a black and white photo on a sequined jacket. “We have found the real original photograph, an 1845 daguerreotype by Carl Gustav Oehme, and for the first time the original work and McQueen’s jacket are reunited,” says Maude Lévesque.

The laboratoryat the end, dazzles with his latest collection Plato’s Atlantis (spring-summer 2010) where McQueen experiments and imagines a world engulfed by the ocean where one is half-fish, half-woman. The designs, fabrics and prints are spectacular, and you get to see the famous Armadillothe shoes Lady Gaga wears in the music video Bad Romance.

Thirteen years after his death, Alexander McQueen is still relevant. “Having opinions, putting them forward through his collections and wanting to remake the world, he did it in his own way”, thinks Stéphane Le Duc, ambassador of the exhibition. “Some of his designs challenged body shapes like low waists. The shoes of the collection Plato’s Atlantis have changed the gait and posture of the body, that’s what a fashion designer dreams of doing, and that’s what he has achieved with exceptional talent,” he concludes.

“The event of the summer is this exhibition in Quebec,” launched Jean-Luc Murray, the director of the MNBAQ. It is indeed the unmissable exhibition of the summer.