Her outfits sparkle with the works of Goya, Arthur Rackham, or Alfred Laliberté. They evoke the dreamlike imagination of Shakespeare, the trauma of witches burning at the stake, the repressed pride of the Scots in front of the British, or overconsumption. Nihilistic, turbulent, provocative, Scottish-born fashion designer Lee Alexander McQueen was also “an artist in his own right”. This is what prompted the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) to host the exhibition for the summer Alexander McQueen. Art meets fashion, created in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
The story begins when Regina J. Drucker donates her massive costume collection to LACMA, including a vast selection of outfits by Lee Alexander McQueen, considered the enfant terrible of British fashion.
“She told us that she loved this collection because there were stories behind each of the outfits,” said Clarissa Esguerra, curator, costume and textiles, at LACMA on Wednesday. “McQueen was trying to learn from these stories. The gifted designer drew his inspiration from the history of art, from Antiquity to the Christian iconography of the Nordic Renaissance and the Italian Renaissance, from the costumes of the Belle Époque to the apocalyptic visions of futurist cinema, as well as in its own history.
The idea then came to LACMA to associate each of McQueen’s outfits with works from his collection. “We are an encyclopedic museum,” adds Clarissa Esguerra. So we thought why not contextualize McQueen’s works using our collection. It is this result, enhanced with its own additions, that the MNBAQ presents, with 69 McQueen outfits next to 225 objects, from LACMA, the MNBAQ and other sources, all displayed over 6 sections.
Angel and demon ?
From the outset, we enter the world of mythology that inspired McQueen. Among sculptures of angels and a staging that evokes the columns of a temple in ruins, a long white toga, whose back seems to be pierced with angel wings, unfolds alongside ensembles inspired by gladiators or the mythology of the god Neptune. The last collection designed during the lifetime of Lee Alexander McQueen, who died in 2010, was titled angels or demons and presented posthumously a month later. We also see a fitted dress, inspired by the world of the Flemish painter Jérôme Bosch, famous for his stagings of paradise and hell.
Fashion virtuoso Alexander McQueen got his start as a tailor’s apprentice with Anderson Sheppard, on Savile Row, London. He also dressed the future King Charles III there, says fashion journalist Stéphane Leduc. Leduc remembers having met Alexander McQueen, for Musique Plus, even before having seen his collections. “I had noticed a character who was provocative, who was even borderline arrogant, and who was very vulgar,” he says. He was like a caged wolf. Already, McQueen was highly critical of the fashion industry. “When I saw a McQueen parade for the first time, I was impressed by his audacity, his way of questioning the body, of showing diversity in a different way, questioning the environment and overconsumption, therefore themes that affect us a lot today”, he underlines.
In the fashion world, McQueen is known for his daring, controversial, theatrical shows. “He often designed the show first and then the collection,” says Maude Lévesque, head of exhibitions at the MNBAQ. “He said: my collections are autobiographical,” says Stéphane Leduc. “Everything could change during a parade of McQueen,” he adds. “There is never a single level of reading in his work. »
From Culloden to Salem
In the collection presented by the MNBAQ, it is the pieces that plunge into the designer’s life that are the most touching. In 2006-2007, his collection The Widows of Culloden draws on the story of the Battle of Culloden by which the British regime crushed the Scottish rebellion in 1746. The tartan of the skirt presented by the artist is precisely that of the McQueen clan in Scotland.
Further, McQueen still probes its origins by presenting dresses from the collection In memory of Elizabeth Howe, Salem, 1692. Elizabeth Howe, McQueen’s distant ancestor, was hanged in Salem during “the deadliest witch hunt of colonial New England”. The dresses designed by McQueen in her homage are encrusted with pearls illustrating the hair, which the alleged witches had to shave so that the mark of the devil could be detected on their skull. “Hair is synonymous with femininity but also with temptation,” continues Maude Lévesque. To accompany these dresses, the MNBAQ exhibits, next to a work by Ernst Barlach, a bronze by Alfred Laliberté illustrating the famous Marie-Josephte Corriveau, who has become a legendary figure in Quebec, in the cage where her body was exposed.
The designated section Evolution and existense explores McQueen’s critical view of the human condition, notably through the costumes in his collection Issuancefrom 2004, inspired by the movie We finish the horses well.Works by Goya and Picasso are exhibited in this section, which also explores the world of bullfighting.
At the end of the race, Alexander McQueen summoned us to 2010 in Plato’s Atlantis through a sci-fi scenario where man, trapped by self-created global warming, is forced to adapt to underwater life.
Far beyond a simple fashion event, presented in a neat and abundant scenography, the exhibition brilliantly demonstrates McQueen’s talent, but also his tragic and sharp reading of the world in which he lived.
Caroline Montpetit was the guest of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec.