mumok: Reflecting Fashion

Reflecting Fashion
Art and Fashion since Modernism
in the context of \"MQ Summer of Fashion\"

Date: Jun 15 to Sep 23
Opening: Thu, Jun 14, 19:00
Venue: mumok

The mumok is spotlighting the influence of fashion on art in its main summer exhibition and, in a historically structured presentation, casts light on clothing and fashion as an essential component in art since the beginnings of modernism.

Fashion has played a role both for the avantgarde of the early 20th century and, since the mid-Sixties, for important artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, Cindy Sherman, Niki de Saint Phalle or Daniel Buren. At the beginning of the 1990s a crossover took place between art and fashion, one which continues to determine art production into the present and has already become one facet of a global, creative lifestyle.

Starting from Baudelaire’s modernité, which valued whatever was fleeting, new and impermanent highly and regarded it as the quintessence of modernity, the Futurists or Sonia Delaunay first drew on fashion in their work. Whereas Delaunay wanted to improve the image of the modern woman, it was under the Futurists that the male suit received a reinterpretation as an asymmetric and brightly coloured garment. Just how much a role Viennese modernity played here can be seen in Viennese fashion production around 1900 with Kolo Moser, Gustav Klimt and Emilie Flöge together with individual positions of the Wiener Werkstätte.

In addition to a chapter Mode und Moderne (Fashion and Modernity) that makes reference to parallels in painting, Surrealismus (Surrealism), where fashion and art are closest, also plays a central role. Max Ernst propagated the supremacy of fashion over art when he proclaimed \"Long live fashion - art should perish\". The mythologized female body orbits the \"Corset mystère\" which as doll, torso or glove, becomes a surface for projection - as Salvador Dali, Man Ray or Max Ernst show. The 60er-Jahren (Sixties), which saw fashion used in performances and in all mediums, has works from Christo (including the \"Wedding Dress\"), VALIE EXPORT’s \"Body Sign Action\" and Yogi Kusama’s gold dress \"embroidered\" with pasta. Andy Warhol was both model and producer of fabrics and dresses. His designs finally took on a life of their own in his paper \"soup dress\". The topics of Anzug , Schnitt [Suit, Cut] and Norm refer to the architectural and sculptural elements in fashion and art. The suit not only plays a role as an item of conventional male attire but also as work clothes and it also - as in the case of Joseph Beuys with his legendary felt suit - illustrates the status of the artist. The cooperative agreements that artists and designers have entered into are central elements in the show and examples range from artists’ clothing at the turn of the century through the fashion series by Cindy Sherman (1983) to Elfie Semotan’s photographs for, for example, Helmut Lang or Erwin Wurm’s work for Hermés.

The concept for the exhibition was developed by Susanne Neuburger together with Barbara Rüdiger and will be opened in parallel with the \"Summer of Fashion\" in the MuseumsQuartier.


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