Poem: Cactus bloom . . .

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Cactus bloom picks up where the moon leaves off

Pink spark rising
after the sleepless Night
upheld the moon
(her shield d’amour).
Now, hold the field of day.

Then, at day's end,
dive like Joan with sword,
immanently mortal,
perpetually young,
softly arcing to earth
like the moon along her
battle for the night sky.



January 2012

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synchronizing art & fashion continued: New York Fashion Week Spring 2012

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I painted and designed clothes for fun when I was young. I should have done more with it. Maybe it’s not too late. One way I get my fill of art and fashion now is during the fashion shows when I challenge myself with a visual matching game between pieces of art and new clothes designs. I become a junky looking for color and pattern every day at Fashionologie to see when the next designer’s photos get loaded, and then I go scour online art galleries for matches. It’s creative hedonism. I ignore the news. I forget about poetry. It’s also creative masochism, as my right arm, shoulder and wrist ache with mouse overuse.

My arm will recover, and the somber and complex tapestries of the world will go on being spun without me paying attention for a week. Poems will keep. (But the pears wouldn’t, so Don and I canned six quarts of them after we got home from work last night; bruises and soft spots were spreading.) Of course I was also with our son Peter in spirit through his scary accident when our world did stand still. Thank you for your caring wishes, he is on his way to recovery after reconstructive surgery Monday.

Truly, I look forward to these creations as much as I look forward to morel mushrooms sprouting overnight after April rains when we practically crawl through the woods by the pond and the fallen apple tree scouting for their weirdly beautiful brainy patterns.

I am especially excited by one pairing today. You'll see why in a minute.

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Sometimes a girl just really gets lucky. I don't know how Zac Posen could have designed a suit to look any more Picasso-esque. That peplum on Posen's jacket: serious cubistic hips! Zac Posen, a Manhattanite, first began designing clothes as a boy when he stole yarmulkes from his grandparents' synagogue to make ball dresses for dolls. If you're into clothes like Zac, browse his entire collection of ball gowns, it's simply gorgeous.

Don't you wonder what's happening in this painting?

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 "Interior with a girl drawing" by Pablo Picasso

 Zac Posen suit with Picasso Peplum

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More cubism from Carolina Herrera. Every season this woman's designs knock me out with simple elegance, and this spring collection she does it again. There are actually many cubist paintings of gray that this dress reminded me of, by Braque and Picasso. I settled on Juan Gris.

Painting by Juan Gris

Dress by Carolina Herrera

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Another designer who never fails to satisfy with her confident sense of design and beauty is Donna Karan. She manages to be playful with pattern without being silly. Some of her fabulous collection had pattern, like this, which instantly reminded me of this textile by Lucienne Day, though I had a time finding it, since I didn't know the artist's name. Now that I do, I have learned that Lucienne Day (who just died last year) was a British textile designer who was inspired by abstract art by the likes of Joan Miró, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Hellooo! After the print pairing, see the graphic browns and blacks Donna Karan designed, which reminded me of Paul Klee's painting "Intention."

Lucienne Day's textile "Calyx"

Donna Karan dress

Donna Karan

"Intention" by Paul Klee

Donna Karan

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Now here are my favorite pairings. My charming friend George is one of those people who does many things very well. He ponders, writes, travels, walks, paints, photographs and blogs with utter grace and beauty. If you are not yet familiar with his posts at Transit Notes, you are in for a treat for the eyes, mind and spirit. On his sidebar, George has posted a few of his stunning abstract paintings, and it suddenly occurred to me in my last fashion post a few days ago that I might be able to match his paintings with fashion this season. Although I'd hoped to match clothes with more paintings of George's than one (I'll keep looking), I confess I didn't expect to find anything this well matched, by two different designers: Timo Weiland and Peter Som. "Subterranean" is among my favorites of George's work, partly because it represents an invisible world where life swarms and vibrates, like the inner realms we discuss at his blog, the Rilke blog, and elsewhere.

Timo Weiland dress

 "Subterranean" by George McHenry of Transit Notes

Peter Som dress

Suit by Peter Som


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Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; 

and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

~ Luke 12:27

And now for the local show room. These simple jewels around the farm are beautiful in color, form and pattern. Any designer would be envious, and I imagine that songwriter Solomon himself would compare them with his beloved . . . 

My beloved is unto me as a cluster of pokeberries . . .

As the goldenrod in the field glows like the sun, so my beloved's love is to me . . .

My beloved's lips are the color of the sumac blossom, and as soft . . .

You have stunned my eyes, my beloved, with even one of your lips,
red like the sumac leaf . . .

I have come to your garden, my beloved, and gathered your peppers, as colorful as the jewels of my temple, as sweet as flowers and as fiery as the days of our youth . . .

All fashion photos from Fashionologie.

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synchronizing art & fashion: New York Fashion Week Spring 2012

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Venus of Urbino, 1538, by Tiziano (Titian), Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Those maids in the background of Tiziano's painting are looking for her clothes, apparently. Yet she is unconcerned, and so is the artist. Who needs clothes, to be rendered charming?

An answer from Liotard:

Portrait of Maria Adelaide of France in Turkish Costume, 1753

by Jean-Etienne Liotard, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

I love clothes. I don't shop much now, though I love the adventure of thrift shops.

While there is a lot of misery all around, there is also a lot to admire and enjoy, in fact, we need beauty more than ever in such times as these, like bouquets of flowers for a loved one suffering from injury, illness, or loss.

Looking at women in new fashions is my pastime when the seasons of fashion shows arrive, and Thursday was the first day of the New York Spring 2012 fashion shows. Fashion is wearable art, poetry in motion. After last February's fall shows, I had fun compiling a gallery of art pieces paired with designer duds. I first explore the photos from shows at Fashionologie, then scour thumbnails of paintings and sculpture at the Google Art Project and at online museum collections. I look for arresting designs, both in art collections, and in fashion collections. They lead to each other back and forth, like a game of visual tennis. I'm back at it and plan to make galleries until the end of the New York shows next Thursday. We'll see how things go. You just never can tell when you will experience vita interruptus.

Hans Hoffman and BCBG square up, below. I don't think much says "spring" more than spring green:

Cathedral, by Hans Hoffman, MoMA

BCBG design; I really like BCBG;

the dress I wore for Lesley's wedding was this designer,

but I only paid 200 bucks

Imitation showed some beautiful clothes Thursday. Romantic and feminine. I see several artists' work in their dresses, and I'm not done exploring. Tara Subkoff launched the Imitation line after brain surgery a couple of years ago. Talk about obstacles increasing creativity! She is an actress in films like "American Pie" and "The Cell" and previously founded fashion design house "Imitation of Christ" with Matthew Damhave. Was Imitation imitating these pieces of art?

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Imitation and two artists at MoMa:

Imitation

left: Helen Frankenthaler's "Jacob's Ladder";

right: Gertrud Goldschmidt's (Gego) "Sphere"

both at MoMA


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Imitation and Monet:

Imitation

Water Lilies, Claude Monet

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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Imitation and Whistler:

Imitation

The White Symphony: Three Girls, by James McNeill Whistler

Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian


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I love these other designers' collections too.

Graphic blue:

Peter Som dress

Paul Klee's Blaue Nacht


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Graphic yellow and black (or blue) a la Matisse:

Yigal Azrouel

 Henri Matisse

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Sketches by Doo.Ri and Chagall: 
 

dress by Doo.Ri

Joseph sketch, by Marc Chagall


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Graphic gold leaves:

Andy Warhol's Rorschach and dress by Wes Gordon

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Blooming red flowers:

Yigal Azrouel

 Red Cannas, by Georgia O'Keeffe




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Sapphire Matisse blue:

Dress by Jason Wu, and blue nude by Henri Matisse

Those are my standouts from Thursday's and Friday's shows. More to come . . .


February's gallery of synchronized art and fashion for the New York Fall 2011 shows is here.




All fashion photos from Fashionologie

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New York Fashion Week: Fall 2011

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TThe Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli, c. 1486

Caroline Herrera

 with colors from Boticelli's "The Birth of Venus"

Is it just me? Or do you also see art as inspiration for fashion. It's time for the New York Fall 2011 Fashion Shows. A woman's beauty as muse and mannequin. It's been going on for a long time. Did you know that since classical times female nudes in painting and sculpture came to be called Venus'es? Painters in the Renaissance got away with painting nude women since they were Venuses and were supposed to be nude, since Venus is the goddess of love, desire, sexuality, and all that. 

But you can't get away with having Venuses walking all over the place. So artist-designers can cover them up with their imaginations. I had a little fun browsing the thumbnails of the Fall collections for inspiration from a few pieces of art. I could do this all day (well, I did), but my mouse finger started hurting all the way up my arm.

The names of the designers under the fashion photos have links to their Fall collections.

Four expressions of Jacqueline by Picasso;
Jacqueline was Picasso's second wife

These dresses remind me of Picasso's Jacquelines.

Clockwise from top left: Caroline Herrera, 

Adam Lippes, Jason Wu, Jill Stuart

This white Jason Wu dress with black lace embellishments reminds me

of Audrey Hepburn's dress in "Sabrina."

Jason Wu

Audrey Hepburn in Givenchy with William Holden, for "Sabrina"

Klimt and Betsey Johnson. Betsey Johnson and so many artists, really.

Gustave Klimt

Betsey Johnson

Degas and Carolina Herrera.

"The Rehearsal" by Edgar Degas

Caroline Herrera

Monet and Lela Rose. I see Monet's haystacks and Houses of Parliament whenever I go to the Art Institute in Chicago. I thought of them when I saw this Lela Rose dress, which is fantastic.

"Haystack Thaw" by Claude Monet

"Houses of Parliament" by Claude Monet

Lela Rose

Mark Rothko and Diane von Furstenberg.

Blues by Mark Rothko

Diane von Furstenberg

Paul Klee and Betsey Johnson. After doing this for a while -- looking at fashion thumbnails for artist inspiration, I wanted more color. How drab most of our fashion is, I thought.
Brava! to Betsey Johnson, offering vibrant colors and patterns year after year.

"Rose Wind" by Paul Klee

Betsey Johnson

But sometimes "drab" is good, very good.
Frederic Leighton and Donna Karan.

"Venus Disrobing for the Bath" 

by Frederic Leighton

Donna Karan

Prabal Gurung's collection was my favorite. Gurung was born in Singapore, raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, and began his career in design in New Delhi, India. He moved to NYC and worked with Donna Karan as an intern and then launched his first collection under his own name two years ago. He designed Michelle Obama's simply fantastic red dress for the White House Correspondents' Dinner last May. For his Fall collection he said ". . . he was dually inspired by John Singer Sargent’s "A Parisian Beggar Girl" and Miss Havisham from Great Expectations."

John Singer Sargent's "A Parisian Beggar Girl" 
and Marcus Stone's "Pip Waits on Miss Havisham"

Stone's image scanned by Philip V. Allingham

Prabal Gurung
I think she and her dress
are worthy of a painting.

I think fashion design is art, wearable art. 

Do you like fashion, or merely tolerate it?

All fashion photos found at Fashionologie.
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