Rainbow

Photographs by fashionartedit

Rainbow. Bill Cunningham. The New York Times. 05.25.08.

excerpted text:

"All over the city, people with an individual concept of dress are embracing color, often exuberant stripes. Institutions are following suit: vivid fluorescent tubes fill the windows of a store at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street; at the Museum of Modern Art, the floor of the garden lobby is gally striped. "

Robert Mapplethorpe

Photograph by fashionartedit

Polaroid: Mapplethorpe. By Roberts Smith. The New York Times. 05.04.08. 

excerpted text:

"'POLAROIDS: MAPPLETHORPE,' which opened on Saturday at the Whitney Museum of American Art, presents about 100 examples in this first exhibition devoted to these works. Rather than the cool, classical, theatrical Mapplethorpe of world fame, these images are tentative yet driven. They leak emotion, whether he is exploring basics of light, focus, composition and angle or photographing gorgeous partly nude leather boys or himself climbing the walls of his apartment like a young faun. Expressions of desire of every kind — for beauty, intimacy, sexual dominance, self-knowledge or artistic clarity — they are more transactions than finished images. You experience the electrical current that triggered them." (Roberta Smith)

Power Dressing

Power Dressing. The New York Times. By Cathy Horyn. 05.09.08.
excerpted text:

"To an extent all superheroes, like some of the most flamboyant creatures in fashion, are playing a role inadvertently thrust on them by circumstance, their true identities and physical shortcomings concealed. What separates the nerdish Bruce Banner, who morphs into the Incredible Hulk, from the mousy Luisa Annan, who as the outlandish Marchesa Casati aspired to look like a wild animal and for one Belle Époque-era ball wore a necklace of live, writhing snakes? The answer is nothing. They each make their claim on the world by becoming Another. The ideas that dominate fashion — identity, performance, gender, body shapes, sexuality, logos and the quest for state-of-the-art materials — pretty well describe the world of the superhero." (Cathy Horyn)


Super Heroes - Fashion and Fantasy

For Sale: Art and Optimism

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For Sale: Art and Optimism. Carol Vogel. The New York Times. 05.04.08.

excerpted text:

"For years collectors and the news media have been speculating about when prices would finally top out. Spring sales estimates don’t suggest pessimism. The auction houses clearly hope that things will play out as they did three months ago in London, when, despite global economic queasiness, a Francis Bacon triptych sold for $51.6 million."

"And the art market has its own problems. Sotheby’s stock price is roughly half what it was last October, and its latest annual report shows that the amount of money owed to the house more than doubled to $835 million last year. Hoping to keep the bubble afloat, Sotheby’s has been giving buyers more time to hand over the money for their purchases. (It is the only publicly traded company of the three houses.)"

"Auction house executives are busy talking up the soaring numbers of Asian, Russian and Middle Eastern collectors, trophy hunting with cash to burn. They also cite the recent $600 million private sale of art from the estate of the dealer Ileana Sonnabend — proof, they say, that there is still enough money out there and that no price is too high."

When is Fashion Ad Not a Fashion Ad? / Cathy Horyn

"When is a Fashion Ad Not a Fashion Ad?". Cathy Horyn. The New York Times. 04.10.08. 

excerpted quotes and text:

"I told her (Victoria Beckham) 'you're the most photographed woman in the world,'" Mr. Teller recalled. "And fashion nowadays is all about product - bags and shoes - and you're kind of a product yourself aren't you" (Juergen Teller)

"People are always going to talk about what Marc does" (Victoria Beckham)

"If fashion shows are a way for a designer to think out loud, collaborations with a photographer can help spin those disparate ideas into a story. Both Ralp Lauren and Calvin Klein owe a debt to the visionary eye of Bruce Weber, who is really a storyteller. Gianni Versace frequently paid homage to Richard Avedon, whose pictures lent imaginative energy to Versace's designs. And it seems doubtful that women would have felt quite the same about Yves Saint Laurent's pantsuit if helmut Newton had not made them the object of sex and mystery." (Cathy Horyn)

"An astonoshing array of people have appeared in the ads (Marc Jacocs), generally doing nothing in the Seinfeldian sense - lying in the grass, kicking up their heels, teasing a squirrel. The group has included Sofia Coppola, Dakota Fanning, the photographer William Eggleston and Winona Ryder who pitched herself for an ad shortly after her shoplifting trial. Even Mr. Teller has put in an appearance, in make-up and wigs with Cindy Sherman and boldly naked with Charlotte Rampling." (Cathy Horyn)

"I tried to make sense of what the hell she was going to do with a handbag, right? It had to come out of a real story". (Juergen Teller)

"Juergen is very funny as a provocateur, but I think he's dead serious as an artist" (Jefferson Hack)

"That is what they have attempted to do with Ms. Beckham, whose 

participation forces a different question than the banality 'Is she beautiful'". (Dennis Freedman)

Murakami / Louis Vuitton

"This is Not a Sidewalk Bag". Guy Trebay. The New York Times. 04.08.08. 

excerpted text and quotes:

"The baggage in question, made since 2002 in collaboration with Mr. Murakami and Louis Vuitton, has generated sales estimated to be in the hundreds of millions, by far the most successful such venture in the label's history. "

"Vuitton has a long tradition of these collaborations, of relationships with artists, going back to the Impressionists." (Yves Carcelle, Chairman of Louis Vuitton)

"Still, nothing the company ever did hit the jackpot like Mr. Murakami's cherry-ornamented and "Multico" bags, which came about, as Mr. Carcelle explained, after 9/11, when Vuitton designer Marc Jacobs, suggested to his corporate bosses that it was no good to mourn forever: fashion had a responsibility, ahem, to help people past their grief."Marc said," Mr. Carcelle recalled, " ' If I work with Takashi, and we do something colorful, I think it will help make New York strong again.'"

"Like the handbags, the purpose of these editions, Mr. Murakami said later, is to bring art to the hoi polloi, people in no position to lay out the $1.5 million that another Franch billionaire Francois Pinault, paid for a  23-foot Murakami statue of the space alien Mr. Pointy in 2003."

"Anyway, it is not the money that matters to him, he insisted, "I always want art to be accessible," he said at dinner, where the guests included Kristen Davis, Tinsely Mortimer and Julian Schnabel. "The money embarrasses me," he said, not looking embarrassed in the least."