The Metropolitan Museum of
Art – Exhibitions
The Roof Garden Commission
Andrian Villar Rojas -The Theater of Disappearance
The Roof Garden Commission
Andrian Villar Rojas -The Theater of Disappearance
Argentinian artist Adrian Villar Rojas has transformed the Cantor Roof garden with an intricate site-specific installation
that uses the Museum itself as its raw material. Featuring detailed replicas of
nearly 100 objects from The Met collection, The Theater of Disappearance, until October 29, encompasses thousands of years of
artistic production over several continents and cultures, and fuses them with
facsimiles of contemporary human figures as well as furniture, animals,
cutlery, and food. Each object—whether a 1,000-year-old decorative plate or a
human hand—is rendered in the same black or white material and coated in a thin
layer of dust.
Andrian Villar Rojas - The Theatre of Disappearance
To realize
this extensive work by featuring detailed replicas of nearly 100 objects from The Met collection the artist immersed
himself in the Museum and its staff for many months, holding conversations with
the curators, conservators, managers, and technicians across every department
who contributed to the realization of this installation.
Andrian Villar Rojas - The Theater of Disappearance
Andrian Villar Rojas - The Theater of Disappearance
The Metropolitan Museum of
Art / The Costume institute
Rei Kawakubo / Comme des Garcons
Art of the In-Between
Rei Kawakubo / Comme des Garcons
Art of the In-Between
“I like to work with space and emptiness.”
Rei Kawakubo - 2000
The
Costume Institute's spring 2017
exhibition examines the work of fashion designer Rei Kawakubo, known for her avant-garde designs and ability to
challenge conventional notions of beauty, good taste, and fashionability. The
thematic show features approximately 140 examples of Kawakubo's womenswear for Comme des Garcons dating from the early
1980s to her most recent collection, many with heads and wigs created and
styled by Julien d'Ys.
“Things that have never been seen before have
a tendency
to be somewhat abstract, but making art is not my
intention at all. All my effort is oriented towards giving
form to clothes that have never been seen before.”
2015
Abstraction / Representation
Abstraction / Representation
Rei Kawakubo / Comme des Garcons
Art of the In-Between
Art of the In-Between
““I never give myself any boundaries or let
them
interfere with my work.”
2011
Bound / Unbound
Bound / Unbound
The galleries illustrate the
designer's revolutionary experiments in "in-betweenness"—the
space between boundaries. Objects are organized into nine aesthetic expressions
of interstitiality in Kawakubo's
work: Absence/Presence, Design/Not
Design, Fashion/Anti-Fashion, Model/Multiple, Then/Now, High/Low, Self/Other,
Object/Subject, and Clothes/Not Clothes. Kawakubo breaks down the imaginary
walls between these dualisms, exposing their artificiality and arbitrariness.
“There is value in bad
taste.”
Good Taste / Bad Taste
Good Taste / Bad Taste
“ The right half of my brain like
tradition and history, the left wants to break the rules.”
2005
Past / Present / Future
2005
Past / Present / Future
“I want to rethink the body, so the
body and the
dress become one.”
1997
Object / Subject
dress become one.”
1997
Object / Subject
“Am I an anarchist? In the sense that anarchy
equals freedom,
yes. Anarchy means freedom, but it also means chaos.”
2016
Order / Chaos
The Metropolitan Museum of
Art
Irving Penn – Centennial
Irving Penn – Centennial
The
most comprehensive retrospective to date of the work of the great American photographer Irving Penn (1917–2009), this
exhibition, until July 30, marks the centennial of the artist's birth. Over the
course of his nearly 70-year career, Penn mastered a pared-down aesthetic of
studio photography that is distinguished for its meticulous attention to
composition, nuance, and detail.
Copyright Conde Nast – Courtesy MET
Irving Penn – The Twelve Most
Photographed Models
1947
Owing to his evident talents
with both still-life arrangement and portraiture, Penn was tasked with Vogue’s
group portraits. These bravado feats of choreography were tough assignments,
and given the competitiveness of many fashion models, this one could have been
harrowing. Yet Penn relished this particular job, not only for its challenges
but also because it was here that he met Lisa Fonssagrives (back row, center
left, in profile). They were married in London three years later.
Irving Penn - Still Life
with Watermelon, New York
1947 – printed 1985
1947 – printed 1985
Copyright – The Irving Penn Foundation – courtesy MET
Irving Penn - Salvador Dali - New York
February 20 – 1947
February 20 – 1947
Irving Penn
– Centennial
The Studio Backdrop
The Studio Backdrop
Penn’s
portraits sessions involved an extraordinary measure of control in the
deliberations of pose and the long, slow dances of psychic accommodation. They required time and a dedicated space, a
studio. In Paris in 1950, Penn used
this old theater curtain as a neutral backdrop for his fashion work and his
portraits of celebrities and tradespeople. Penn took the curtain with him to London and then to New York, where it was moved from studio to studio over the next
half century. From the start, the cloth
was imperfect, with soft stains and frayed edges, but its flaws served Penn’s
purpose.
Copyright Conde Nast – courtesy MET
Irving Penn - Rochas Mermaid Dress
(Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn) – Paris
1950- printed 1980
(Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn) – Paris
1950- printed 1980