Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, April 22, 2024: Alexander McQueen, a British fashion designer and couturier. The Savage Beauty exhibition (#2004)

Monday, April 22, 2024

Artist of the Day, April 22, 2024: Alexander McQueen, a British fashion designer and couturier. The Savage Beauty exhibition (#2004)

Lee Alexander McQueen (1969 – 2010) was a British fashion designer and couturier. He is known for having worked as chief designer at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001 and for founding his own Alexander McQueen label. His achievements in fashion earned him four British Designer of the Year awards (1996, 1997, 2001 and 2003), as well as the CFDA's International Designer of the Year award in 2003. McQueen committed suicide in 2010 at the age of forty.

Savage Beauty (exhibition)
Savage Beauty was an art exhibition held in 2011 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art featuring clothing created by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, as well as accessories created for his runway shows. The exhibit was extremely popular in New York City and resulted in record attendance for the museum.
The exhibit was organized by the museum's Anna Wintour Costume Center and curated by Andrew Bolton and Harold Koda. The exhibit featured McQueen's pieces from the archives of his own London fashion house, Alexander McQueen, and of the Parisian couture house Givenchy, as well as pieces held in private collections.

The show is composed of six separate galleries, arranged by theme: "The Romantic Mind", featuring some of his oldest work in the early 1990s; "Romantic Gothic and the Cabinet of Curiosities", featuring his exploration of Victorian Gothic themes; "Romantic Nationalism", examining Scottish and British identity; "Romantic Exoticism", examining non-western influences in his designs; "Romantic Primitivism", featuring natural materials and organic designs; and "Romantic Naturalism", featuring his attempts to integrate themes of the natural world with technology.

• "The Romantic Mind" examines his technical ingenuity, which combined the precision of tailoring and pattern making with the spontaneity of draping and dressmaking

• ‘The Romantic Gothic" highlights McQueen’s historicism, particularly his engagement with the Victorian Gothic, and dichotomies such as life and death

• "The Romantic Nationalism" looks at McQueen’s patriotic impulses, including his reflections on his Scottish heritage and his fascination with British history. Romantic Nationalism, Highland Rape. 'The show is in my imagination. I have a set image in my head of a woman . . . and I create a narrative around that.'

• "The Romantic Exoticism" explores the influence of other cultures on the designer’s imagination, especially China and Japan.

• "The Romantic Primitivism" captures McQueen’s engagement with the ideal of the ‘noble savage’, while

• "The Romantic Naturalism" considers his enduring interest in raw materials and forms from nature.

The exhibit includes pieces from his first major collection, Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims, created during his graduate studies at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Other notable collections in the exhibit include Dante, #13, VOSS, Irere, and Plato's Atlantis, as well as Banshee, Highland Rape, The Widows of Culloden (including the original life-size hologram of Kate Moss), and Horn of Plenty.

© 2024. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Alexander McQueen or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only