“Camp: Notes on Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
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The Costume Institute’s spring 2019 exhibition, “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” is on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York through September 8, 2019.The exhibition, which was preceded by the much-talked-about the Costume Institute Benefit or Th“Camp: Notes on Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Costume Institute’s spring 2019 exhibition, “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” is on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York through September 8, 2019.The exhibition, which was preceded by the much-talked-about the Costume Institute Benefit or The Met Gala, looks at the origins of camp’s aesthetic sense. How it developed from a marginal space and eventually influence mainstream culture. The framework for the exhibition is Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp.’” It examines how “fashion designers have used their metier as a vehicle to engage with camp in a myriad of compelling, humorous, and sometimes incongruous ways,” the museum says.“Camp: Notes on Fashion” features around 250 objects, which includes womenswear and menswear, along with sculptures, paintings, and drawings from the 17th century to the present day. Versailles has been positioned as “camp Eden” in the show’s opening section.“It addresses the concept of ‘se camper’ — ‘to posture boldly’ — in the royal courts of Louis XIV and Louis XV,” The Met informs. The focus then shifts to the figure of the dandy as a ‘camp ideal’ tracing the camp’s origin to late 19th and early 20th centuries queer subcultures of Europe and America. Sontag in her essay had defined camp as aesthetic and went on to outline its primary characteristics.The second part of the exhibition explores how all these elements — including irony, humor, parody, pastiche, artifice, theatricality, and exaggeration — are articulated in fashion.“Camp’s disruptive nature and subversion of modern aesthetic values has often been trivialized, but this exhibition reveals that it has had a profound influence on both high art and popular culture,” said Max Hollein, Director of The Met. “By tracing its evolution and highlighting its defining elements, the show embodies the ironic sensibilities of this audacious style, challenges conventional understandings of beauty and taste, and establishes the critical role that this important genre has played in the history of art and fashion.”Designers whose work is on view in the exhibition include Virgil Abloh (for Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh); Giorgio Armani (for Armani Prive); Manish Arora; Ashish; Christopher Bailey (for Burberry); Cristobal Balenciaga; Alexander McQueen (for Givenchy); Alessandro Michele (for Gucci); Jean Paul Gaultier, Anna Sui, Gianni Versace, and Vivienne Westwood, among others.“Camp: Notes on Fashion” continues to be on view through September 8, 2019, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 5th Ave, New York, NY 10028, USA.For details, visit: https://www.blouinartinfo.com/galleryguide-venues/285009/museum-overviewClick on the slideshow for a sneak peek at the exhibition. https://www.blouinartinfo.com/ Founder: Louise Blouin Read more