Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty Returns to Reign

Photo courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum

             Awestruck is the only word suitable enough to describe how I felt as I toured the Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Having booked almost a year in advance, I had no idea that its scale would be quite so massive and a ticket so coveted. After its widely successful run at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the retrospective has finally come back home to reign and rightfully so. Born into a working class family in London, Lee Alexander McQueen worked his way up in the fashion world, which he managed to take by storm without taking it too seriously.

The Savage Mind gallery, photo courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum

             The exhibition begins with McQueen’s MA graduate collection, Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims (1992), and closes with his final collection, Plato’s Atlantis (2010). Five years after McQueen’s tragic suicide, the exhibition is a haunting reminder of his genius lasting legacy. It is easy to invest in a brand, but it is more important to invest in the man behind the brand, which the V&A has pulled off exceptionally. A quote from McQueen foreshadowed his fate: “I want to be the purveyor of a certain silhouette or a way of cutting, so that when I’m dead and gone people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen.”

The Romantic Naturalism gallery, photo courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum

             Indeed, there will never be another like him. With my McQueen handbag in tow and my black and white McQueen skull scarf draped around my neck, I was professing, probably a bit too loudly and excitedly, my knowledge about the designer to anyone who happened to be within earshot. I had a very important introduction to make after all. Like a pilgrimage to Mecca, my fashion items were returning to holy ground, to be reunited with their creator. I had all of the necessary makings of a fan girl. I’m sure McQueen would think that was very uncool of me, but I remained on the verge of tears (happy ones of course), covered in goose bumps for the entire exhibition.

Alexander McQueen is a girl's best friend

             I cannot begin to explain how it felt to see McQueen’s creations, which I had only previously seen in photos or videos, in the fabric flesh. The exhibition remained true to McQueen’s vision and propensity towards performance on the catwalk, even down to the music and the ambience. The mirrored box from the Spring/Summer 2001 Voss show was there fully equipped with lights to turn it from clear to opaque glass.

The Voss gallery, photo courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum

             Lingering in the Cabinet of Curiosities room, I examined the intricacies of metal mouthpieces, butterfly-adorned headwear, and the spray-painted dress from the No. 13 Spring/Summer 1999 collection. Televisions broadcasted the clothes in motion from previous catwalk shows: from the derrière flaunting “bumsters” and too-cool-for-school models wearing them in Nihilism (Spring/Summer 1994), to the lace-encased horns and crucifixes in Dante (Autumn/Winter 1996), to the abundant houndstooth and seeping lips in The Horn of Plenty (Autumn/Winter 2009). Even McQueen’s model choices were deliberate – the way they sauntered out, flicked off members of the audience, and appeared all-around irreverent and indifferent to their surroundings.

The Cabinet of Curiosities gallery, photo courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum

             McQueen viewed his clothes as just that – clothes. His humble and somewhat unfounded assumption implied his stance on whether fashion equates to art. For someone who could cut clothes without a pattern and managed to cram a pentagram, a carousel, a game of chess, fire, water, red contact lenses, and much more into his catwalk repertoire, surely we must argue that what McQueen achieved was an art form. Naysayers slammed him for being misogynistic when he was anything but. McQueen lashed out with the perfect response: “I know what misogyny is! I hate this thing about fragility and making women feel naïve…I want people to be afraid of the women I dress.” That kind of confidently executed intimidation on the part of the wearer, that kind of empowerment, is what McQueen’s clothes represent.  

"When you see a woman wearing McQueen, there's a certain hardness to the clothes that makes her look powerful. It kind of fends people off." - Alexander McQueen; the Romantic Nationalism gallery, photo courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum

             McQueen’s version of beauty is savage because of the gritty, dark side of it that he chose to expose and become known for. He drew inspiration from sadomasochism, primitivism, romanticism, and nationalism, making it hard to believe that each room represented the amalgamation of one creative mind. Sarah Burton is the current creative director of Alexander McQueen. By her own admission, she does not share the same fascination with the darker side of life as the brand’s founder did. No one would wish a tortured past upon another, but McQueen’s demons were precisely what spurred on his theatrical and inventive visions. I cannot bring myself to watch the catwalk shows under Burton in recent years for fear of being underwhelmed due to my high standards. Without Alexander McQueen the individual, I fail to rationalize Alexander McQueen the brand.  

McQueen's last collection, Plato's Atlantis (Spring/Summer 2010), before his premature departure from the fashion world, photo courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum

             Just like the ever-changing hologram that distorts McQueen’s face into a skull and back again on the cover of my Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty book, he will eternally remain the man, the myth. Due to his untimely death, he will also be preserved at the height of his youth and his success for all of time, leaving a giant fashion-shaped hole in our lives. McQueen, at least for me, will forever be the King of fashion, presiding from his celestial throne. I think he’d quite like that, don’t you?

The cover of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty

Pop! Goes My Art

             I frequent London’s Tate Museum of Modern Art so often, I should probably have my own installation. Imagine then my delight as I was given a ready-made excuse to visit. The Tate is currently running the Lichtenstein: A Retrospective exhibition, an impressive collection of Roy Lichtenstein’s work. Lichtenstein was an American pop artist influenced by comics and advertising and became a leading art figure in the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol. 125 pieces of work make up Lichtenstein: A Retrospective, making it the first full-scale retrospective of this artist in more than twenty years.

             I visited the museum on a Friday afternoon, when lining up for tickets wasn’t a problem. However, the exhibition is drawing in crowds particularly on the weekend. It is recommended to either book in advance or to go in the morning to avoid disappointment. If you are a student, remember to use it to your advantage! I was able to shave the original ticket price down from 14 pounds to twelve pounds twenty. This is definitely one of the pricier exhibitions, but I assure you it is more than worth the splurge.

             With 13 different themed rooms, the exhibition is extensive and progressive, showing how Lichtenstein’s work developed throughout his career. The rooms include War and Romance, Modern, Early Pop, Late Nudes, and Chinese Landscapes. Exhibitions are the best way to get an overview of an artist’s work all in one place. Exhibitions sometimes display pieces of art from private collections that are not normally available to the public, such as in the Lichtenstein exhibition.

             The exhibition is not only comprised of pantings, but of sculptures, works on paper, unseen drawings, and collages as well. Speaking as a fan of Lichtenstein's, I didn't even realize he had created half of the work he did. His work is far more diverse than I could have previously imagined. Standout pieces for me included a giant composition notebook painted on canvas and oddly shaped eye sculptures. Unfortunately, photography was prohibited, and as much as I was tempted, Tate curators were enforcing the rule. In a way, not being able to document the exhibition allows you to just be in the moment with the artwork, which undoubtedly speaks for itself.

             Lichtenstein is renowned for his use of Benday dots, which is a system of using two or more different colored dots in order to create a third color. Comic books utilized this technique by creating Benday dots in primary colors to achieve the secondary colors of flesh tone, for example. Almost everyone in the exhibition wanted an up close and personal encounter with this process, including myself. We were caught lingering very closely to the paintings themselves, where the dots are inescapable. As Lichtenstein perfects his craft, the Benday dots noticeably become more defined and evenly distributed and sized throughout the exhibition. It is appropriate that Lichtenstein would make use of this technique, as he also borrowed common comic strip features such as thought bubbles and boxed captions.

             The closest tube stop in order to reach the Tate Museum of Modern Art is Southwark, where the museum is located only about a five-minute walk away. The Lichtenstein exhibition is hard to miss on the second floor with its sunny yellow entrance. I highly recommend exploring the rest of the museum if the Lichtenstein exhibition isn’t for you, as the Tate is one of my favorite places to visit in London. The Tate also offers coffee and tea, sandwiches, and cakes in their café overlooking a breathtaking view of the Millennium Bridge and St. Paul’s Cathedral. 

             Lichtenstein: A Retrospective finished on May 27th. See here for the permanent collection and current exhibitions offered at the Tate Museum of Modern Art .