Alexander McQueen’s Savage Beauty at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
This is the most exquisite exhibit I have seen in a long time.
I wanted to write you a beautiful essay about how wondrously transforming McQueen’s work is. I wanted to tell you about how gorgeously curated an exhibit Savage Beauty is. I wanted to describe to you every detail of every draping, stitch, cut, and the total environment presentation created by Andrew Bolton.
Following in the tradition of master pieces, the work left me speechless.
It muted my thinking brain and turn on the feeling heart.
Adjectives and phrases are all I can summon:
melancholy, sublime, divine, heart broken, exquisite, construction, delicious, passionate, rules twisted, boundaries smashed. darkness honored, ironic, earnest, unleashed….beauty is everywhere.
Now…I will leave you with a few quotes from McQueen himself that deeply resonated with me. I could go on and tell you how I view each of his statements refracted through my world view but not today, I am still reeling and stuck in only feeling.
“Its important to look at death because its a part of life. Its a sad thing. Melancholic but romantic at the same time. Its the end of a cycle — everything has to end. The cycle of life is positive because it gives room for new things.”
“You’ve got to know the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for. To demolish the rules but keep the tradition.”
“My collection have always been autobiographical, a lot to do w/ my own sexuality and coming to terms w the person I am —- it was like excising my ghosts in the collections. They were to do w my childhood, the way I think about life and the way I was brought up to think about life.”
“I want to be honest about the world that we live in, and sometimes my political persuasions came through in my work. Fashion can be really racist. Looking at the clothes of other cultures as costumes. That’s mundane and its old hat. Lets break down some barriers.”
“I find beauty in the grotesque. Like most artists I have to force people to look at things.”
“There’s no way back for me now. I’m going to take you on a journey you’ve never thought it was possible.”
What if that was the pledge we made to ourselves?
“There is no way back for me now. I’m going to take myself on a journey I’ve never thought was possible. I want to take you along with me to experience beauty in the most common yet unlikely places.”
What if I promised you that?!
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