PICASSO/CHANEL
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain
11 October 2022 to 15 January 2023
abstract
The exhibition PICASSO/CHANEL held at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain from October 2022 to January 2023 focuses on work both produced from 1910 to 1930. Curated by Paula Luengo, Head of Exhibitions at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, the exhibition is organized in four chronological sections: “Cubism and the style of Chanel”, “Olga Picasso”, “Antigone”, and “Le Train Bleu”. The simplicity of the exhibition title presents Chanel and Picasso as equal greats – an approach consistent throughout the exhibition content. Beginning with the more familiar comparisons of Picasso’s Cubist paintings and collage and Chanel’s early work followed by portraits of Picasso’s first wife dressed in Chanel, the exhibition then focuses on the less familiar contributions of Picasso and Chanel to the play Antigone and the ballet Le Train Bleu.
review
PICASSO/CHANEL focuses on work both produced from 1910 to 1930. Curated by Paula Luengo, Head of Exhibitions at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, the exhibition is organized in four chronological sections: “Cubism and the style of Chanel”, “Olga Picasso”, “Antigone”, and “Le Train Bleu”. While the premise of the exhibition’s first section is not novel[1], as an opening theme it does include some insightful comparisons. In particular, the exhibition catalogue recognizes Chanel’s use of “simple, lowly fabrics like cotton and wool jersey […] partly as a result of the textile shortage during the war and consequent price hike” (2022, 25) and Picasso’s explorations of collage – “so central to the invention of Cubism” (Martin 1998, 17).
In his introduction to Cubism and Fashion held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1998 Richard Martin writes that “Cubism was never rarefied; it insisted on an art less remote and supreme than before” (1998, 16). Writing in the comprehensive PICASSO/CHANEL exhibition catalogue, Juan Gutiérrez credits Chanel’s work as a “constant reappropriation of types and forms that fell outside the boundaries of elegance.” (2022, 48) Together, these two comments offer compass points for viewing relatively early work by two now impenetrably iconic identities.
In the second section Olga Picasso, the Russian ballerina (née Khokhlova) and first wife of Pablo Picasso, appears as the subject of numerous portraits by her husband, often dressed in early designs by Chanel. With few of Chanel’s early garments surviving, these drawings and paintings offer glimpses of work credited for its geometric simplicity and minimal palette. While the content of the first half of this exhibition may have felt familiar to some, the exhibition’s second half shifts focus to two performances where Picasso and Chanel collaborated professionally, both with Jean Cocteau: the play Antigone (1922), and Serge Diaghilev’s ballet Le Train Bleu (1924) with a libretto by Cocteau.
Dominique Marny credits Cocteau’s interest in creating his abridged version of Sophocles’ classical Greek tragedy Antigone to “the events that were shaking up society in the 1920s [… Antigone’s] youth, her purity of soul, her rebellion against the established order, her determination not to give into male dictates, and her loyalty to the memory of her brothers were bound to resonate with the times.” (2022, 149) Picasso contributed sets and masks for the play; Chanel costumes. The exhibition relies heavily on drawings of set designs and costumes. Chanel’s original costumes do not survive, but included what has been credited as the designer’s first forays into costume jewelry by way of “specially designed metal headband-like crowns.” (Luengo 2022, 32)
The final section of the exhibition is devoted to the ballet Le Train Bleu, produced by Diaghilev in 1924 (Fig. 1). The same year Paris hosted the Olympic Games and the one act ballet reflects the public’s increasing interest in sport. Video footage of the restaged version of the performance by the Paris Opera in 1992 and remade costumes for the performance are included (Fig. 2). Picasso’s contribution to the ballet included permission for his small painting in gouache, Two Women Running on the Beach (The Race), to be recreated, at Diaghilev’s request, as a stage curtain. Chanel’s designs included sleeveless tank tops and shorts – pink with grey stripes for the character Perlouse and navy for her “gigolo”. Visually reminiscent of the orange, purple and striped blue versions worn by Picasso’s three women in his small 1918 oil painting The Bathers (Fig. 3), the garments were difficult to wear. Sarah Woodcock notes the original costumes (held in the V&A):
could hardly have been comfortable to dance in; the wool is not very soft, and the costume is seamed on the sides, at the shoulders, and between the legs. The new costumes were instead made of silk jersey, which conveyed the idea of the costume in modern terms, was more comfortable for the dancers, and was less amusing for the audience. (2009, 45)
Chanel is credited with introducing clothing women were able to move freely in – a change overdue but necessitated by women joining the workforce in World War I. An active woman herself, it is curious that she would have overlooked such practicalities as the material requirements of the dancers at the time.
I would love to claim that the exhibition title is flawed – that Chanel should precede Picasso. A more pedestrian explanation for the title sequence is that April 8, 2023 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso with this exhibition comprising one of a number of events organized under the aegis of the Picasso Celebration 1973-2023. It would also be fair to note that Chanel’s garments often post-date the examples of Picasso’s work in the opening section, although this could be attributed to the scarcity of extant examples of her early work.
This is an exhibition that makes no any claims to reorder who-influenced-who. Instead the simplicity of the exhibition title presents Chanel and Picasso as equal greats – an approach consistent throughout the exhibition content. Particular credit is deserved for the presentation of garments on headless mannequins. More evocative of the workshop than the shop window, this installation decision elegantly removes the familiar fashion exhibition problem of uncanny faces and plastic limbs (Fig. 4). Without making an overt claim to do so, PICASSO/CHANEL presents the creative hunger of two now over-referenced icons.
References
Gutiérrez, Juan. 2022. “The Canon of Modern Life: Chanel from the Perspective of Picasso” PICASSO CHANEL. Madrid: Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, pp. 44–49.
Luengo, Paula. 2022. “Picasso and Chanel” PICASSO CHANEL. Madrid: Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, pp. 20–35.
Marny, Dominique. 2022. “Jean Cocteau’s Antigone” PICASSO CHANEL. Madrid: Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, pp. 146–177.
Martin, Richard. 1998. Cubism and Fashion. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Woodcock, Sarah. 2009. “Ballets Russes Costumes and the Art of Design”. The Ballets Russes and the Art of Design, Eds. Alston Purvis, Peter Rand and Anna Ulinestein. New York: The Monacelli Press, pp. 39–53.
[1] The Metropolitan Museum of Art held Cubism and Fashion from December 10, 1998 through March 14, 1999. The exhibition was described as “an attempt to understand the fundamental changes in fashion that occurred between 1908 and about 1925 and to offer the proposition that perhaps Cubism, which transfigured art so fundamentally during that epoch, is also a prime cause of fashion’s modern forms.” (Martin 1998, 11)