In the 20th century, many well-known artists made their works of art into textile fabrics and collaborated with textile companies of the time. The Paper learned, "Hello! Master: From Picasso to Andy Warhol's Fashion Marvel is on display at Space B06, Beijing's 798 Art District, and as part of Beijing International Design Week, the exhibition showcases more than 100 original fabric and costume designs by 39 modern artists in six zones.
Exhibition view
Since the 20th century, many avant-garde and avant-garde artistic trends and schools such as surrealism, expressionism, cubism, fauvism and so on have emerged in the Western art world, showing the development of art, culture and society at that time. At the same time, the fashion industry also ushered in a trend of cross-border alliance with art, and many famous artists applied their creative inspiration to fashion fabrics, including Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Juan Miró, Raul Dufei, and later Andy Warhol, Zandra Rhodes (the opening designer of the London Museum of Fashion), who combined art with the collage of fabrics, allowing previously unreachable artworks to be used through clothing, home, industrial design, etc, into the life of the public.
The exhibition is divided into six exhibition areas, from "Origins" to "Surrealism", "Fusion of Oil Painting in Fashion Fabrics", "Contemporary Masters", to "Little Known Picasso" and "Pop Art Pioneer", combing and reviewing a history of the combination and development of art and fashion. At the end of the exhibition, an immersive art experience area was set up, inviting a professional film-level setting team to combine AIGC, AI human-computer interaction, Web 3.0 co-creation mechanism and other technologies to create an art scene and co-creation area intertwined with light and shadow.
Exhibition view
"Punk Princess" Sandra Rhodes attended the event
As one of the themed exhibitions of Beijing International Design Week 2023, Sandra Rhodes, fabric and fashion designer, founder of the London Museum of Fashion and Royal Honouree, also attended the event. In previous launch events, Sandra Rhodes donated 31 works to the China Design Museum, which is under construction.
Sandra Rhodes attended "Hello! Master: From Picasso to Andy Warhol's Fashion Marvel exhibition
Sandra Rhodes, a pioneer of popular textile design in the UK, began her career as a textile designer and perfected the art of textiles to become a dominant factor and intrinsic part of clothing styling. Known as the "Punk Princess", Rhodes became an influential designer in the fashion industry in the 70s of the 20th century. In her more than 50-year career, she has also designed fabrics and garments for many royalty and celebrities, including Princess Diana. In 2003, Rhodes, passionate about education, founded the London Fashion Museum.
Sandra Rhodes' signature lipstick pattern print
Regarding the 31 works donated, Sandra said that they were all selected by herself, "documenting a very important period of my career. Among the donations, you can see revolutionary flowing jackets and skirts from the 1970s, printed with orange and white 'chevron shawls' prints on candy-pink chiffon, with white feathers plastered together along the frills; a classic V-neck kimono sleeve skirt with lilies and a shocking pink ribbon tied around the waist; and a fuchsia asymmetrical layered knitted evening gown with red satin suspenders from my 1978 punk collection. I want to convey all my design ideas through fabric design and pattern. ”
Sandra Rhodes also attended "Hello! Master: From Picasso to Andy Warhol's Fashion Marvels, she highlights her personal work created in the '60s, including her most successful "Haute Brass" design fabrics and her most popular "lipstick" design fabrics.
Sandra Rhodes' signature lipstick pattern calico at the exhibition site
From artwork to textile design
Back to the history of art entering textile design: in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many artists, such as Wellcome Morris, the "father of arts and crafts" in England, explored how to make artistic practice closer to the lives of ordinary people. To this end, they set their sights on the field of design, especially for the provision of artistic designs for mass-produced textiles for the masses.
Works by Raul Dufei
Works by Raul Dufei
Pioneer artists such as French modernist painters Raul Dufey and Sonia Delaunay, British constructivist painter Ben Nicholson, Bloomsbury Art Group, American artist and textile designer Ruth Reeves, photographer Edward Steichin, Russian female constructivist artists Lyubov Popova and Valvara Stepanova and other pioneering artists who pioneered the innovation of textile design and mass-produced clothing still profoundly affect public life today.
Ben Nicholson's Beautiful Curves
Ben Nicholson's "The Princess" (left), printed cotton twill skirt designed by Margaret Calkin James (right)
The second section of the exhibition travels to Britain and the United States in the 1940s. The 40s of the 20th century were probably the most productive decade for artists to intervene in the textile industry. Among the many reasons for this phenomenon, the most influential was the extraordinary dynamism and passion inspired by the post-war Anglo-American social and cultural revival, and the resulting openness to new ideas.
Surrealism was the most fashionable and popular art genre of its time. Spanish artist Dalí first became famous in 1947 for his surrealist designs for Wesley Simpson, presenting symbolic dreamlike scenes in Hitchcock's film Dr. Edward. The innovations in textile design and mass-produced clothing initiated by Dalí still have a profound impact on public life today.
Dalí's Classical Armor
The immersive part of the exhibition also recreates the picture depicted in the scarf
Dali 《Please report number》
Dalí "Ballet Dancer"
Marcel Wihess's works are colorful and rich in schematics. On the eve of World War II, Wiechs provided a large number of surrealist graphic designs for Parisian couturier Elsa Chaparelli, and during and after World War II, Wichs lived in New York and designed a wide range of surrealist scarves and fashion fabrics for textile mills.
Works by Marcel Wihess
Art on fabrics
In the mid-1950s, New York's Fuller Textile Company's collaboration with 20th-century internationally renowned artists, "Master Contemporary," was by far the most prestigious collaboration between American artists and the textile industry, most notably between Picasso and Föhler (Picasso had never accepted any corporate design invitations before).
The project aims to mass-produce fashion fabrics, sell them at affordable prices of $1.5 to $2 per yard (0.91 m per yard), and launched the "Art for the People" campaign "Art on Fabric". The art of yardage for the masses is essentially very close to Picasso's beliefs. With Picasso's leadership and charisma in the art world, the most popular artists of the 20th century, such as Miró, Fernand Reger, Chagall, Raul Dufei and his widow, joined in.
Fabrics designed by Picasso
One of Chagall's works is also featured in the exhibition. The fabric, called "Petite Flower", was featured at the 1956 Fabric Exhibition at the Museum of Art in New York. "Love" is his best pigment, and almost every fabric work has flowers symbolizing his love with his wife. The first bouquet of flowers he received came from his wife, Bella. In a poetic lilac atmosphere, the bright yellow and pink flowers bloom wantonly, just like love.
Chagall "Petite Flowers"
Juan Miró works
Returning to Picasso, one of the less-mentioned experiences in his artistic career is that in the early 1960s, Picasso worked on two textile design projects as a pioneering artist of the 20th century and a well-paid member of the French Communist Party. In 1963, the two projects were brought to market by merchants.
One of the highlights of the project was the collaboration between Picasso and Broomcraft Textiles Company in New York. Together with the factory's textile studio, the artist has created 11 colorful home décor fabrics in a variety of materials, all of which are screen-printed from Picasso's life. The collection sells for about $5 per yard. Due to a series of advertising campaigns and soft articles published in famous magazines, the product received widespread attention after its launch.
Picasso designed the "Musical Farmer" fabric
Picasso was keen to apply his work to sportswear, and perhaps that was the primary motivation for his most unexpected collaboration with American skiwear manufacturer White Hart. He designs a variety of fabric patterns for snow clothing collections, which are used in the production of printed corduroy capes, PVC-coated raincoats, cotton sweatshirts and women's culottes. They are commercially available for between $9 and $30.
Picasso designs "Carnet II"
Picasso designed "sketchbook" and "still life"
"Art Fan" on printed fabrics
In the early 1960s, Pop art pioneer Andy Warhol achieved great success in the New York graphic design scene. The commercial textile design in which artists participated in the same period has come to an end. However, Warhol created a collection of food-themed pop-style fabrics for his friend Stephen Bruce, the legendary café owner in New York. In the late 50s of the 20th century, butterflies were the subject of Warhol's creations. In the 60s of the 20th century, he designed a special fashion textile with a butterfly theme.
Andy Warhol "Happy Butterfly Day"
Andy Warhol "Ice Cream"
Immersive exhibition recreates "ice cream"
Artist Saul Steinberg admired minimalist graphics, whose lines are unmatched in their agility and penetration, and he also "painted" on fabric.
Saul Steinberg "The Wedding"
Saul Steinberg, "Arab Town"
In Britain in the 1950s, textile giants rushed to hire talented artists as designers, and under the leadership of painter and weaver Alastair Morton, the world-renowned Edinburgh Textile Company transformed the works of artists such as William Scott, Joe Tilsson, Victor Vasare and Marino Marini into exquisite and unique high-end prints and fabrics.
In contrast, David Whitehead Ltd. invited artists such as Henry Moore, Eduardo Pauloch and John Piper to design and produce affordable printed fabrics that could be "artistic" for consumers in the lower end of the market.
Exhibition view
The 1953 exhibition "Painting in Fashion Fabrics" was an important milestone in the history of textile design, reflecting a new concept of fabrics as an artistic medium by British artists after World War II, pushing artists to display original designs rather than finished textiles. Many of Britain's biggest names have exhibited, including Henry Moore, William Scott, John Paiborgegraham Souther and Eduardo Pauloch.
Works by John Piper
The exhibition will run until November 5