Documentary on Alexander McQueen

Lee Alexander McQueen was very close to his mother Joyce

On the plane back to Hong Kong I saw a documentary on the late British fashion designer Alexander McQueen.

Called McQueen, the documentary gathers shaky video footage the designer took himself, along with interviews with his family, friends, and assistants. It gives a fuller picture of the man who shook up the fashion world with his designs and explains how he evolved from a young man who loved drawing all the time in school, to apprenticing with top tailors in Savile Row.



There he learned the craft of making suits and his former bosses were impressed he would come into work with no attitude, and do his work very well. He later worked for other designers and learned how to come up with a theme, do research, and create a collection.

He went back to school this time, straight into the MA fashion course for Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. He didn't have the money to pay for tuition, but his aunt did.

McQueen had creative fashion ideas in his head

His graduation collection was bought by fashion stylist Isabella Blow who became his patron and mentor, buying his creations and also introducing him to fashion circles. The documentary has footage of them at her home that had a huge estate, him playing with his dogs there and she in high heels and a military-style jacket.

Then starting out, his fashion shows were criticized for being misogynist with themes like Highland Rape and Jack the Ripper. One of his friends recounts how they got into the Givenchy show and dismissed it as "irrelevant" and then ironically he was later named creative director there.

McQueen takes a video of them pulling up to Givenchy in a chauffered car and how there were language barriers with him not speaking French, the staff working at the atelier not much English. They were terrified whenever he got his scissors out because he would just chop things up, but after they saw what he had done to resolve the problem, they understood what he was doing.

He also had lunch with the staff, which was unheard of before, and they were thrilled he respected them. McQueen later did a stint at Gucci.

McQueen was mentored by Isabella Blow

His assistant observes that when McQueen began making so much money, he got into drugs, which changed his personality. He also became more vain, doing liposuction, caving into the shallow physical expectations of the fashion industry.

But his depression hit hard, when Blow committed suicide in 2007 at 48. Some say it was because she and McQueen drifted apart, with him not appreciating her, though he denied this. There is footage of him going to the funeral in a black jacket and red tartan looking distressed.

However creatively he got better and better, exploring themes of death and beauty. Models and his friends say McQueen was always true to himself and didn't care what others thought of what he was doing.

McQueen was very close to his mother, the youngest of six children. She gives a few interviews about him, saying how he was very talented and he was a good boy. But when she died in February 2010, McQueen was devastated.

He spoke to his older sister on the phone about their mother's funeral, but then the day of the funeral she found out McQueen had killed himself by hanging. A former assistant ominously recounts how McQueen had talked about suicide, and how he would probably leave his flat in a body bag. His sister believes he could not deal with his mother not being around anymore.

A model's dress is being painted by two robots

That's when the documentary ends, giving a post script about how his posthumous show "Savage Beauty" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was the most popular ever in the New York museum. That's when I came into contact with his work and was in awe of his creativity. Everything was possible and he was not afraid to try.

The interviews with the friends and family show how much he impacted them, from berating an assistant for leaving him and then coming back, to his nephew so proud of McQueen and what he did, to his sister describing a skirt he made for her that fit like a glove but was almost impossible to walk in.

Irving Penn's Magnificent Images

The photographer himself, Irving Penn, the master of portraits and fashion

At The Metropolitan Museum of Art we also saw Irving Penn: Centennial that's on until July 30. It is 100 years since the birth of the American photographer who died in 2009.

One of his earlier portraits of a chef

I first became acquainted to Penn's photographs through Vogue magazine and thought they were so elegant and beautiful even if the subjects were very simple. Actually there was nothing tricky about them -- it was very straight forward but how they were photographed made them quietly sophisticated and gorgeous.

It was pictures of food in a still life arrangement -- either the ingredients artfully placed, or the finished dish, but hardly garnished or decorated with anything, or models posed with as little distraction as possible to illustrate the article.

The exhibition at The Met features only 150 of Penn's photographs, though it features many of his earlier works that I was unaware of. He started taking portraits of all kinds of people in different jobs from a balloon seller to fireman, waiter, chef, blast furnace tender and butcher, window washer and chamois seller.

Smouldering image of Marlene Dietrich

He hated smoking, and when his mentor Alexey Brodovitch died of lung cancer, Penn became even more aware of the cigarette butts lying all over the streets of New York and decided to use them as subjects for a series of photographs.

They are used butts, some fished out from the streets so they are dirty, and yet Penn makes them look like dangerously beautiful objects. It's so ironic that it makes them arresting images. But after looking at several of them you get the idea and want to move on.

His portraits of people are amazing -- he put his subjects in a tight corner -- Truman Capote, Marcel Duchamp, Spencer Tracy, Igor Stravinsky, and Salvador Dali. Other fantastic portraits include Marlene Dietrich, Cecil Beaton, Pablo Picasso, and Audrey Hepburn.

Penn was famous for his fashion shoots

Penn's studio was in a building with no water and electricity but had natural light that he preferred using. Because of his fame, people did not hesitate to have their portraits taken by him. You can see the backdrop he used for his photo shoots too, and some visitors take selfies with it.

He was also adventurous in his travels, and in the show there is video footage of him in Morocco setting up a basic tent and getting locals in their native dress to have their portraits taken by him.

In another he took pictures of indigenous people in Papua New Guinea. Again he kept everything simple so that the viewer only focuses on the subject, making them arresting images.

It's too bad there aren't more photographs to look at -- I could look at dozens more, particularly of his fashion shoots and still lifes of things like flowers, but alas the exhibition was soon over...

A backdrop he used to use for portraits

Irving Penn: Centennial

Until July 30, 2017

Gallery 199

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

China's Soft Power Show at The Met

Intricately designed wine vessel of bronze and gold inlay

One of the exhibitions on now at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is called Age of Empires: Chinese Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties (221BC-AD220) until July 16.

Earthenware dancer full of movement

It features 160 objects that were excavated from imperial tombs over the years from the Qin and Han dynasties that help give us a better idea of what life was like, particularly for the privileged classes.

We tried to use the free audio guide, but the attendant somehow ran out of headphones but not the gadgets, so we just relied on the captions to explain. For the most part they were fine, giving explanations of the pieces much like how things were described in my art history class -- lots of observation and imagination.

Many of the items we saw were in very good condition, which makes you wonder about the rest of the things unearthed -- there must have been thousands of items that were crushed or so disintegrated there was nothing left to show.

A lively bronze horse with its groom

We particularly liked the sculptures of animals, both large ones like a bronze horse that looked energetic with its nostrils flared and looking confident with its groom, to an anatomically correct replica of a goose, to a small representation of an elephant and rhinoceros. All these animals were with the deceased in their journey to the underworld.

Even remnants of fabric managed to survive all these centuries, giving us an idea of the kinds of patterns and colours of the clothes they wore at the time. There were also lacquer trays and bowls -- that were even found with food on them when they were excavated. Pretty amazing.

Delicate embroidered fabrics that have survived centuries

I'd see the terracotta warriors before in Xian, so seeing a few of them on display wasn't as impressive. Nevertheless, the large bronze wine vessels with intricate designs were, along with the jade funeral suits that looked like patches of jade armour all over the body, and models of two and three-storey houses.

For the China this was an excellent exercise in soft power  -- linking this exhibition to the Silk Road -- and hence Belt and Road -- as a way to get everyone on board or at least interested, as some pieces in the show were from the Middle East to demonstrate that China didn't just conquer other people, but integrated part of their cultures as well.

A jade funeral suit connected with gold wire

Granted the exhibition is also sponsored by the likes of the Joseph Hotung Fund, the Henry Luce Foundation, and the estate of Brooke Astor to give the show more street cred with the New York and arts crowd, the major sponsor is China Merchants Bank -- a big PR coup for the state-owned bank.

Age of Empires: Chinese Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties (221BC-AD220)

Gallery 899, The Tisch Galleries

Until July 16, 2017

The First Monday in May

Remember that Guo Pei dress Rihanna wore to the Met gala?

On my flight back from Beijing to Hong Kong, I watched the documentary The First Monday in May, which follows how the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour put together the 2015 exhibition and gala, China: Through the Looking Glass.

It's a huge undertaking, combining Chinese-inspired fashion with museum pieces from the Asian Art collection, pairing outfits inspired by or look similar to actual works of art in the museum's archives. But it's not just about ancient China, it's also about Communist China, and contemporary China, featuring today's designers.

Andrew Bolton is the Costume Institute curator at the Met, his dream job since he was young. He strongly believes that fashion is an art form, something some of his colleagues in other departments don't necessarily accept, but the massive gala is a big fundraiser for the museum, something they can't ignore or look down on.

However, many heads of other departments take the opportunity, as the exhibits shape up, to express their concerns that they don't want the clothes to overshadow the museum pieces.

One exhibit showing the inspiration from Ming vases

It's a telling insight into the politics at the Met, and watching how Bolton navigates through it all.

Meanwhile clothes are already arriving at the museum for the costume department to carefully document and decide how they will arrange them in the exhibits. Different designers are interviewed, and Jean-Paul Gaultier admits he has never been to China, but in a way doesn't want to go, because he wants to have a fantasy in his mind of what China is to him.

John Galliano's fantastical dresses are also featured, Coco Chanel's vintage pieces of gold and black sequinned jackets remind you of sleek lacquered cabinets, and Vivienne Tam's homage to Imperial China and her pop-art tribute to Mao Zedong.

It's disappointing Tam wasn't interviewed in the documentary, as she would have given an interesting perspective about how her clothes shape her identity as a Hong Kong designer.

Vivienne Tam's fun Mao dress

While Wintour argues that art moves people, fashion can as well, though Gaultier says he never imagined his clothes would be in a museum.

The petite woman is a powerhouse, fierce, decisive and meticulous. Wintour is in charge of the invitation list and features all kinds of people from philanthropists, to actors, singers, artists, businessmen and politicians. Imagine having to figure out where everyone sits! Her assistant tries to keep her cool the whole time, but there's a huge snag when Rihanna and her entourage are going to cost much more than they budgeted for...

And then there are many mini crises along the way in setting up the exhibition, making deadlines even tighter and working around the clock...

There are also concerns the exhibition is a gweilo perspective of China, and the only Chinese person working directly on the project is film director Wong Kar-wai, who doesn't seem impressed by how things are panning out. He is rightly concerned that the exhibition isn't authentic enough, and also how everyone seems to want to have a hand in things.

Wong Kar-wai is concerned how the show will turn out

To an extent Wong must be familiar with these kinds of situations, or perhaps as a revered director, he is used to having everything his way?

The exhibition generated a lot of interest, and a lot of coverage of the gala, thanks to Rihanna showing up in a yellow gown by Guo Pei that many immediately pronounced it looked like an omelette or scrambled eggs, and criticized Sarah Jessica Parker's hideous headdress that looked comical.

It's a documentary that keeps your interest throughout and if anyone is interested in event planning, fashion, museum curation and art, then The First Monday in May is for you. It's a riveting eye-opener...

The First Monday in May (2016)

Directed by Andrew Rossi

90 minutes

Art on the Roof

The "house" pays tribute to the Mid-West as well as the Psycho movie

The Roof Garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a great spot to take in the views of the Manhattan skyline. And it was the perfect contrasting backdrop to British artist Cornelia Parker's art installation, Transitional Object (PsychoBarn).

The rooftop has amazing views of the Manhattan skyline

In a video she explains that she wanted to do something with red barns, and then came across Edward Hopper's works. He did a painting in 1925 called House by the Railroad, and realized that director Alfred Hitchcock had based the house in the 1960 movie Psycho on Hopper's painting.

She researched that eerie house and found that in reality it wasn't a real house, but wait was actually a facade, a set prop for filming.

That gave her the idea to do something similar on the roof of the Met, since it would be difficult to construct an entire house there.

Edward Hopper's House by the Railroad

Continuing with her interest in barns, she worked with a restoration company that salvaged wood from an old barn and made it into the facade of the Psycho house, with the corrugated roof fashioned into individual shingles.

When people approach the work, they think it's a whole house on the roof, but when they go around the back, they actually see it's propped up like a set.

But it's so interesting to see such a traditional piece of Americana architecture found in the mid-West contrasted against the sleek New York skyline.

Kudos to Parker for thinking about all these aspects and tying them altogether to create an arresting image that's alternatively quaint and unsettling at the same time.

Transitional Object (PsychoBarn)

Look around and the house is actually a facade

Until October 31, 2016

The Roof Garden Commission

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

1000 Fifth Avenue

New York
(212) 535 1675

Unfinished Paintings Left to Imagination

Jan van Eyck's St Barbara is very detailed as a sketch

Yesterday before going to see The Met exhibit "Manus x Machina", we went to visit the new Met Breuer, which occupies the building where The Whitney used to be, on 75th Street and Madison Avenue.

The Met Breuer houses modern and contemporary art, and for its inaugural exhibition, the museum had an interesting show called "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible", on until September 4.

Leonardo's beautiful rendering of a woman

It's an interesting exhibition -- giving visitors a chance to look at paintings or works that aren't finished and try to figure out what the artists' intentions were.

There are 197 works on show, which is a lot to go through, but many of them are interesting and range from Leonardo da Vinci to Rembrandt to Manet, and Andy Warhol.

We were immediately mesmerized by Jan van Eyck's St Barbara made in 1437. The painting is hardly completed and yet the sketch is so detailed that it is beautiful in itself.

Nearby is Leonardo da Vinci's Head and Shoulders of a Woman (La Scapigliata), where the artist has drawn a graceful face of the woman with untamed locks that are not clearly executed, but leaves this to the viewers' imagination.

Just the face and lapdog missing here...

While many have the face or subject clearly defined and painted, leaving the background unfinished, the opposite is true of Anton Raphael Mengs' portrait Mariana de Silva y Sarmiento, Duquesa de Huescar.

Everything from the neck down is painted perfectly, but her face is rubbed out and even her lapdog is left blank. It's kind of disturbing not to be able to see her face, but interesting how the artist approached the painting and wasn't able to complete it.

There's a painting by Gustav Klimt, a posthumous portrait of Ria Munk III, who committed suicide after her fiance called off their engagement. Apparently he worked on her portrait twice before and the family wasn't happy with it and this was the third attempt, but Klimt died before he could finish it.

One has a good idea of what the painting would look completed, with the sumptuous and vivid colours coming through the canvas.

Klimt's beautiful portrait half finished

Paintings by JMW Turner are also in the show, a series of canvases that showcase his signature impressionist style, but they are so blurred that they don't even have any clues of where the painting is set.

On the second floor, the modern art is harder to figure out if it is "finished" or not. Most amusing is Andy Warhol's Do it Yourself (Violin), a paint-by-numbers canvas with only some parts coloured in.

We were pretty tired by the time we got to the second floor; thankfully there were fewer pieces there, but we were pretty brain dead by then.

Nevertheless we quite enjoyed the show. It turns out museums like The Metropolitan receive many works that are unfinished and this is a good opportunity for the museum to showcase these pieces to visitors, who rarely get to see them.

Andy Warhol's paint-by-numbers cheeky painting

They give some insight into the artists' intentions as well as technical artistic methods. Hopefully more curators will consider including these kinds of works when profiling artists or themes to give more depth to the exhibition.

Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible

Until September 4

The Met Breuer

945 Madison Avenue

New York

Fashion and Design, Handmade and Machine

A Dior dress on the left, Alexander McQueen on right

Today I went to see the annual fashion-related exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This year it's called "Manus x Machina: Fashion in an age of Technology". It showcases handmade clothes and those made by machine, from the 1920s until today.

They were divided into different sections focusing on lace, sequins, artificial flowers, feathers and beading, presented in a white austere looking room with mini arches that almost had a religious feeling, like worshipping the best of fashion.

Gareth Pugh's outfit made with sraws

Some had interesting juxtapositions, like a 1920s Chanel sequinned evening dress, and then two others of similar styles but from the 1990s and 2000s next to it to show how technology has enabled designers to make 3-D printed outfits.

There were some outfits that were totally out there -- like a dress made completely of black drinking straws that were individually hand sewn onto the fabric. Another was a black dress that had white delicate tulip-like flowers coming out of the dress and the edges of the petals connected with each other to create a kind of bubble over the black dress.

Admittedly I preferred many of the older designs, that were so elegant and stylish even today, while the newer ones seemed to be only made possible with technology, or used it to prove how far they could go in pushing design forward.

Many brand names were featured, from Chanel and Dior to Alexander McQueen, Prada and Yoji Yamamoto. There were a few Chanel wedding dresses designed by Karl Lagerfeld, one a winter dress that was covered in white sequins and camelias.

Ethereal wedding dress from Chanel

The highlight of the show was another wedding dress designed by Lagerfeld with a very long 20-foot-train covered in the most intricate beading with sequins and pearls in a computer-generated design, while the dress itself is relatively simple. My friend said it was the perfect outfit to wear for your coronation.

While we liked the outfits, and how they were put together, the atmosphere didn't encourage people to celebrate and have fun with the fashion. Instead it just felt very serious and almost austere.

What a pity, with such gorgeous clothes, to not be warm and inviting, and inspire the next generation of designers to push boundaries even further.

I missed last year's exhibition that was fashion inspired by China that I heard was a very good show, but my yardstick is the Alexander McQueen one that fascinated and amazed us with his creativity and innovation.

Avant garde Iris van Herpen

Manus x Machina: Fashion in the Age of Technology

Until August 14

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

1000 Fifth Avenue

New York

Tel: (212) 535 7710