Paris Haute Couture: Daniel Roseberry's Sumptuous Surrealism at Schiaparelli

Daniel Roseberry's model muse Maggie Maurer wears his matador-inspired gold hat embroidered with crystals and pearls and bugle-bead encrusted jacket with a neckline shaped like two doves.

American designer Daniel Roseberry has created another dramatic and engaging haute couture collection for Maison Schiaparelli in Paris. His prodigious jewels and voluminous silhouettes command attention and elicit delight. The couturier marries the artistic avant-garde, integral to the history of the fashion house, with his modern and irreverent sensibility, writes Jeanne-Marie Cilento

Surrealist silver tromp l'oeil 

bustier worn with a 

black-fringed cape

DANIEL Roseberry's new haute couture collection for Schiaparelli is full of the Surrealist and experimental ideas that have always been a signature of the maison. Yet this is only the American designer's fourth season and his work has already made a significant impact not only on the House of Schiaparelli but on French couture. Lady Gaga even chose him to design her dress to perform at President Biden's inauguration in January.

The couturier's monumental, sculptural jewels and exuberant gowns and jackets are designed to arouse an emotional response and to make his work impossible to ignore or forget. Roseberry imagines each of the twenty-six looks as magazine covers and asks himself if they are visually striking enough to make the cut. 

Growing up in a Texan family of devoted Episcopalian ministers, his work is influenced by the ritual, grandeur and the garb of church ceremony. And although this may seem an unlikely background for a couturier at a storied French fashion house in Paris, he has galvanized the best of its European history and combined this with his American can-do-anything dynamism. 

Roseberry's ten years with outré American designer Thom Browne in New York also appears to have been a good grounding for heading a conceptual fashion label. At Schiaparelli, Roseberry's aim is to create impudent and modern designs with what he describes as a "barbaric" ethos all while using the talents and traditions of couture to make beautiful clothes. This is the first season, he says, that he has fallen in love with couture. For this collection, he was drawn to haute couture's most extravagant era in the Eighties and Nineties, using richly embellished embroidery and jewellery.

The designer's giant, sculptural bijoux and voluminous gowns are designed to arouse an emotional response and to make his work impossible to forget

Eighties matador with

silk sleeves embellished

with blue and gold eyes

"For two years, I’ve been saying that I didn’t care about nostalgia," Daniel Roseberry explains. "This season, though, it’s where it all started. I found myself wondering, again and again: what if you combined a little Manet; a little Lacroix; a little 1980s; a little 1880s; a little matador; a little space alien; a little Ingres; a little shimmer; a lot of color? Could I do it? And what would it look like?"

Eventually he decided to call this fourth couture collection, Matador Couture, and it is one that he says honors Elsa Schiaparelli's vision but isn't in a thrall to it. 

"If last season was about deconstruction, about pushing past the boundaries of what couture was, about trying to upend all its unspoken rules, about doing things we weren't 'supposed' to do; this season, I felt the freedom to make something fiercely, undeniably, unapologetically pretty ~ because sometimes you have to rebel against beauty in order to return to it."

The first look in the collection (see at right) is like an Eighties matador wearing a Basque jacket with exaggerated arms in Mikado satin and silks. The gold-thread embroidery, inspired by the Schiaparelli archives, includes ceramic blue eyes, gold pearls and rhinestones set against ochre and pink silk. The trousers are stretch lambskin in gold lamé and black. The dome-shaped hat is created from metalized perspex and has a quilted Shocking Pink satin lining. 

Roseberry says that a year ago he felt like he was designing for the apocalypse with the pandemic casting its sombre shadow across the world. But today he feels like we have survived and fashion will continue to thrive. The new collection, he says, represents a return to innocence and the joy that drove him to work in fashion.

"What if you combined a little Manet, a little Lacroix, a little 1980s, a little 1880s, a little matador, a little space alien, a little Ingres, a little shimmer and a lot of color?"

White denim cropped

jacket with embroidery

and Jet beading

"A year ago, I felt like I was designing for the end of the world," he says. "But the world didn’t end. We’re still here. Fashion is still here. Couture is still here. And not only is it still here, but in a world increasingly reliant on the easily replicable and the digitally disseminated, its power ~ to stop you in your tracks ~is greater than ever."

Roseberry explains that he wanted to return to the fashion he loved as a youth. "Blind nostalgia isn’t healthy: we can’t romanticize the past, especially when, for so many groups of people, the past wasn’t romantic at all. 

"But the gift of fashion is its ability to allow us to pretend, and that is its promise as well; if we dream hard enough, maybe we can will that beautiful past into existence." 

The latest collection was designed in three parts, with the first paying tribute to Schiaparelli jackets of the past, such as the iconic shapes of the white denim matador-inspired cropped jacket embellished with embroidered barrel sleeves and black silk tassels, worn over a structured tulle skirt (see above).

The short zipped jacket is embroidered with hand-crafted fringes and black rope fishnet embroidery while Jet beads trace the three-dimensional trompe l’oeil breasts in black resin and fabric. The swirling cords are created with black glass beads and pompons. The jacket is worn with the white tulle skirt edged in black and a wide-brimmed sombrero-style hat made from black Duchesse silk. Decorated with pearls and black Swarovski crystals, the hat rim is strung with small, hanging pompoms. Finishing the look are black satin mules adorned with Roseberry's signature golden toes with silver nails.

"A year ago, I felt like I was designing for the end of the world. But the world didn’t end. We’re still here. Fashion is still here. Couture is still here."

Pink silk roses and black wool

crepe mini-dress inspired

by Jean Cocteau

"This collection is unapologetically emotional, as giddy as falling in love. It is also a tribute to romance, to excess, to dreams, because really, is there anything more urgent today than dreaming big?" Roseberry asks. "Than dreaming of a better world? Of grabbing every piece of beauty with both hands?"

As a homage to an Art Deco evening coat designed by Jean Cocteau for Elsa Schiaparelli in 1937, Roseberry has created a black-wool crepe, curved-sleeved creation, heavily embroidered with dozens of shell-pink silk roses (see at right).

The wool dress has a black duchess satin embroidered in pink silk taffeta that refers to the original piece in the Schiaparelli archives. A turban in black felt and patent leather is worn around the head and over the ears. It is designed to mimic a scarf with two pieces of upturned fabric.

Roseberry's fashion manifesto is to bring new ideas and a flagrant beauty to his work. "Give me more beauty, more earnestness, more romance, more effort," he exclaims. "I hope this collection reminds everyone of the sheer delight that fashion can bring us in hard times, and with it, the promise of more joy when the clouds part."

He sees his work as being in conversation with Elsa Schiaparelli's most imaginative creations from the 1930s. The new collection uses Lesage, the same company she employed, to create the lavish embroideries also utilizing the the same techniques and materials. Even the first matador look is made of vintage Schiaparelli swatches that were collaged together. 

"This collection is unapologetically emotional, as giddy as falling in love. It is a tribute to romance, to excess, to dreams, because is there anything more urgent today than dreaming big?"

A Dadaist piece of

jewellery designed 

as human lungs

The second part of the collection focuses on the body and bijoux, as jewellery is a key element of the house’s visual vocabulary. The designer describes it as being a dialogue between hard and soft, machine and human, metal and fabric. 

"For example, the delicate pair of human lungs, seemingly crafted from a web of capillaries dipped in gold, worn atop severe black crepe gown," he explains (see at right). 

The long-sleeved dress is in wool crepe with a low-cut neckline. This is designed to reveal the gilded brass necklace in the shape of trompe l’oeil lungs. And these are further adorned with sparkling rhinestones, creating a Surrealist piece that also looks like branches or roots of a tree. 

For the designer, the jewels become the flamboyant embroidery. He uses all of the Schiaparelli tropes such as the nose, pairs of lips and ceramic eyes, made by hand in the fashion house’s Giacometti-inspired gold. The evocative and amusing accessories include a minaudiere shaped like a giant pair of lips and a striking and sleek belt clasp with a cast hand that appears to hug the wearer. 

Roseberry has used many upcycled materials for the collection, making each creation a one-off. A look created from a gilt body sculpture of flowers was made by artist Michel Carel and took several months to finish. The colour palette of the collection is equally bold mixing pink, lavender, cornflower blue, ochre and Elsa Schiaparelli's signature Shocking Pink. A black stretch velvet dress featuring a vivid pink silk faille rose (see below) links the brilliance and creativity of the Schiaparelli founder with Roseberry's contemporary take on Surrealism.

Short film in Paris at Schiaparelli's Place Vendome ateliers showing the new AW21 collection

Highlights from Schiaparelli's Autumn/Winter 2021 Haute Couture Collection by Daniel Roseberry 

Long-sleeved midi dress in stretch black velvet with a bateau neckline. Oversized flower petals in pink silk faille for a trompe l’oeil effect. Long earrings are in gilded and silver brass in the shape of a small flower and a large flower with suspended small black and white pearls. Black satin pumps with silk faille bows are adorned with golden toes bearing silver nails.

Handcrafted gilded brass jewellery bustier in the shape of a bouquet of flowers. Long skirt draped in black silk faille with coordinating stole.

Coat in mirrored silver calfskin. The waist is enhanced by a belt with a trompe l’oeil hand jewelry buckle, one in gold metal and the other in silver metal. The bag, in silvery smooth calfskin, is embroidered with pearl and gold Swarovski crystals. 

Bustier jewellery in epoxy gold and silver metal in shapes of body parts and animals to form a cross. Denim pants are embroidered with gold strass and gold thread while eyes are in resin. A jewel bag in gilded brass takes the form of a flower with a mouth in the middle. Black lamb d'orsay pumps adorned with gold toes with silver nails.

Short fitted coat in vintage leather patchwork with voluminous sleeves. The coat is closed with an offset zip on the right side, while the front is adorned with trompe l’oeil gilded brass jewel buttons in anatomical elements, including eyes and ears.

Fitted zipped jacket with exaggerated sleeves made from vintage denim jeans are embroidered with gold strass and thread, and rhinestones. Designs take shape in anatomical elements in resin, including nipples, eyes, mouths, and breasts. Embroidery includes three-dimensional padded flowers using lamé work, gold bulges, strass and beads. Spiral-cut breasts are made from gold lambskin. Leather stirrups in black stretch lambskin. A lip clutch with a removable chain is made from gilded brass with the interior in Shocking Pink. 

Fitted Basque jacket with exaggerated arms in various Mikado silks, satin, and faille weaves. Embroidery techniques are inspired by the Schiaparelli archives and include traditional volute in gold strass, gold pearls, rhinestones, lurex thread, multicolored thread embroidery in ochre silk faille, embroidered with gold thread spindle stretch lambskin in bi-colored lamé and black. Dome-shaped hat in vucum metalized perspex with quilted Shocking Pink satin lining. Black satin pumps with silk faille bows adorned with golden toes bearing silver nails.

Dress in black wool crepe with a yellow silk belt at the waist, topped with an exaggerated bubbled top in silver metallic eel. Gilded brass earrings in the shape of eyes with a large white plastic pearl as the pupil. Attached is a nose adorned with a septum piercing from which hangs a drop-shaped tassel with a white plastic bead.

 Long bubble dress in mauve taffeta with balloon sleeves. Worn with a shoulder bust in mirrored silver epoxy resin.

Mini dress in black silk chiffon with hangs by the stem of a gilded metal rod in the shape of a flower. Black satin mules adorned with golden toes bearing silver nails.

Denim pants are embroidered with gold strass and gold thread while eyes are in resin. Black lamb d'orsay pumps adorned with gold toes bearing silver nails.

Denim pants are embroidered with gold strass and gold thread while eyes are in resin. A jewel bag in gilded brass takes the form of a flower with a mouth in the middle. 

Strapless dress in wool crepe with a plunging heart-shaped neckline. Entirely lined with a pleated silk lurex made by hand for an exaggerated bubbled volume effect that redefines the dimensions of the silhouette.

Thigh-high boots in white stretch lambskin with a silver swirl platform are adorned with golden toes bearing silver nails.

Midi sheath dress in wool crepe, molded on an artisanal metal structure with fabric gazelle horns extending from the shoulders.Embroidered with filigree lamé thread, gold pearls, gold cut beads, handmade gold pompoms, and Swarovski rhinestones. Two trompe l’oeil nipple buttons are in gilded brass. A galette hat, made from black wool crepe, is embroidered with pearls and gold Swarovski crystals

Long dress in black wool crepe with a trompe l’oeil mouth bustier in orange silk with a matching train. Dangling earrings in gilded brass are composed of an eye with an iris in turquoise resin, a nose with a piercing from which hang two eyes in purple resin, and a mouth painted in red resin.

Strapless wedding dress in ivory silk taffeta with exaggerated volume created from hand-crafted pleating. The bustier is embroidered with rhinestones from pieces of hand-cut glass mirrors that are painted for an antique effect. Gilded brass earrings in the shape of a cross are formed by three teeth adorned with silver drops. 

Paris Haute Couture: Antonio Grimaldi

A black-velvet, mini-dress with voluminous sleeves and floating train embodies Italian designer Antonio Grimaldi's take on the Eighties for his new AW 21/22 collection. 

Today in Paris, the haute couture Autumn/Winter 2021/22 season opens with most couturiers showing digital presentations. Italian designer Antonio Grimaldi filmed his new collection in a vast, modernist space in Rome. Escaping the dour pandemic ethos, he was inspired by the glamour and fun of the 1980s with sculptured, diaphanous party gowns, writes Jeanne-Marie Cilento

Couturier Antonio Grimaldi with

his muse and model Anna Cleveland in Rome

THE setting for Antonio Grimaldi's digital presentation of his new haute couture collection for Autumn/Winter 2021/22 was a vast, modernist space in Rome. Turning away from the sombre atmosphere induced by the rolling waves of Covid-19, the couturier looked to the Eighties for inspiration. Grimaldi wanted his new collection to express that decade's glamourous hedonism. 

Called the "Ladies Club", he envisioned the collection as a women-only party that is festive yet dreamlike. His designs capture the essence of the Eighties but in a more sculptural, streamlined way with long capes and skirts. However, there is not a shoulder-pad in sight. 

Grimaldi also adds trains to some gowns to make the silhouette more dramatic, including on mini-dresses and as an extension to long, sinuous capes. 

 The designer's signature is an elegant and dynamic asymmetry, the austere line offset by curves and intricate embroideries, This season includes sculptural necklines mixed with asymmetrical openings on the front and plunging open backs. There are also one-shouldered bodysuits embroidered with crystal and covered with feathers. The collection's twenty-one looks feature cocktail and evening dresses worn with tall, metallic stiletto heels.

The palette ranges from black to glacial white and includes pale pinks, inspired by the aurora borealis, and heightened by fluorescent hues in lime green and light blue. Model Anna Cleveland, pictured with the designer above, is Grimaldi's muse for this season.

Turning away from the sombre atmosphere of the pandemic, the couturier looked to the Eighties for inspiration 

Sculptural curves and vivid colour

are signatures of the designer

Antonio Grimaldi says he always wanted to be a designer, since he was a child. He is passionate about art, fashion and in particular about craftsmanship. He learnt the secrets of couture in a small atelier in seaside Salerno, on the mountainous southern coast of Italy. Grimaldi started working with his mother and sister when he was 15 years old and later designed his sister’s wedding dress. 

In the summer, he started to go regularly to the atelier in Salerno because he wanted to learn about how to make beautiful clothes. The designer says when he was growing up in Italy, fashion school was only for women, so he went on to study graphics and art but was still determined to be a fashion designer.

 

He attended an art institute before learning more about the craftsmanship of fashion and tailoring. He completed his training when he moved to Rome and started to work in the studio of the historic fashion house, Fernanda Gattinoni.  

Today, he says that working with dressmakers early in his career taught him about textiles and the art of modelling designs to the body. He explains it was also very satisfying to work in an atelier, when he was young, where he was able to turn his sketches from dream to reality. Because the designer studied art rather than fashion, this is still an important aspect of his design philosophy for all of his collections. 

He learnt the secrets of couture in a small, family atelier in Salerno, on the mountainous southern coast of Italy

Asymmetry and beautiful tailoring

enhanced the fluidity and 

virtuosity of the new collection

In 1996, the designer became the co-founder of 'Grimaldi Giardina' and the collections were presented at Altaroma in the Italian capital. Emanuel Ungaro also encouraged Grimaldi to show his work during the haute couture week in Paris. 

In 2010, Grimaldi decided to created his own fashion house in his name. One of the highpoints of his career was being invited to show as a couturier during Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week. 

He says this is important from a business standpoint, as it provides the best fashion platform in the world to reach international buyers. Since 2017, he has been an invited member of the official couture calendar in Paris.  

During the initial phases of creating a couture collection, Grimaldi thinks about the mood of the collection and then does the sketches. Next the fabrics and textures are chosen but this changes as the design of a garment develops. 

Lastly are the modelling and cut of the gown that will eventually be seen in that season's show. The designer sees the process of creation as the same for both ready-to-wear collections and couture. However, he believes art is the sina qua non for designing haute couture. Artistic and conceptual ideas along with the marvellous hand-workmanship are essential to couture and separate it from all other forms of fashion.

Highlights from Antonio Grimaldi's AW 21/22 Haute Couture Collection 

Barcelona: Antoni Gaudi's Basílica de la Sagrada Familia

Looking up into the vertiginous nave of Antoni Gaudi's Basilica de la Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, the columns are designed to look like trees and branches

The first time John Willsteed saw the spectacular spires of Antoni Gaudi's Basílica de la Sagrada Familia, he was the bassist for the iconic Australian band the Go-Betweens in the eighties. Now a senior lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology's School of Creative Practice, his Spanish trip to revisit his favourite building was derailed by the pandemic and the ensuing travel restrictions

The fairytale Nativity facade 

of the Sagrada Familia 

with its soaring spires

WE hadn’t packed bags yet, but it was about all that was left to do. I had compiled playlists to keep me diverted, amused, energised on the long flights. We’d pored over pictures and hopeful descriptions of poky little apartments in the right places, or spacious, sleek pads too far away from the action. 

It took us three months to get the accommodation and the flights just so. The right amount of layover; the right seats for me and the kid and my sweetheart; the menus, the access options for my travelling companions and their idiosyncratic needs. 

 All the while, Antoni Gaudí’s dream cast its evening shadow over the park across the Carrer de la Marina. Darkening the playground, the streets of the Eixample and their endless cars; blurring the faces of the crowds that ebb and flow past and through the structure, dwindling at day’s end and disappearing into the larger tide of Barcelona at night. 

Since builders broke ground for the Basílica de la Sagrada Família under architect Francisco de Paula del Villar in 1882, the site has seen several architects and project managers. But Antoni Gaudí remains its creative heart. 

An otherworldly mix of styles 

When Gaudí turned his attention in 1909 to del Villar’s original neo-Gothic design, he mixed it with the organic flow of the Art Nouveau. Using intricate upside-down models, with weighted strings tracing parabolic curves, reflected in mirrors, Gaudí created his own style. 

 Gaudí sculpted rather than drew, creating apartments and parks and public buildings whose undulating lines and unexpected textures weren’t really seen again until Frank Gehry’s iconic structures, such as the Olympic Fish Pavilion and the Bilbao Guggenheim, both in Spain. Like the Sagrada Família, these buildings are otherworldly, seeming to exist outside both time and gravity. 

 A stop on tour 

Standing in the transept,

looking at the stained glass windows

The first time I saw the Basílica, it was a grey afternoon in late August, 1988. I was on vacation from touring as bassist with The Go-Betweens and fled London with a dear travelling companion to saunter/stagger through southern Portugal, then Lisbon and Spain. 

Brisbane friend Peter Loveday was “our man in Barcelona” and graciously led us through the town, cracking open each day as a fresh delight. I loved a wine, back in those days, and a beer. Prawns, vodka, gin and mussels. Barcelona was made of such treats, but the greatest treat was Gaudí. 

We lingered in the wonder of Park Güell, where architecture and nature entwine, and the view stretches south across the city to the blue of the Mar Balear. 

On the clearest of clear days you can see the mountains on Majorca. We were tourists visiting Casa Milà and Casa Batlló, dumbstruck by the extraordinary colours and finishes (lots of murals and tiles, cool to the touch on a hot afternoon), the bespoke furniture and fittings, and the opulent, sensual design of the facades and interiors. 

Towering scale 

A 2021 model showing the parts in brown

that have yet to be built

The Sagrada Família stood apart from these architectural treasures. On that August afternoon, the scale of the cathedral was staggering. Not just in size, towering over this five-storey city, but in the depth of detail. 

 The Basílica is based on a crucifix, with the two facades — the Passion and the Nativity — at the ends of the transept or crosspiece. Each of these facades is dense with sculpture — flowers, plants, animals, angels, saints and scenes from the Bible — and from each rises four belltowers. 

The spiral staircase inside the eastern belltower of the Nativity facade was worn smooth, a fractal path tracing the interior of a Nautilus shell. The towers are just over 100 metres tall (the central tower will top 170 metres when completed sometime after 2026). With little room for passing on the stair and no handrail, the experience was dizzying. 

We emerged into the afternoon high above the city, on a little bridge between the towers; the beginnings of the cathedral below us. We saw colourful glazes of the cimborio (domes or cups) capping the belltowers. The sight, as I later noted in my diary, brought tears. I’d been triggered by the vastness of the idea, the astonishing detail and the knowledge that Gaudí didn’t live to see it finished. 

God’s architect 

Gaudi's otherworldly basilica rises up 

amid the ordered streets of 

Barcelona's Eixample district

In June 1926, at the age of 73 and after almost two decades of working on the Basílica, Gaudí stepped into the path of a tram a few blocks from the cathedral. 

“God’s architect”, the Catalan Modernist, was buried in the underground crypt of the Sagrada Família below the Basílica he designed. I have returned to Barcelona a couple of times over the years but never to the Sagrada Família. Much has changed since the 31-year-old me climbed those stairs

The nave has been built, with towering columns and stained-glass windows. More bell towers rise above the street, with more to come. It is within a handful of years of being completed, hopefully by the 100th anniversary of Gaudí’s death.

Our carefully laid travel plans would have seen us arrive in Barcelona early in July 2020. The pandemic put those plans (and much else) on hold. I enjoyed the quiet but ache for the trip we had imagined. I think I’ve waited long enough for a second visit to my favourite building.

French Impressionism Exhibition Opens at the National Gallery of Victoria

One of the highlights from the French Impressionism show, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's Carmen Gaudin in the artist's studio (1888). Cover picture: Claude Monet, Grand Canal, Venice (1908). Photographs: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 

Melbourne's extended lockdown delayed the opening of the National Gallery of Victoria's major new exhibition of French Impressionism from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts collection. Now launched, the show features works by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro and Mary Cassatt, including paintings that have never been exhibited in Australia, reports Isabelle Lante Della Rovere

Claude Monet, Camille Monet and 

a child in the artist's garden 

at Argenteuil (1875).

Photo: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

BOSTON'S Museum of Fine Arts is well known for its rich holdings of Impressionist paintings. The loans for the National Gallery of Victoria's new show are from the American institution's celebrated collection and provide an opportunity to see many Impressionist masterpieces that have not been seen in Australia. 

Called French Impressionism, the exhibition will examine the late-nineteenth century artistic movement, highlighting the milestones and key figures at the centre of this period of experimentation and revolution in modern art. 

The display of more than one hundred paintings and works on paper showcases the breadth of the Impressionist movement and evokes the artistic energy and intellectual dynamism of the period. The show aims to present some of the thoughts and observations of the artists themselves and look at the social connections, artistic influences and personal relationships between them. 

 ‘Paintings by the Impressionists are beloved world-wide for the artistic innovation and visual curiosity they represent, as well as for their breath-taking use of colour,'' said Tony Ellwood, director of the National Gallery of Victoria. 

"This exhibition will give audiences the extraordinary opportunity to study more than 100 masterworks up-close, including Monet’s radiant scenes of the French countryside, and to discover the truly revolutionary origins of this important moment in modern art history. "

Paintings and works on paper showcase the breadth of the Impressionist movement and evoke its artistic energy and intellectual dynamism 

Claude Monet, Meadow with poplars (c.1875).

Photo: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Presented thematically across ten sections, the exhibition will open with early works by Monet and his forebears, Eugène Boudin and painters of the Barbizon School, illustrating their influence on Monet’s use of the then radical method of painting outdoors en plein air (‘in the open air’) to capture changing conditions in nature. 

The growth of the movement is examined by exploring the key subjects and ideas of the Impressionists. 

"The Museum of Fine Arts' collection of Impressionist paintings has the unique capacity to narrate the history of French Impressionism with nuance, depth and flare,'' comments Tony Ellwood. "This is the first time the MFA Boston has lent such a large selection of works to Australia. A thematic presentation of this calibre and breadth will not be seen here again for many years." 

Designed as an immersive exhibition, the audience will be able to see the distinctive brushwork and use of colour along with places important to the artists, such as Paris, Fontainebleau Forest, Pontoise, Giverny, the Normandy coast and the South of France. Artists were also interested in exploring new ways of painting movement and the changes in urban and domestic settings at the end of the 19th century. Still life paintings, intimate interiors and street scenes by such artists as Manet, Renoir and Gustave Caillebotte are featured too. 

The broader themes of the exhibition are mixed with looking at how the artists work, including Renoir and his experimentation with pictorial effects in the 1880s, as well as Pissarro and his role as mentor to a number of other artists. 

"This is the first time the MFA Boston has lent lent so many works to Australia. A show of this calibre and breadth will not be seen here again for many years." 

Claude Monet, Water Lillies (1905).

Photo: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

A highlight of the show are sixteen canvases by Claude Monet, curated like the dramatic gallery Monet helped design for his famous Water Lilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie, in Paris, between 1922 and 1926. 

Painted over a thirty-year period, these paintings depict many of Monet’s most beloved scenes of nature in Argenteuil, the Normandy and Mediterranean coast and his extraordinary garden in Giverny. Together, these paintings demonstrate the full scope of the artist’s contribution to the Impressionist movement. 

 MFA Boston’s collection of French Impressionism benefitted from the collecting efforts of individual Bostonians, some of whom visited the artists in France during the movement’s height. Mary Cassatt, an American-born artist integral to the French Impressionist movement and whose work is featured in the exhibition, encouraged fellow Americans to buy the works of her French colleagues, ensuring that many great Impressionist paintings found their way into important American collections. 

The Museum of Fine Arts was founded in 1870 and stands on the historic homelands of the Massachusett people, a site which has long served as a place of meeting and exchange among different nations. The museum finally opened its doors to the public in 1876 at its original location in Copley Square. 

A highlight of the show are sixteen canvases by Monet depicting his most beloved places in Argenteuil, his garden at Giverny and the Normandy coast

Vincent Van Gogh, Houses at Auvers (1890).

Photo: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

In 1909, the MFA moved to its current home on Huntington Avenue. Today, the museum houses a collection of 500,000 works of art, from the ancient to contemporary. For the past fifty years, the museum has shared its remarkable collection and curatorial expertise with audiences around the world through traveling exhibitions.

"We are delighted to share these iconic works with the people of Australia, so that they may experience this transformational moment in the history of art," said Matthew Teitelbaum, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts. 

"French Impressionism highlights artists and their relationships, their shared ambition and mutual support, ideals that are reflected in our relationship with the National Gallery of Victoria," 

"Our mutual endeavor has been one of vision, creativity and collaboration. This exhibition is a joyous celebration of our connections and a reminder that individuals and institutions thrive through reciprocity and generosity. "

 

French Impressionism is open at the NGV International, St Kilda Road, Melbourne, Australia. 

Frick Madison Opens in New York

One of the highlights at Frick Madison, is this striking portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence of the fashionably-dressed Julia, Lady Peel (1827). The Frick Collection, New York. Photograph: Michael Bodycomb

New York's Frick Collection is now housed at Marcel Breuer's signature Mid-Century Brutalist building. Called Frick Madison, it is the museum's temporary home for the next two years while the historic Gilded Age mansion undergoes an extensive renovation, reports Antonio Visconti 

The hulking form of Marcel Breuer's

Brutalist mid-century building

that houses the Frick Madison 

Photograph: Joe Coscia

THE opening of Frick Madison in New York is the first time the Frick Collection has been seen outside the walls of its elegant Manhattan mansion at 1 East 70th Street. The collection's new home features masterpieces from the museum including works by Bellini, Gainsborough, Goya, Holbein, Ingres, Rembrandt, Titian, Turner, Velázquez, Vermeer and Whistler.

Rehousing the collection at Frick Madison has allowed the curators to design dramatic new installations to show the art works. They have also been able to display rarely seen paintings, such as the series by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, that have never been shown together. 

The Frick Madison is situated at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street. The striking  Brutalist building was designed in 1966 by Bauhaus architect Marcel Breuer and was originally commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art. 

“We are thrilled that the public can continue to enjoy these great works of art from our collections during a time when they otherwise would be inaccessible as we renovate and enhance our home at 1 East 70th Street," says Ian Wardropper, the Frick's director. "The minimalism of Marcel Breuer’s mid-century architecture provides a unique backdrop for our Old Masters, and the result is an experience  that our public is sure to find engaging and thought-provoking.”

Frick Madison features highlights from the collection including works by Bellini, Goya, Gainsborough, Rembrandt, Titian, Turner, Velázquez, Vermeer and Whistler

James McNeill Whistler's

Symphony in Flesh Colour

and Pink: Portrait of 

Mrs Frances Leyland (1871)

The Frick Collection, New York

Photograph; Joe Coscia

Marcel Breuer’s austere stone and concrete building is a very different museum experience compared to visiting the Frick’s elegant Beaux Arts mansion. The Frick's curators have tried to use the Modernist setting as an opportunity to present the collection in a new way.

However, the design of the gallery spaces at Frick Madison reflect the museum’s traditional emphasis on a more personal experience of art and architecture. 

Instead of replicating the mansion’s domestic display, the new installation emphasizes Breuer's architecture and its forms and materials. It is stark and without the familial warmth of the Frick mansion but it is nevertheless interesting to see the works in a new  context. 

The renovation and expansion of the Frick Collection's elegant mansion is the first for more than eighty-five years. Selldorf Architects say they want to honor the architectural legacy and unique character of the Frick while offering greater access to the original 1914 home of Henry Clay Frick.

The architects are planning to preserve the beloved galleries for which the Frick is known. However, it will be interesting to see if this is the eventual outcome. Often comprehensive renovations destroy the soul and atmosphere of historic buildings. The architects say the new design will also add more spaces for permanent collection displays and special exhibitions, conservation, education and public programs. 

The renovation and expansion of the Frick Collection's Gilded Age mansion is the first for more than eighty-five years.

Bellini's St Francis in the Desert.
one of the Frick's most beloved works  
lit by Marcel Breuer's trapezoidal window.
Photograph: Joe Coscia

The hulking Frick Madison building, has retained the signature trapezoid windows designed by Marcel Breuer  and these provide a contrasting background for the collection's masterpieces. 

Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert is considered to be the greatest Renaissance painting in America and it is one of the most prized at the Frick. 

Today, the painting can be seen next to a  deep-set Breuer window, which allows the natural light of Manhattan to merge with the divine light depicted in the painting. 

Visitors are able to see the work and contemplate the complexities of meanings hidden within this cool, spartan space. The original position the painting held in the mansion, dominating a wall in the Living Hall, showed its importance to Henry Clay Frick. 

“From the very beginning we sought to marry our holdings with Marcel Breuer’s great modernist building, with the intention of revealing the Frick’s strengths in a new way, while inspiring fresh conversations and observations," comments Xavier F. Salomon, deputy director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator.

"Throughout the installation, we’ve maintained the core value of the Frick experience: offering visitors the opportunity to study works of art in a direct and immediate way, surrounded by a beautiful and peaceful environment. Rather than trying to recreate the rooms of the mansion, we celebrate this architectural icon, hoping audiences emerge with new understandings of both its features and spaces, and of our remarkable and very distinct collection.” 

"The minimalism of Marcel Breuer’s mid- century architecture is a unique backdrop for our Old Masters, providing an engaging and thought-provoking experience."

Hans Holbein the Younger's iconic 

portrait of Sir Thomas Moore, (1527)

The Frick Collection, New York

Photograph: Michael Bodycomb

Three floors of the Breuer building are devoted to the collection with the paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts organized by time period, geographic region and media. 

There are galleries dedicated to Northern European, Italian, Spanish, British and French art and with some rooms featuring individual artists. The layout highlights the Frick's strengths in particular schools and genres 

The curators hope the new installation will reveal unexpected relationships between subjects and artists and the different mediums of art works.

Holbein’s iconic portraits of Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell hang together, alone, without other works; here the famously oppositional figures  confront each other in a way that was not possible at the mansion. 

On the second floor, Northern European paintings represent modern-day Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. These works share the characteristics of

precision and highly naturalistic depictions of their subjects, ranging from Memling’s and Holbein’s contemporary sitters to Van Eyck’s and David’s religious figures to Bruegel’s sinewy soldiers. 

Three stunning paintings by Rembrandt, his Self-Portrait, that of Nicolaes Ruts, and the enigmatic Polish Rider, are shown side by side. Nearby are the Frick’s three Vermeers, genre scenes of men and women presented within domestic interiors. These panels are seldom shown in such unmediated proximity, and here surround you on three walls. 

The curators hope the new installation will reveal unexpected relationships between subjects and artists and different media

Three of eight portraits by Van Dyck,

exhibited at  Frick Madison

Photograph: Joe Coscia

For the first time, the Frick's collection 

of eight full and half-length portraits by Van Dyck, spanning all periods and geographic locations of his oeuvre, are displayed together in one room. 

Portraits by Frans Hals are presented nearby, in addition to landscapes by Hobbema and Ruysdael, which evoke the lyrical beauty of the countryside of the Low Countries.

One floor above, the Italian and Spanish schools are displayed. Diminutive gold ground panels by early Italian religious artists including Cimabue, Duccio, and Piero della Francesca come together in a smaller, more intimate gallery. Such panels are found in very few collections across the United States and particularly represent the taste of Helen Clay Frick, the daughter of the museum’s founder and founder of the Frick Art Reference Library and a longtime Trustee of the institution. 

In a central cross-shaped space, there are the grand Renaissance works collected by Henry Clay Frick, including paintings by Titian, Bronzino and Veronese. The monumental pair of canvases by Veronese has left the walls of the Frick’s West Gallery only once during the past century. 

For the first time, the Frick’s eight portraits by Van Dyck are displayed together in one room. 

One of the great 18th century pastel artists,

Rosalba Carriera's Portrait of a Man

in Pilgrim's Costume (1730-1750).

The Frick Collection, New York

Photograph: Michael Bodycomb

The display of Italian work continues on this floor with Venetian eighteenth-century paintings by Guardi and Tiepolo. Two recent acquisitions are also on view: a stunning pair of portraits by Rosalba Carriera, one of the most important eighteenth-century pastel artists, who worked in Venice. 

Finally, an unprecedented arrangement of nine Spanish paintings by Velázquez, Murillo, El Greco, and Goya ~ works typically scattered throughout the mansion ~ shows Henry Clay Frick’s great interest in Spanish masters. 

There are also fine English landscapes by two great masters of the genre  ~ Constable and Turner ~ together representing a critical moment in early nineteenth-century British painting. 

Constable’s naturalistic, nostalgic depiction of the English countryside contrasts with Turner’s bustling French harbors. Frick Madison's installation offers a distillation of the period, when these contemporaries attempted to define modern painting, offering profoundly opposing approaches. 

On the fourth floor of the Breuer building, visitors will find the work of British and French artists, represented through Henry Clay Frick’s love of portraiture, landscape painting, and sculpture. Paintings from the British School are by far the best represented in the Frick’s holdings, a fact that was not as apparent until now, since previously these works were dispersed throughout various rooms of the historic mansion. 

Two recent acquisitions are on view: a stunning pair of portraits by Rosalba Carriera, an  important eighteenth-century Venetian artist

The Frick Collection has striking works 

of British portraiture, including the two  

paintings above by Reynolds, flanking  

a view of Constable's White Horse 

 Photograph: Joe Coscia

Hung together at Frick Madison for the first time, seven canvases by Gainsborough (the largest collection of the artist in any New York Museum) are shown alongside portraits by Hogarth, Lawrence, Reynolds, and Romney, together representing nearly one hundred years of remarkable British portraiture. 

Another gallery on this level features four, full-length portraits by American-born James McNeil Whistler, the London-based artist who is the best represented in the Frick’s holdings. 

These works, loved by New Yorkers, have often been relegated to storage to make room for major special exhibitions, an issue the renovation will solve with the addition of a new gallery.  

The fourth floor also offers a focused look at the Frick’s French works, represented by eighteenth-century artists Boucher, Chardin, Greuze, and Fragonard. Of particular note are the fourteen paintings of Fragonard’s Progress of Love series, now displayed together for the first time in the museum’s history. 

There are also three decorative panels of hollyhocks, which have been in storage much of the time since Mr. Frick purchased the cycle for his home in 1915. At Frick Madison the series is displayed to reflect its history, as it was created during two distinct campaigns, twenty years apart. The initial four canvases (1771–72) are shown for the first time in the original sequence envisioned by the artist when they were commissioned by Louis XV’s mistress Madame du Barry. 

The seven canvases by Gainsborough are hung together and represent the largest grouping of his paintings ever shown in any New York museum

Four grand panels of Fragonard's

Progress of Love series

shown at the Frick Madison,

illuminated by another of

Marcel Breuer's spectacular

trapezoidal windows.

Photograph: Joe Coscia

They are shown in a gallery approximately the same size as their intended home outside Paris, overlooking not the Seine River but Madison Avenue, illuminated by another one of Breuer’s large, deep windows. 

In an adjacent room are the ten canvases painted by Fragonard twenty years after the original four, together in an arrangement that was never possible in the mansion, owing to space constraints. 

Punctuating this installation is a dramatic wall that gathers together the full set of Fragonard’s cupid-themed overdoors. 

Succeeding generations of French masters including Ingres, David and others are featured in another gallery. A Barbizon landscape by Corot leads to the final gallery that displays some of the most modern works in the collection, Manet’s Bullfight and Impressionist canvases by Degas, Monet, and Renoir.

While the Frick is home to one of the most significant collections of sculpture and decorative arts in the United States, interest in the collection has been dominated by the paintings in its lavish reception rooms. Within the context of the mansion, the Frick’s impressive sculpture can sometimes be perceived merely as decorative when viewed head-on in front of a painting, while its decorative arts collection can go unnoticed. 

At Frick Madison, sculpture and decorative arts are presented independently, as works of art in their own right. To highlight the importance of these works, the first object the visitor encounters on each floor of Frick Madison is a sculpture. 

The Frick is home to one of the most significant collections of sculpture and decorative arts in the United States 

Jean Barbet, Angel, (1475)

Second floor of Frick Madison, 

the temporary new home 

of the Frick Collection.  

Photograph: Joe Coscia 

On the second floor, which is dedicated to Northern European art, the Barbet Angel is given centre stage in a room of its own. Often overlooked amid the lush plantings of the Garden Court, the Angel is one of the Frick’s most famed works and possibly the only monumental fifteenth-century French bronze sculpture in existence, as most large French metalwork from that period was melted down during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. 

Cast by a cannon maker, the Barbet Angel stands atop a column, which invites visitors to move around it, to enjoy and appreciate the sculpture from all sides. Installed at Frick Madison, the Angel provides a new introduction to the collection, as well as showing the importance of its sculptures. 

 A third-floor gallery is dedicated entirely to works in bronze. Straying from the sparseness of the Frick Madison display, this space evokes a fifteenth studiolo and features a selection of the finest bronzes acquired by Henry Clay Frick from J. P. Morgan’s estate in 1916.

At the Frick mansion on East 70th Street, bronze statuettes have often been displayed to ornament the furniture; at Frick Madison, they are arranged in dialogue with each other, enabling visitors to study them closely. 

Also on prominent view for the first time is Francesco da Sangallo’s St. John, the artist’s only signed bronze and the only such statuette at the Frick that was made to decorate a church. Designed to crown a marble font in Santa Maria delle Carceri in Prato (near Florence), the statuette is shown at Frick Madison in a way not attempted in the residential backdrop of the mansion.

The third floor includes a series of galleries devoted to decorative artworks, curated in dramatic displays quite different to the domestic setting in which they are usually seen at the mansion. Concentrated groupings of clocks and Limoges enamels offer a fresh focus on lesser-known collections from the Frick’s holdings. Another space features prized seventeenth-century Indian carpets, not shown on the floor as “furnishings,” but hung on the wall in the manner of paintings nearby. 

Jean Barbet's Angel is one of the Frick’s most prized works and possibly the only monumental fifteenth-century French bronze sculpture in existence

A dramatic display of European 

and Asian porcelain (c.1500-1900).

with an 18th century 

French cabinet below.

Photograph: Joe Coscia

Particularly arresting is a gallery displaying floor-to-ceiling porcelain organized by color, rather than by function, origin or the date of manufacture. This presentation shows how strongly influenced European firms such as Meissen and Du Paquier were by earlier and contemporary Asian wares. 

The confluence of East and West is further amplified by Baroque furniture. Examples by Boulle and the van Riesenburghs feature ebony, tortoiseshell, and repurposed Japanese lacquerware, materials available through emerging global trade networks. 

 Also on the fourth floor are several fine examples of important French eighteenth-century furniture and ceramics, including the stunning fall-front desk and commode made for Marie- Antoinette by royal cabinetmaker Riesener, often overlooked in the mansion by the nearby Vermeers. And a remarkable marble and gilt-bronze table by Gouthière that is normally overwhelmed in the mansion display by the Ingres portrait, traditionally installed above it.  

This installation also shows several of the museum’s most important examples of early Sèvres porcelain, including the recently acquired Vase Japon and a pair of candelabra by Gouthière. 

The Frick Madison allows New Yorkers, and those travelling from further afield, to see a vividly and thoughtfully curated collection of both the Frick's masterpieces and rarely-seen works, in a spectacular mid-century building. It is an experience not to be missed.

 Frick Madison is located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street, New York, NY 10021. Museum Hours: Thursday ~ Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.; closed Monday ~ Wednesday. 

What pictures do we take with our phones?

A guest takes photographs with his phone at Guo Pei's Spring Summer 2018 show in Paris. Picture above and cover, shot at Jean Paul Gautier's AW19 haute couture show, both by Elli Ioannou for DAM.

Last year we took more than 1.43 trillion photographs with our camera phones. American academic Dr T.J. Thomson studied thousands of phone images to discover what we photograph the most, revealing insights about who we are and what we value in society

Last year we took around 1.43 trillion

photographs on our phones. 

Photograph: T.J Thomson

ALTHOUGH we take a staggering number of photos each year (an estimated 1.43 trillion in 2020), we share relatively few of these and are using our cameras in different ways compared to the days of film. 

Analysing how we use our camera phones, which are responsible for 90.9% of all photographs taken, and the images we share with them can reveal important insights about who we are and what we value. 

I examined the lifecycle of a pool of about 5,000 images taken by more than a dozen people living in Australia to see what they photographed, “screenshotted”, and shared in a four-week period in early 2019. I also interviewed these amateur photographers about how they used their phones to make images. 

Women versus men 

On average, one in four images on our smartphones is a screenshot, of say, a social media post or recipe. And out of every four images, about 1.74 are of objects, 1.07 are of humans, 1 is of the built or natural environment, and just .18 are of animals. (The missing .01 percent are indeterminate because they are either underexposed or blurry). 

According to the study, 

women are more 

likely to have themselves

photographed than men.

Photograph: Elli Ioannou

Women and men seem to use their camera rolls differently. Women in the study were much more likely to photograph themselves or have themselves photographed. They took selfies 8.6 times more often than men and were photographed 3.5 times more often than men. Women documented their possessions 5.4 times more than men. 

Meanwhile, men were more than twice as likely to photograph strangers, such as passersby on the street, tourists, or crowds at gigs, beaches or parks. 

A consistent look

Only 6.5%, on average, of the overall image pool was shared by its owner on social media. Thus, the vast majority of images remained on participants’ camera rolls. When they did share, nine out of 10 users shared to a single platform. 

Instagram was the most popular sharing platform, followed by Snapchat and then Facebook. Participants were keen to share visual media with common reference points ~ presenting a consistent aesthetic motif to their followers ~ and images they considered flattering. 

Backstage at Guo Pei's

SS18 show where models use their

phones to capture their experiences.

Photograph: Elli Ioannou

Why people take photos 

Interviewees told me they whipped out their camera phones for five primary reasons. 

 1. Making memories 

The urge to hold onto experience is strong. As one participant put it: “I’m getting ready to move so I’m just trying to get as many memories of my dogs as possible.” Another participant, prompted by a photo they’d taken, added: “I was out with my family going bowling and I took this because I wanted to have something as a reminder of that.”

 2. New experiences, rare treats or first times 

 These experiences included major milestones, such as the first day at university or moving into a new home, as well as more banal and everyday activities, such as when a normally busy space was uncharacteristically empty. One participant remembered: "This, I sent it [a photo of me working on my laptop in a coffee shop] to my friend and said, ‘I’m here’. It was a Polish coffee shop and no one else was there. No other customers and I thought it was kind of funny."

 3. Ideas and inspiration 

 Some users took screenshots of tattoos they wanted to get, while others captured recipes, people posing, or arrangements of objects they liked. One interviewee said: "I’ll often screenshot photos of influencers I follow to try to copy makeup looks, outfits, how they edit their photos, that kind of thing."

 4. Evidence and receipts 

 Phones were handy to document rental car damage, a builder’s progress, or dubious social media claims. One man noted: "There’s a group in my hometown called ‘[Redacted] Whispers’ and this person was telling a story and it reminded me of a video I had seen and I questioned the authenticity of it … I don’t remember if I shared it to anyone. I just remember taking the screenshot to prove, if need be, that I didn’t believe it."

Actors Julianne Moore and Kirsten Stewart

shot at the AW18 Chanel show. Phones

crowd the air, held high during fashion shows.

In the past, it was only professional photographers.

5. Communication aids 

 When a contact asks, “Where are you?” or “What are you doing?”, some camera phone users reported they simply take a picture of their location or themselves and send it in response instead of typing a reply. It’s just easier to send a photo than to explain. 

Our changing visual values 

That participants used their smartphones most often to document objects is a testament to how digital technology has changed what we visually value. Where once pictures of loved ones and travel destinations filled photo albums and scrapbooks, our camera rolls are now filled primarily with mundane and quotidian objects. 

Humans came a distant second and environments came in an even more distant third. This indicates we’re using our smartphones for more functional purposes, such as screenshotting a work roster or timetable, compared to when we used cameras for more primarily aesthetic or relational purposes. 

But when it comes to sharing, we still value human connection and disproportionately share images of humans over things or places. As the number of images taken in 2021 is expected to grow again, consider what you photograph and screenshot in the coming year and what this reveals about yourself, your place in society, and your values.

Dr T.J. Thomson is a Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication and Media at Queensland University of Technology