"Catholics live in an enchanted world, a world of statues and holy water, stained glass and votive candles, saints and religious medals, rosary beads and holy pictures. But these Catholic paraphernalia are mere hints of a deeper and more pervasive religious sensibility which inclines Catholics to see the Holy lurking in creation," Father Andrew Greeley, states in his book The Catholic Imagination. Andrew Bolton, head curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, remembered Greeley's quote during the presentation of the exhibition "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and The Catholic Imagination" that took place at the Galleria Colonna in Rome in February.
Launched by the grand and lavish Met Gala last Monday, the exhibition has now opened and it is currently the most ambitious and largest The Met has ever undertaken. The event is conceived as a sort of pilgrimage for its visitors and covers 25 galleries with spaces designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
The journey starts in the Byzantine Galleries with Gianni Versace’s 1991 and 1997 collections inspired by the glittering micro-mosaics of the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna and with Dolce & Gabbana’s A/W 2013 2013 designs moving from the mosaics of the Duomo di Monreale in Sicily.
The Medieval Galleries offer the chance to explore the hierarchy of the Catholic Church through several designs, among them a red, silk taffeta evening dress from Pierpaolo Piccioli's Valentino Haute Couture A/W 2017 collection inspired by the great cape or "cappa magna" worn by cardinals for solemn liturgical occasions, plus several pieces from Alexander McQueen's last collection.
Among McQueen's designs there is a dress featuring details from Hieronymus Bosch's "The Temptation of St Anthony" and "Hell" (from the "Garden of Earthly Delights" triptych); another gown is inspired by Hugo van der Goes's "Portinari Triptych" while sections of Stefan Lochner's "Altarpiece of the Patron Saints of Cologne" are printed on a silk satin dress with a duck feathers underskirts and matching kid leather gloves.
The cult of the Virgin Mary is evoked by designs by Christian Lacroix, Thierry Mugler, and Jean Paul Gaultier. But visitors will probably be more fascinated by rather unusual vestments they may not see on the runways that were created for Madonna and Child statues by Yves Saint Laurent (for the statue of the Virgin of El Rocío in the Church of Our Lady of Compassion in Paris) or Riccardo Tisci (for the statue of Our Lady of Graces in the Parish of Saint Peter the Apostle in Palagianello).
The Robert Lehman Wing elevates visitors to the celestial realm with saints and angels through Elsa Schiaparelli's gown embroidered with the Saint Peter's keys and Roberto Capucci gold lamé and ivory silk taffeta "Angel of Gold" gown.
In the Met Cloisters visitors can instead get acquainted with garments inspired by Catholic monastic orders and with refined pieces by Madame Grès, Claire McCardell, and Cristóbal Balenciaga (the exhibition boasts the white choral robes Balenciaga designed for the Spanish choir Orfeón Donostiarra, one of the most prestigious amateur choirs in Europe, originally founded in 1897 - maybe the Met spotted the connection between the designer and the choir in one of our previous posts?).
Throughout these galleries the designs are shown alongside religious artworks selected by Griffith Mann, Curator in Charge of the Department of Medieval Art: sadly at times the artworks seem to be just elements that help creating a mysterious, Gothic and wonderful cinematic set or a beautiful fairy tale-like story rather than providing the context to the pieces.
One critique that can be moved to the exhibition is the fact that the selection mainly revolves around Haute Couture and grand designs to create a link with the pomp and circumstance of the Church (but streetwear has borrowed from religion as well...), and that many of the gowns included are by Wintour approved fashion houses, sponsors and American designers (see Rodarte, Versace, Thom Browne and Rick Owens...).
The most surprising pieces included in the event are the forty ecclestiastic papal vestments and accessories - pure masterworks of craftsmanship - from the Sistine Chapel Sacristy, many of which were never showed outside the Vatican.
Displayed in the Anna Wintour Costume Center to preserve an aura of sacredness around them, the objects – from mid-eighteenth to the early twenty-first centuries – include a cope donated to Benedict the 15th from the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and covered in intricate embroideries of the Agnus Dei and the Four Evangelists; twelve vestments commissioned by Empress Maria-Anna Carolina of Austria for Pius the 9th that required fifteen women over sixteen years to complete, and a papal tiara covered in precious stones given to Pius the 9th by Queen Isabella II of Spain.
At the press presentation that took place in February at Galleria Colonna in Rome, a location linked with the cultural and ecclesiastical tradition, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, current President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, seemed more fascinated about the event than Bolton himself.
As Donatella Versace, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Thom Browne and fashion devil Anna Wintour, sat in the front row, Ravasi analysed the power and the symbolism behind clothes, reminding his audience that God appears in the first pages of the Bible as creator and tailor, since in The Genesis we are told that he made tunics from the skins of animals for Adam and Eve.
Dissecting the meaning behind clothes, Ravasi looked at the different dimensions of clothes, moving from their most basic function that is protecting ourselves to a more symbolical one derived from the Latin vestis, and indicating the role and social function of the wearer (think about military uniforms or ecclesiastical garments). The cultural dimension regards instead the world we live in: our clothes do change according to the revolutions society goes through, but also ecclesiastical and liturgical vestments have adapted and mutated throughout the times as proved also by the sacred garments included in this event.
"The last dimension is the one touched upon by this exhibition and it is the sacred dimension," Ravasi stated in his presentation. "All religions have specific clothes and ornaments linked with celebrations and rites. Richly decorated liturgical vestments should never enter ordinary life as they point at a transcendental and mysterious dimension linked with God and therefore considered as marvellous, splendid and sumptuous."
To prove his point, Ravasi remembered the chasubles designed by Matisse for the Chapel of the Rosary of the Dominicans at Vence, a few miles west of Nice: complementing the interior decor of the chapel, the chasubles bring movement to the otherwise static environment and, when Picasso saw them, he stated they were not just sacred vestments, but butterflies flying in God's sky.
In your presentation at Galleria Colonna you stated that sacred vestments and symbols are strongly linked with the spiritual dimension and should therefore not to be donned outside of religious celebrations, but we have seen liturgical stoles and Sikh turbans on Gucci's A/W 18 runway, while Dolce & Gabbana turned papal tiaras into handbags and recreated the Fontana Sisters' pretino dress. Why do you think designers often employ religious symbols in their collections?
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi: It is not new for creative minds to use certain symbols in their works – think about Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" or Cattelan's Pope John Paul II lying on the ground struck by a meteorite. I think there is always a strong and at times innate desire to desecrate powerful symbols, a desire that could be deemed as instinctive, rebellious and even childish - if you think about a child who stubbornly does something that is stricly forbidden. Behind all this I can see a very subtle yet positive meaning: people tend indeed to desecrate only figures or symbols that they think are still important or powerful and, by doing so, they end up giving meaning to those symbols, they acknowledge their values. Nobody attacks the symbols of the Roman Empire, they may be grand, but you put them in a museum, you don't feel the need to wound or humiliate them. Religious symbols in an extremely secularised world are instead still important, that's why people feel the need to reference them in a positive or negative way. A while back I was in Munich for a series of lectures and they took me to an exhibition by a photographer who worked on the desacralisation and desacrating themes and who took pictures of walls from which crosses had been removed. Though the symbols weren't there they had left a shadow on the walls and I found that very significant, they proved indeed that the symbols had been physically removed, but they were essentially still there.
So, in your opinion, fashion designers do not use these images linked with religion as they are copyright free?
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi: Maybe there is also this aspect to consider, but I never thought about it, after all there are many other symbols that are not covered by copyright. But I do think that provocation remains the first and foremost reason why they use them so much.
Some people may consider fashion as unfitting to engage in a dialogue with religion: can Holy Couture and Haute Couture really live together or is there a risk in the case of this exhibition of critics accusing the Vatican of collaborating with an industry that revolves around materialistic values?
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi: Without a doubt we are entering in a world that represents in many ways the illnesses of our times: the emphasis on superficial or banal things, on the exterior, on the dimension of the so-called "nothing underneath", is obvious in fashion. For some people clothes are the most important thing in their lives and indifference and superficiality often reveal themselves as the dominating trends in our society. Yet the church must get in touch with this dimension, in the same way it must reach out to those places where there is the presence of evil, of negativity and corruption. When I lived in Milan I was often contacted by representatives of the fashion industry, after all there are people also in this industry who go through dramatic and traumatic human experiences and who may feel the need to come in touch with another reality - think about models who seem to lead a secular yet ascetic life that can end up being pretty brutal. The fashion industry is in search of beauty and this is one of the great values of the history of the church as well and I do feel that it is necessary to establish a connection between these two worlds, this is why I think this exhibition is very relevant for our times.
Yet you would agree that this view of luxury is very much removed from Pope Francis' vision of the church...
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi: This is an aspect that should certainly be considered. In the fashion industry there is a component of excess, of luxury for its own sake, and we must take into consideration these elements from a moral and religious point of view. But together with negative things there are also good things, as Saint Paul writes in the fifth chapter of the First Letter to the Thessalonians when he says "Put all things to the test: keep what is good" - and Saint Paul uses the expression τὸ καλόν that indicates the beautiful and in the language of the New Testament, the good. I think we could encourage big players in the industry to consider their vast riches and come up with interesting funding projects. For example, a while back I visited with a delegation of women from my ministry the women's prison of Rebibbia in Rome. Among the visitors there was also Lavinia Biagiotti, daughter of the late fashion designer Laura who was very religious, and we discussed the possibility of sending a dressmaker and some fabrics to the women serving in jail. I think these initiatives could be encouraged also in other environments and cases.
Will the profits from these loans be used by the Vatican for other projects?
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi: I don't know the details as this aspect was taken care of by the Sacristy of the Sistine Chapel, but when I was in Milan I made sure that whenever there were loans of materials that were paid for, the money would be used for specific aims such as restoration projects. I think in this case any profits from the loans may go to charitable projects by Pope Francis or again towards restoration projects. The latter are as important as the former: as that proverb says "if you have two loaves of bread, keep one to nourish the body, but sell the other to buy hyacinths for the soul", in a nutshell, food is important for physical nourishment, but so is something that can lighten your mood, make you happy and fill your heart with beauty.
While living and working in Milan, you often got in touch with fashion designers: did they show any genuine interest in religion or did they have any questions about life-related matters?
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi: I was often criticised by the media for my choice of looking not just at the religious horizon but for trying to go beyond certain borders and reaching out to dialogue with other worlds. I have recently developed for example an interest in genetics, AI and neurosciences as I think these are fundamental fields, because they are changing anthropology and human beings, and this is why I want to get in touch with representatives from these disciplines. I have always thought that it is important to learn from each other and dialogue, after all, as Plato says in Socrates' Dialogue a life without enquiry is not worth living. Whenever I met fashion designers I often found myself amazed when I discovered that the themes linked to the Gospels are very relevant for them, I think that the Gospel has still got the power to scandalise and provoke. We are living in a world in which there aren't distinct boundaries between the good and the bad and I think that the world of fashion incarnates and represents the general situation of this world. Scientists may have all the answers, fashion designers may have wealth and material things, but when an ecclesiastical figure speaks to them, they often ask you questions about the meaning of life, love, death, pain and sorrows. These are important issues also for fashion designers and this makes you think a lot because contemporary culture focuses on technological and scientific languages, but it looks like the languages that may provide us with higher answers come from the artistic and religious fields.
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