It is not so rare while watching films by Pier Paolo Pasolini to spot what could be defined as "images within images", that is tableaux vivants inserted in the various scenes that call to mind paintings by Giotto, Bruegel, Vermeer or Bosch.
Author Antonio Costa in his writings about cinema and art, calls such moments "effetto dipinto" (painting effect), that he divides into two subcategories - "effetto pitturato" and "effetto quadro".
The former refers to painted settings and backdrops in films (think Meliès' Voyage dans la lune); the latter indicates instead the way specific paintings or compositions are just subtly evoked in a film, via colours, gestures, lights or shadows.
As Costa writes: "The frame evokes a painting; either because the film cites it explicitly, or it reproduces determinate chromatic or lighting effects or its spatial organization, or because the film imitates the statis or temporal suspension of the painting or it inscribes itself in the compositional or iconographic logic of a certain genre (for example the landscape, or the portrait, or abstract decorativism)."
You could easily apply Costa's "effetto dipinto" definition to the recent shows by Valentino: if you know your art references and have studied a bit the passions, obsessions and modus operandi of Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli, it becomes indeed almost easy to spot certain connections with art and illustrations.
Take Valentino's Haute Couture A/W 18 collection showcased at the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild in Paris during the local high fashion week.
Piccioli continued the solemn, almost sacred and divine moods that characterised the house's Haute Couture A/W 17 collection, but he injected into them a dreamy dose of heightened glamour.
The show opened with grand robes covered with appliqued motifs of animals and abstract patterns telling mythical stories; it moved onto more wearable day pieces such as blouses and pants matched with capes in luxurious fabrics and materials; continued with burnt gold thick brocade gowns accessorised with embellished Medieval caps and with dresses with golden and green intarsia birds that evoked Matisse's cut-outs, and closed with grand voluminous taffeta gowns in jewel colours such as aquamarine blue, emerald green, ruby red and fire opal.
Guido Palau's super glam coifs or floral headpieces, suspended between Sheila Legge, surrealist phantom, and Liz Taylor in 1968 Joseph Losey film Boom! completed the looks.
The standing ovation arrived at the very end with an emotionally charged finale with a soundtrack that featured Maria Callas singing "Un bel dì vedremo" from Giacomo Puccini's "Madama Butterfly".
In a way it was the soundtrack that triggered the memories and conjured up visions of the arty ghosts behind the collection. In the intarsia-ed and appliquéd capes and dresses, Piccioli included the story of Daphne and Apollo (a character that some of his seamstresses dubbed "Nino D'Angelo", after the Neapolitan crooner famous for his signature blonde moptop haircut...), Leda and the Swan, Europa and the Bull and Caravaggio's "Narcissus", reinterpreted as an abstract sketch.
Yet, when you thought about Costa's "effetto quadro" while listening to "Madama Butterfly", you immediately linked the opening robes not to legends and myths, but to Umberto Brunelleschi's illustrations for the sumptuously magnificent fable-like costumes for Puccini's "Turandot".
Piccioli is actually an opera fan and one of the pictures on his moodboard showed singer Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini on the set of Medea, a film that already served as an inspiration for Valentino's S/S 14 collection.
Yet the A/W 18 designs rather than moving from Medea, veered towards the first two parts of Pasolini's Trilogy of Life, with moods that seemed lifted from the painting-inspired moments or the costumes in The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales.
A grand red gown evoked the costume donned by Laura Betti as the wife from Bath in The Canterbury Tales, while one double-face pink and lame top with two long tails that extended from the shoulders called to mind Fra' Angelico's annunciatory angels in their pink robes and golden wings.
Architectural details weren't missing as proved by a pale pink gown with trompe l'oeil sculptural round elements that seemed anchored to the skirt of the dress, evoking a detail maybe borrowed from a Baroque palazzo or church in Rome à la St Charles at the Four Fountains.
Pure moments of fashion with winged gowns that called to mind the structure of grandiose dresses by Roberto Capucci were combined with Greek mythology, fables and religion in Piccioli's very own stream of consciousness (he cited Molly Bloom's soliloquy in James Joyce's Ulysses as an inspiration...).
The designer's instincts allowed him to combine impossible garments in the same outfit such as a billowing yellow taffeta shirt with olive green Bermuda shorts, or to include in the same collection sweeping green sequinned capes, shocking pink diaphanous ruffle dresses and exuberant coats, monumental plumed gowns, backless jumpsuits, glamorous lamé jackets, blouses that tied at the neck and asymmetrical capes-cum-scarves reminiscent of one or two designs seen on the Haute Couture A/W 17 runway.
The final voluminous tangerine gown made with 1,350 metres of fabric evoked visions of Max Ernst's surrealist "Attirement of the Bride" and provided careful observers with the final revelation.
The "effetto dipinto" in a film may prompt watchers to check upon a specific painting or discover what the director wanted to say by using it, and the way that work connects or speaks to a character, but in the aesthetic universe of fashion the "painting effect" as seen in this collection (but also in Valentino's Haute Couture A/W 17 designs) has a different meaning.
The moods, atmospheres and hues of different paintings get all mixed together on a runway, they are combined and confused, and their meanings or the metaphors they stand for dissolve, so that the "effetto dipinto" ends up offering an infinite visual contamination that has two very final aims - pleasure and desire.
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