When regarding an astonishing suite of twelve vestments (chasubles, dalmatics, etc.) given as a gift to Pope Pius IX in 1862 and richly embroidered with biblical scenes, from the Fall in the Garden of Eden to the Passion of Christ, other viewers may find themselves wondering about the nimble fingers that did the stitching. Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, gallery view, Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries for Byzantine Art. Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Fashion-glamorous and unobscured by the mists of time-sucked up all the attention. And in truth, no one, on the crowded weekend when I visited the Met, appeared to be looking at the little mosaic, beautiful and fragile. The former was destined for some worldly, glittering evening-a movie premiere, an embassy dinner, a hot night of dancing-while the latter was, in all likelihood, the object of private religious veneration. Divided into three parts, and between the Met Fifth Avenue and the Cloisters, it explores both the baroque Roman Catholic Church’s love affair with bling, as an expression of devotion and an aid to worship, and the inspiration twentieth- and twenty-first-century designers have drawn from Catholic iconography and from the ecclesiastical garments and monastic habits that serve to distinguish sacred from profane in real life.Īrt-lovers and churchgoers alike may be startled by the juxtaposition, in the Met’s Byzantine galleries, of a halter top by Gianni Versace (autumn/winter 1991–92), lavishly adorned with crystals and sequins that together compose the image of a Madonna fit for a basilica in Ravenna, with a miniature mosaic icon from the early 1300s, showing the Virgin Eleousa (the Virgin of Compassion), sharing a tender embrace with her infant son. Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, and the Met Cloisters, 99 Margaret Corbin Drive, New York City, through October 8, 2018įew exhibitions have the potential to offend as varied a public as Heavenly Bodies, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s current blockbuster, organized by curator Andrew Bolton. Lots of us had variety of thoughts and feelings that day during the exhibit.Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, gallery view, Medieval Sculpture Hall. 'Stop complaining, the life is too short!' That's what an old man told his lady, that was sitting right next to me. That kind of a religious journey is able to evoke the feeling of the sacrifice of the best that you have as an attempt to purify the soul. Those kind of gowns, together with the place where they were represented and skillfully done decorations, were very strong. In other words, by rethinking the past from the present moment and by making certain projections to the future, we are able to analyze the values, that make a progress of the society. And it can fulfill it with the new value. Those dresses were from the John Galliano's collection, by the way. When not everyone is allowed to do the same thing, and only certain amount of people, that are either rich enough or are members or certain society or club or what so ever, are able to get that unique access to something. It made me feel of some sort of excellency, that exists in our society. I deeply remember visits to the church in my childhood, when during the mess, there was always something that kept a secret in it, that you were not allowed to see it clearly. And here is the irony again: all those rules and restrictions. There were also 3 dresses right in the heart of the collection, that were not allowed to take pictures of.
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