Text by Mary Gregory, Photos by Adel Gorgy
It’s rare for America’s largest art museum to design and present a show about the influence of Catholicism on the imagination. It’s rarer still for it to be a fashion exhibition. Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination is the first of its kind. Through October 8th, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art brings together an historic loan from the Vatican of some 50 papal robes and accessories with approximately 150 items of contemporary high fashion.
A Balenciaga Wedding Ensemble in the Fuentidueña Chapel at The Cloisters
Every year, on the first Monday in May, a stretch of Fifth Avenue is capped with a huge white tent, covered with red carpet, and studded with stars from the music, entertainment and fashion industries. It’s called the East Coast Oscars and has just as much star power and glitz as Hollywood’s version. The Met Gala inaugurates the annual exhibition of fashion at the Met’s Costume Institute. Previous exhibitions have focused on individual designers, fashions from geographical regions, or the interplay of technology and clothing. This time, the influence of Catholicism is the lens through which fashion is viewed.
“The Catholic imagination is rooted in and sustained by artistic practice,” stated Daniel Weiss, president of the Met. Indeed, in earlier ages, many of the faithful couldn’t read and didn’t speak Latin. They knew stories of the Bible and lives of saints primarily through the paintings, statues and stained glass windows in churches and cathedrals.
“Wedding Ensemble,” 2005-6, in white silk tulle by John Galliano for Dior at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination is the museum’s largest exhibition to date, covering some 60,000 feet across 25 separate galleries in two buildings: the Met Fifth Avenue and The Cloisters. It’s one of the most visited exhibitions in the museum’s history. Mannequins dressed in contemporary clothing intermingle with religious and secular art from the Renaissance and Middle Ages. Masterpieces from the Sistine Chapel sacristy, many on view for the first time outside the Vatican, fill the Costume Institute’s separate galleries.
A procession of Dolce & Gabbana ensembles recalling religious mosaics at the Met’s Galleries for Byzantine Art
The exhibition creates conversations across time. It’s filled with extraordinary art, history, fashion, ecclesiastic objects, ideas and questions. The opening pieces juxtapose the Met’s Byzantine mosaics, metalwork and jeweled manuscript covers with five dresses from Dolce & Gabbana that recreate, in fabric, crystals and beads, mosaics of saints from a Sicilian cathedral. A procession of mannequins leads to the medieval hall, familiar to those who’ve visited the museum’s Christmas tree and crèche. Those galleries are now filled with religious statues, reliquaries, chalices, crosiers, tapestries and illuminated Bibles joined with cutting edge fashion.
A Thom Browne ensemble at the Met’s Heavenly Bodies
A medieval limestone sculpture of Saint Mary Magdalene, her head wrapped in cloth, looks strikingly related to a nearby trio of contemporary ensembles topped by voluminous hats and wimples by designer Thom Browne. Metallic ornamentation on a gown by Jean Paul Gaultier pays homage to Saint Joan of Arc.
An Yves Saint Laurent statuary vestment for the Virgin of El Rocío, ca. 1985
A devotional practice of dressing statutes of the Madonna and Child has been taken up by designers like Yves Saint Laurent and Riccardo Tisci. Tisci’s lavishly embroidered sky-blue silk cape for the statue at the Parish of Saint Peter the Apostle in Palagianello, Italy and Laurent’s from the Chapel of Notre-Dame de Compassion in Paris are highlights of the show. Among works by contemporary designers and artists finding inspiration in Catholicism are a chasuble by French artist, Henri Matisse, for his last great creation, the Chapel du Rosaire in Venice, and a Valentino black cape dotted with gold stars inspired by an icon of the Madonna of Cz?stochowa.
Gallery view with a Christian Lacroix wedding ensemble in the Met’s Medieval Hall
The placement of the works, traveling between rooms and epochs, is meant to suggest a pilgrimage, and treasures of the Vatican Collections from 15 papacies crown the exhibition. A gloriously embroidered Cope of Benedict XV, a jeweled tiara of Pius IX, and the Mitre of Pius XI are among the masterworks on view.
The Cloisters’ Romanesque Hall with Viktor & Rolf’s 1999-2000 Ensemble
The Met exhibition offers a chance to see rare and beautiful items from the Vatican, creative new designs, and masterpieces of art. Yet, ultimately, a trip to a museum isn’t so much about what we find there, but what we leave with. Questions are raised, conversations are introduced, and a window is opened. Whether to ponder those questions and possibly see things anew is up to the viewer.
His Eminence, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, attended the exhibition’s press preview and shared his thoughts. “In the ‘Catholic imagination,’ the truth, goodness, and beauty of God is reflected all over…even in fashion,” Cardinal Dolan said. “The world is shot through with His glory.”
Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Through October 8, 2018
Top photo: Designer Riccardo Tisci’s statuary vestments from the Parish of Saint Peter the Apostle in Palagianello, Italy on view in the Met Fifth Avenue’s Medieval Hall.
