A new exhibition in Milan celebrates the fantastical art of the beauty photographer through the decades
By Sarah Vine
In the rarefied atmosphere of the high-fashion magazine, beauty (along with pretty much everything else) is about fantasy and desire. Highly stylised images present an idealised vision of the human form, elegantly displayed, adorned, retouched, enhanced, filtered through the visions of the photographers and the stylists. The face becomes a canvas, the body a sculpture. This is beauty at its most extreme.
Once you understand that, you can enjoy magazine images of beauty for the fabulous fantasy that they are, without getting hung up about the fact that what they represent is beyond the range of 90 per cent of the population. It's about inspiration. Reality doesn't come in to it.
Inspiration - as well as adulation - is the purpose of a new exhibition of beauty photography, which opens next week in Milan. Sponsored by Dolce & Gabbana, designed and directed by Jean Nouvel and curated by American Vogue, the show brings together 89 iconic images from the world of magazine beauty. Spanning eight decades and encompassing some of the greatest names in photography - from Richard Avedon to Annie Leibovitz - it is a tribute to the creativity and adventurousness of some of the most visionary names in the business.
It is the ever-turning kaleidoscope of style, and the aesthetic yearnings that it creates, that constitute the heart of this exhibition. From an historical perspective it offers a fascinating insight into the changing views of ideal beauty, of the many ways that fashion has sought to reinvent - and manipulate - the female form.
Sixties visions of androgynous, wide-eyed models are juxtaposed with the bronzed, toned athleticism of the Seventies and the wild, throaty excesses of the Eighties. As with all high fashion, there is a strong whiff of spectacle. Steven Klein's superwoman, top right, lifts up a truck on a highway, her animalesque form taut, her body sculpted in her clinging dress.
Elsewhere, cultural references abound: Steven Meisel's 2007 portrait of a girl holding a peach, right, is an unmistakeable tribute to Vermeer, the white shirt, the limpid gaze, the half-opened lips, all reminiscent of the Dutch Master's Girl With A Pearl Earring. Travelling back in time, Clifford Coffin offers us an inscrutable, other-worldy beach scene, left, while the tortuous pose of Edward Steichen's 1934 Your Hands, far right, hint at something rather more profound than simple advice on how to achieve the perfect manicure.
From an aesthetic point of view the show offers a very simple pleasure: beauty at its most fantastical. It can be no coincidence that Dolce & Gabbana has chosen to use this show to launch its long-awaited range of cosmetics, an opulent offering that will no doubt soon be gracing the bathroom shelves of fashionistas everywhere.
Extreme Beauty in Vogue is at the Palazzo Della Ragione in Milan from March 4 to May 10; www.extremebeautyinvogue.it
By Sarah Vine
In the rarefied atmosphere of the high-fashion magazine, beauty (along with pretty much everything else) is about fantasy and desire. Highly stylised images present an idealised vision of the human form, elegantly displayed, adorned, retouched, enhanced, filtered through the visions of the photographers and the stylists. The face becomes a canvas, the body a sculpture. This is beauty at its most extreme.
Once you understand that, you can enjoy magazine images of beauty for the fabulous fantasy that they are, without getting hung up about the fact that what they represent is beyond the range of 90 per cent of the population. It's about inspiration. Reality doesn't come in to it.
Inspiration - as well as adulation - is the purpose of a new exhibition of beauty photography, which opens next week in Milan. Sponsored by Dolce & Gabbana, designed and directed by Jean Nouvel and curated by American Vogue, the show brings together 89 iconic images from the world of magazine beauty. Spanning eight decades and encompassing some of the greatest names in photography - from Richard Avedon to Annie Leibovitz - it is a tribute to the creativity and adventurousness of some of the most visionary names in the business.
It is the ever-turning kaleidoscope of style, and the aesthetic yearnings that it creates, that constitute the heart of this exhibition. From an historical perspective it offers a fascinating insight into the changing views of ideal beauty, of the many ways that fashion has sought to reinvent - and manipulate - the female form.
Sixties visions of androgynous, wide-eyed models are juxtaposed with the bronzed, toned athleticism of the Seventies and the wild, throaty excesses of the Eighties. As with all high fashion, there is a strong whiff of spectacle. Steven Klein's superwoman, top right, lifts up a truck on a highway, her animalesque form taut, her body sculpted in her clinging dress.
Elsewhere, cultural references abound: Steven Meisel's 2007 portrait of a girl holding a peach, right, is an unmistakeable tribute to Vermeer, the white shirt, the limpid gaze, the half-opened lips, all reminiscent of the Dutch Master's Girl With A Pearl Earring. Travelling back in time, Clifford Coffin offers us an inscrutable, other-worldy beach scene, left, while the tortuous pose of Edward Steichen's 1934 Your Hands, far right, hint at something rather more profound than simple advice on how to achieve the perfect manicure.
From an aesthetic point of view the show offers a very simple pleasure: beauty at its most fantastical. It can be no coincidence that Dolce & Gabbana has chosen to use this show to launch its long-awaited range of cosmetics, an opulent offering that will no doubt soon be gracing the bathroom shelves of fashionistas everywhere.
Extreme Beauty in Vogue is at the Palazzo Della Ragione in Milan from March 4 to May 10; www.extremebeautyinvogue.it
