The Thyssen Museum of Madrid presents until the 15th of January 2023 an exhibition exploring the relationship between these two 20th century creative geniuses from 1915 to 1925.
By Xavier Comtesse / Special contributor JSH® Magazine & Swiss Watch Passport
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Many portraits of Picasso’s first wife, the beautiful Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova, who was one of Chanel’s most loyal customers, are on exhibit. Alongside Picasso’s artworks, various pieces of clothing from the early period of the fashion Designer are on display with few specimens still remaining today.
Cubism is clearly apparent in Chanel’s creations. Her use of a geometric formal language, the chromatic reserve and the cubist aesthetic of collage expressed in straight and sharp garments, also highlights her preference for black, white and beige and her use of fabrics with austere and geometric textures.
Xavier Comtesse, our times: “Frugal because we don’t throw anything away anymore. Expensive because art pieces such as antique watches have never been so expensive”.
The Painter and the Fashion Designer first met in Spring 1917. Chanel loved being closely connected to the Parisian artistic and intellectual world of the time, so much so that she has stated that “it was Artists who showed me how to be demanding.“
Coco Chanel: “it is artists who have shown me how to be demanding.”
Blue train (train bleu)
The exhibition goes on with a cinematographic reproduction of the avant-garde ballet “the blue train” by choreographer Serge Diaghilev on a libretto of Jean Cocteau, inspired by the Olympic Games and the silent movies. Picasso used his work “two women running on the beach” as a stage curtain. The entire set is deliciously vintage.
Here comes the word: vintage
That’s definitely what typifies our artistic period, which is at the same time frugal and spendy. A paradox of the new modern times…
