27 September, 14 PM | UNArte, Grivitei 28


INTRODUCTION

A performative exhibition of visual and aesthetic content, concepts transposed in terms of revealing images and a curatorial rhetoric compose the debate context, in a linguistic formula of a stylistic register appropriate to the new trends of interference of interdisciplinary methods in art with the aim of creating some emerging artistic products.

Keywords: contemporary art, fashion design, philosophical concept, architecture, designers, creative process, anthropology, hybrid styles,  experiment, artistic statement, references, biographies

In the last decades, fashion has become a living and increasingly complex and augmented organism, seen as a whole, but also in particular sequences, described in a three-dimensional vision on the international catwalks by emerging designers, validated by the big fashion brands fashion but also in the context of the long-awaited demonstration events at the end of the years of study at the top universities in London, Paris, Milan or New York.

The trends of recalibrating the concept of fashion are directed at a fulminant pace towards the experimental methodology that acquires the dimensions of an unpredictable meant to arouse enthusiasm and curiosity in the surprise of the unusual.
Workshops are being taken by storm, structural materialities, excessively oversized, recyclable materials, ecological textures, hyper-technological fabrics, etc., are now finding their place in designers' work-spaces. The fashion industry, it seems, positions itself in a cause of tangentiality with these creative ramblings. One of the big fashion groups has already published a favorable statement in this sense, thus defining the characteristic of the new experimental luxury branding know-how. Although creative minds are always open to accepting challenges, every time, the imaginative factor is based on extremely personal inspirational sources, which aim at the life history context of each designer, particular, intimate contexts or individual reaction to cultural or social stimuli, expressing thus the way of perception and reporting to the environment, to the visual and performing arts, interdisciplinary areas, etc.

Thus, the creative discourse of designers has its origin in the sensitive, deep side of individuality and references to artists, sound designers, light works, multimedia installations, etc., often substantiate the conception of a thematic mood board. With feedback to the imperial rhetoric of Renaissance painting, with impetuous references to the gestures of abstract art or reinterpreting the explosive chromaticism of the pop-art current, the designers compose real visual essays, supported, in many cases, by aesthetic, philosophical, scientific theories, etc.

The present work aims to make a foray into the depths of this syncretic phenomenon of contemporary fashion and to highlight the artistic experience that is the basis of the creation of the clothing object with valences of an art object, as in the case of any authentic artistic production.
Various examples are discussed, analyzing some of the most important names in painting, architecture and sculpture, in dialogue with designers who have changed the perception of the fashion phenomenon in recent decades, but young people at the beginning of their careers are also present, proving a constant passion and determination to push one's creative limits. Apparently, imagination is the component responsible for this spectrum of concerns that give birth to artistic innovation and progression.

The newly created product, in addition to its simple existence, more or less eclectic, exclusive, can have a trajectory with a pseudo-commercial destination, on musical stages, in contemporary cinema, theater or opera productions. At the same time, the artistic work, subject to conceptual rigors, can be the object of an exhibit in a contemporary art gallery, and can acquire the value dimension of an aesthetic object.
The designers have invaded the context of the arts, painting, sculpture, architecture, through their inspirational fusion but also through the discovery of a state of freedom of the creative act that the artists have experienced, over time, and which has become edifying for the creative contemporary. It should be mentioned that a consensual phenomenon was born since the modernism period, when important artists found, in turn, the clothing object as their thematic argument (see Chapter I).

The representatives from the field of avant-garde fashion, who extrapolated the notion of a clothing object to an artistic object, are the subject of Chap. III. From the poetic, metaphorical narrative, to the overflowing fantasy and the eulogy of the human drama, we can note the unequivocal necessity of overcoming the status of usually coat, to instill in the embryonic condition of the term coat, a hyper-creative aura, an accumulation of sensory meanings. A conceptual journey into paradise worlds, of possible realities, in a realm of harmonic or dissonant play and the disappearance of physical limitations. It can be said that the design that established the technological basis of the creation of the clothing product has slipped into thematic approaches that induce emotion and states of reflection, converting into an object hybridized with artistic whims.
And in this case, the designers do not only deliver a product of their imagination and deep meditative trajectories, they bring to the fore a gesture of overflowing sincerity, an imperative assumption to put themselves at the service of self-revelation, of a free overwhelming content.

Thus, the exploitation of a basic pattern, which follows the shapes of the human body, becomes an extremely generous pretext for interpretation and the discovery of new possibilities of artistic expression. Symbolism is also a fundamental tool in the development of concepts and in shaping the message, this component structures, essentializes and gives meaning to the newly created object. (Chap. I, paragr. 1).

The incursion on different continents, into the creative environments of contemporary designers and artists highlights an overwhelming diversity of the themes addressed, a high cognitive and emotional substrate but also, in many cases, the concern (in the creative approach) for raising society's awareness of current pressing issues , such as climate warming, greening of production systems, racial discrimination, military conflicts, humanitarian crises, etc.

Fashion is often analyzed with the implication of a predictable cyclicality, but it operates more in the manner of a complex orbital system and the subject's interaction with the comings and goings of trends, modulated by global culture.  Marnie Fogg

Representatives of contemporary art brought into discussion extrapolate notions of the exposure of the human body, of the fragility of the human being in the face of existential adversities.

The idealization of the human actor is another favorite theme found in contemporary artists, appealing to archetypes from ancient, medieval, enlightened or modern art, in a plastic discourse of reinterpretation through materiality, dimensions, proportions or chromatics. A prioritization of the potential that the art with references to the ready-made and conceptualism evokes, formulates huge leaps in terms of the visual aspect, often eulogizing the paradox or the absurd.

Consumerism, indigenous art, mix-culture representations but also installations that advance the composition of the latest technological developments in the field of electronics are themes that materialize the works of art selected for the International Biennials or are the subject of extensive exhibitions held in important Museums of the world, as we will see in the chapter dedicated to contemporary artists.
Since the focus of the debate theme addresses the analysis of the tools that the creative human factor uses in the elaboration of the artistic work, we can see that the theorizing of concepts, the use of colors, the plastic sense are common factors to all artists, and the creative impulse is present under the impetus of the same experiences , belonging to the artist, inviolable.

The interpretation, the abstraction of reality was built on the modern man's need to commit a breakdown, a dissonance between the natural elements in the composition of the real and to juggle with the precepts of a random arrangement, an invocation of metaphor, of a game without imposed rules. Following the peak stages of an artistic evolution in terms of technical methods but also the theme in question, a cross-cultural authority is established aimed at opening new horizons of artistic manifestations. Multiculturalism, it seems, underpinned disciplinary interference and generated artistic products, making the result challenging and unique.

Based on the question Why do human beings create art? We can summarize, following specialist studies: As a way of self-representation, the being-subject can spread its message to the world and, thus, can be a binder of passive, visual, aesthetic communication, materializing, initially, an expression of the cult personality, creative individuality.


National University of Arts, Bucharest

https://unarte.org/teze-de-doctorat/