HIROKO KOSHINO: A TOUCH OF BAUHAUS

Please join us on Thursday, November 1^st from 6 to 8 PM at WhiteBox in NYC and meet Hiroko Koshino at the opening of her exhibit, Hiroko Koshino: A Touch of BAUHAUS.

A Touch of BAUHAUS, curated by Kyoko Sato, is part of the WhiteBox Prime SAS (Seminal Artists Series), which honors artists of great repute. Past participants of the WhiteBox Prime SAS include Carolee Schneemann: More Wrong Things, Michael Snow: Snow Alert, Naoto Nagakawa: XXX-1960’s, Vienna Actionists Hermann Nitsch and Günther Brus, Hyman Bloom, Braco Dimitrijevic and Aldo Tambellini to name a few.

Post-World War II Japan found itself in the midst of rapid economic and cultural transformation – one in which growing industries such as technology and fashion shot to the forefront. It was amidst this landscape that a group of young people began rebelling by sporting a preppy, Ivy League look that broke stride with propriety-and time-honored traditions, and celebrated individualism. Known as the “Miyuki Tribe”, with Hiroko Koshino at the helm, talented young fashionistas began reinterpreting traditional Japanese artistic elements through a personalized and radical lens.

Visual artists began to be influenced by various new incoming art notions culled from Abstract Expressionism and Land Art, paralleled by the indigenous and subversive Gutai movement. This fresh shift in artistic perspectives made way for a wave of artistic leaders that included Hiroko Koshino. Building on her belief in the unity of all forms of art-a Bauhaus tenet- the classically trained Koshino used key elements to inform her paintings and sumi-ink masterworks as the basis for her stunning fashion designs, resulting in her recognition as one of the foremost couturiers in Japan.

HIROKO KOSHINO: A Touch of BAUHAUS will, for the first time in New York, reveal how Koshino’s visual artworks inform her high fashion designs. Curated by Kyoko Sato at WhiteBox, the exhibition will include Koshino’s most inventive runway pieces, side-by-side with her signature abstract paintings and sumi-ink works, including-in WhiteBox’s project space-a site-specific eighty-foot-long ink scroll that epitomizes her brilliant combination of art and design as Gesamtkunstwerk, the Bauhaus approach towards a total artwork.

After years of creating riveting artworks inspired by key painters ranging from Jackson Pollock to Gustav Klimt, as well as the Lyrical Abstraction and Tachism movements, Koshino began experimenting with the connection between art and fashion in the serene studio created for her by her colleague, genius architect Tadao Ando, in Ashiya. There she was able to deeply connect with her love for Mother Nature, free from the hustle and bustle demands of Tokyo, while infusing her paintings with a deeply Japanese attitude.

Koshino’s innovative design techniques, based on painting with sumi-ink directly onto the fabric, were the essence of many of her innovative fashion creations. In an essay on Koshino and her works, critic Anthony Haden-Guest writes, “Hiroko’s Sumi-Ink works are wholly beautiful, but not so much so as to overwhelm. They do not exclude, they embrace.”

Early in the history of Japanese art, Nihonga, tradition-based Japanese paintings, used to be exhibited in separate spaces from yōga, or artwork with Western influences. A push for change and a reconciliation of the two energies was beginning to happen. Thus Haden-Guest points out that while Hiroko’s work is “delicate, forceful and remarkably various … it embodies this accommodation, in her fashion, as in her art,” fusing the two styles.

In 1977, Hiroko joined the cutting-edge group “TD6” (Top Designers 6), presenting her fashion collection in Tokyo for the first time. Since, she has been showcasing twice a year. In 1978, she became the first Japanese designer to join Alta Moda in Rome, a sensational show earning her a thirty-page article in the Italian edition of Harper’s Bazaar.

In 1982 Hiroko Koshino created International Inc., leading the “Designer’s Character Brand” boom that turned fashion into a top industry in Japan. Subsequently, she debuted her brand and her signature prêt-à-porter collection at the Paris Fashion Week, to great acclaim.

Koshino considers herself an artist since childhood. She got started drawing characters from Manga and Anime, attending Kabuki plays regularly, influenced as well by the Bunraku national puppet theater of Japan. Six decades later, Koshino unabashedly continues her painting career, having created, by now, well over 1,900 paintings using a wide variety of techniques and inventive, unorthodox paint applications.

Her artwork continues as a wellspring of inspiration flowing right into her fashion design. “I can continue designing because I paint,” Koshino explains. Indeed, her paintings frequently function as brainstorm-drafts for what will later become one of the extraordinary design creations that she refers to as “the architecture of the body”, all along carrying as part of her signature, the elemental Japanese sense of sculptural ‘high volume’ in her couture.

Although her artwork and design are deeply intertwined, Koshino explains there is a definite separation between the two camps. “The process of production in fashion and art is very different,” she says. “When I make art, I can express my spirit directly. It is very personal. When I create fashion, I need to think about what people want, and I need to design what people will buy, so it unequivocally contains a business aspect.”

–Kyoko Sato

Koshino’s works will be showcased at WhiteBox with an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. on November 1st. The exhibition runs through December 1st.

“I can continue designing because I paint,” Koshino says. “Both design and art are my creation, and I cannot divide them.” This thought reminds people of Bauhaus-style “total work of art” (Gesamtkunstwerk), which became the title of her New York debut exhibition at the WhiteBox [HIROKO KOSHINO: A TOUCH OF BAUHAUS (329 Broome Street); Curator Kyoko Sato (Nov. 1-Dec. 1, 2018)]

FASHION INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY LECTURE BY HIROKO KOSHINO

Thursday, November 1, 2018 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Fashion Institute of Technology

227 W 27th St, New York, NY 10001

Feldman C501

About WhiteBox:
WhiteBox, on its 20th anniversary remains a non-profit art space aiming for total invention catalyzing the tenor of the times. It serves as a platform for contemporary artists to develop and showcase new sitespecific work, and is a laboratory for unique commissions, exhibitions, special events, roundtables, and arts education programs, providing an opportunity to experience an artist’s practice in a meaningful way, socially inspired free from market constraints. WhiteBox artistic vision provides hard to pigeon-hole artists with sustained exposure, creating an ideal environment for more in-depth interaction between sophisticated as well as community-bound New York audiences and artists’ practices. It achieves this by inviting local and international emerging and established artists to respond to its exhibition space with leading-edge interventions, performances, and developing long-term inspired programming that allows them to develop projects and engage with audiences. The artists who exhibited at WhiteBox tend to defy easy categorization.

Special thanks to The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and Nao Takekoshi.

THOMAS COLE’S JOURNEY: TRANSATLANTIC CROSSING AT THE MET

The Mountain Ford, 1846, Image Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Text by: Rishabh Manocha
All artwork by Thomas Cole, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Last month (Jan 30, 2018) witnessed the opening of an unprecedented exhibition, celebrating the life and legacy of English-born American artist Thomas Cole. The title Transatlantic Crossings signifies his immigrant status to the fledgling new country – the United States.

It is also reflective of embarking on a purposeful journey. The latter years would reveal Cole’s significant contribution to American art.

Cole’s forte of landscape painting is sublime, romantic and deeply piercing. The beauty of the American wilderness is a predominant theme of his work. But, what lies beneath that unfettered beauty is truly penetrating. From purely lyrical depictions of the landscape, of which he was a pioneer in the new continent, much of his critical work comprised of incremental narratives, often dichotomous in nature. These narratives talk about man’s penchant of incessant desires. Born in the heyday of industrialization, Cole witnessed first hand the shocking effects of mass production on the ecological cycle. The soot ridden valleys and smoke of chimneys indeed played a pivotal role in shaping his understanding of man’s relationship to nature.

One of Cole’s most acclaimed works, The Course of Empire depicts mankind’s emergence, prosperity, and eventual diminishment. From the reeds of landscape, to the material pomp and glory of man, and finally to the disappearance into the same enigma of landscape, Cole depicts the course of so-called “civilization”. It is almost as if the series depicts the course of empire, but pays ode to the permanence of landscape.

Yet another exemplary work is The Oxbow. Here, Cole depicts the tamed nature of landscape in juxtaposition to the lush and rampant existence of nature. The cropped fields of Massachusetts set against the northwestern forests depict American landscape as a panoramic refreshment.

As one looks at Cole’s work and himself as the patron of the Hudson River School, one begins to delve deeper into the subject of dichotomy. It is apparent in his first generational roots as an immigrant, having founded the first institution of its kind in the United States. It is apparent in his usage of landscape as means to distinguish the contrived and the natural. And, it is apparent in his choice of human depictions in composition, most times either sparse or plenty.

The exhibition also includes direct comparisons between his work, and the work of his contemporaries JMW Turner and John Constable. The influence is indeed apparent, but the perspective is rather anew. It isn’t though his work isn’t impressionistic in technique like Turner’s or largely painterly like Constable’s. However, his work is more than just the interplay of paint and canvas. It is but an assessment that’s made through each landscape. The exhibition runs through May 13, 2018.

Landscape with Tower (from McGuire Scrapbook), Image Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow, 1836, Image Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Titan’s Goblet, 1833, Image Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

For more information regarding this exhibition and more, please visit www.metmuseum.org

DAVID HOCKNEY – THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

For nearly 60 years, David Hockney (British, born 1937) has pursued a singular career with a love for painting and its intrinsic challenges. A major retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art—the show’s only North American venue, opening November 27, 2017—honors the artist in the year of his 80th birthday by presenting his most iconic works and key moments of his career from 1960 to the present. Working in a wide range of media with equal measures of wit and intelligence, Hockney, has examined, probed, and questioned how to capture the perceived world of movement, space, and time in two dimensions. The exhibition David Hockney will offer a grand overview of the artist’s achievements across all media, including painting, drawing, photography, and video. From his early engagement with modernist abstraction and mid-career experiments with illusion and realism, to his most recent, jewel-toned landscapes, Hockney has consistently explored the nature of perception and representation with both intellectual rigor and sheer delight in the act of looking.

Born in West Yorkshire, where he attended the local Bradford School of Art, Hockney moved to London in 1959 to study at the Royal College of Art. His career is distinguished as much by early successes as by his willingness to flaunt conventions both societal and artistic. Hockney’s works from the 1960s brazenly reference homoerotic subject matter, from Walt Whitman to Physique Pictorial muscle magazines, while his dedication to figuration throughout his career runs against the grain of predominant art world trends on both sides of the Atlantic.

Many fine examples of Hockney’s work from California in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as well as his double portraits from New York, London, and Los Angeles, show the artist’s interest in the tension that exists in social relationships and the difficulty of depicting transparent material such as glass and water. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hockney turned to a brightly hued palette and fractured, cubistic perspective that mirrors both his interest in Pablo Picasso and his own experiments with Polaroid photography. In recent decades, Hockney has ventured outdoors to paint the changeable landscapes of his native Yorkshire across the seasons, while simultaneously returning to the study of figures in social groupings. Keenly interested in scientific innovations in the aid of art, Hockney recently experimented with an old technology: he created a series of portrait drawings using a camera lucida, first employed by artists in the Renaissance to render one-point perspective. He has also always embraced new technologies, including the possibilities for colorful composition offered by applications on the iPhone and iPad. Examples of the artist’s experiments in that medium will be included in the galleries. The exhibition ends with his most recent, near neon-toned landscapes, painted in the last three years in Southern California, where he returned to live in 2013. The Met presentation marks the first time the series will be exhibited publicly in the United States. Even to the most committed follower of Hockney’s art, the unprecedented unification of his renowned early works with the newest, will be revelatory.

David Hockney
Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)
1972
Acrylic on canvas
The Lewis Collection
© David Hockney, Photo Credit: Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter

David Hockney
Large Interior, Los Angeles
1988
Oil, ink on cut-and-pasted paper, on canvas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Purchase, Natasha Gelman Gift, in honor of William S. Lieberman, 1989 (1989.279)
© David Hockney

David Hockney
“Garden, 2015”
Acrylic on canvas
48 x 72″
© David Hockney
Photo Credit: Richard Schmidt

David Hockney
Domestic Scene, Los Angeles
1963
Oil on canvas
Private collection
© David Hockney

David Hockney
Colorado River
1998
Oil on canvas
Private collection, courtesy of Richard Gray Gallery
© David Hockney, Photo Credit: Tom Van Eynde

David Hockney
Cleaning Teeth, Early Evening (10 PM) W11
1962
Oil on canvas
Astrup Fearnley Collection, Oslo, Norway
© David Hockney

David Hockney
A Bigger Splash
1967
Acrylic on canvas
Tate, purchased 1981
© David Hockney, Photo Credit: ©Tate, London 2017

Exhibition Dates:
November 27, 2017– February 25, 2018
Exhibition Location:
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Galleries,
Gallery 999

At The Met, David Hockney is curated by Ian Alteveer, Curator, with assistance from Meredith Brown, Research Associate, both in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art.
The exhibition is made possible in part by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Jay Pritzker Foundation, the Jane and Robert Carroll Fund, and the Aaron I. Fleischman and Lin Lougheed Fund. It is supported by an Indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. It is organized collaboratively by Tate Britain, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated, scholarly catalogue published by Tate

HEAVENLY BODIES: FASHION AND THE CATHOLIC IMAGINATION

Costume Institute Benefit on May 7 with Co-Chairs Amal Clooney, Rihanna, Donatella Versace, and Anna Wintour, and Honorary Chairs Christine and Stephen A. Schwarzman

(New York, November 8, 2017)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that The Costume Institute’s spring 2018 exhibition will be Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, on view from May 10 through October 8, 2018 (preceded on May 7 by The Costume Institute Benefit). Presented at The Met Fifth Avenue in both the medieval galleries and the Anna Wintour Costume Center, the show will also occupy The Met Cloisters, creating a trio of distinct gallery locations. The thematic exhibition will feature a dialogue between fashion and masterworks of religious art in The Met collection to examine fashion’s ongoing engagement with the devotional practices and traditions of Catholicism. A group of papal robes and accessories from the Vatican will travel to the United States to serve as the cornerstone of the exhibition, highlighting the enduring influence of liturgical vestments on designers.

“The Catholic imagination is rooted in and sustained by artistic practice, and fashion’s embrace of sacred images, objects, and customs continues the ever-evolving relationship between art and religion,” said Daniel H. Weiss, President and CEO of The Met. “The Museum’s collection of religious art, in combination with the architecture of the medieval galleries and The Cloisters, provides the perfect context for these remarkable fashions.”

In celebration of the opening, the Museum’s Costume Institute Benefit, also known as The Met Gala, will take place on Monday, May 7, 2018. The evening’s co-chairs will be Amal Clooney, Rihanna, Donatella Versace, and Anna Wintour. Christine and Stephen A. Schwarzman will serve as Honorary Chairs. The event is The Costume Institute’s main source of annual funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and capital improvements.

“Fashion and religion have long been intertwined, mutually inspiring and informing one another,” said Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute. “Although this relationship has been complex and sometimes contested, it has produced some of the most inventive and innovative creations in the history of fashion.”

Exhibition Overview
The exhibition will feature approximately 50 ecclesiastical masterworks from the Sistine Chapel sacristy, many of which have never been seen outside the Vatican. These will be on view in the Anna Wintour Costume Center galleries and will include papal vestments and accessories, such as rings and tiaras, from the 18th to the early 21st century, encompassing more than 15 papacies. The last time the Vatican sent a loan of this magnitude to The Met was in 1983, for The Vatican Collections exhibition, which is the Museum’s third most-visited show.

In addition, approximately 150 ensembles, primarily womenswear, from the early 20th century to the present will be shown in the medieval galleries and The Met Cloisters alongside religious art from The Met collection, providing an interpretative context for fashion’s engagement with Catholicism. The presentation situates these designs within the broader context of religious artistic production to analyze their connection to the historiography of material Christianity and their contribution to the perceptual construction of the Catholic imagination.

Designers in the exhibition will include Azzedine Alaïa, Cristobal Balenciaga, Geoffrey Beene, Marc Bohan (for House of Dior), Thom Browne, Roberto Capucci, Callot Soeurs, Jean Charles de Castelbajac, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, Maria Grazia Chiuri (for House of Dior), Domenico Dolce & Stefano Gabbana (for Dolce & Gabbana), John Galliano (for House of Dior), Jean Paul Gaultier, Givenchy, Craig Green, Madame Grès (Alix Barton), Rei Kawakubo (for Comme des Garçons), Christian Lacroix, Karl Lagerfeld (for House of Chanel), Jeanne Lanvin, Shaun Leane, Claire McCardell, Laura and Kate Mulleavy (for Rodarte), Thierry Mugler, Norman Norell, Guo Pei, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli (for Valentino), Pierpaolo Piccioli (for Valentino), Elsa Schiaparelli, Raf Simons (for his own label and House of Dior), Riccardo Tisci (for Givenchy), Jun Takahashi (for Undercover), Isabel Toledo, Philip Treacy, Donatella Versace (for Versace), Gianni Versace, Valentina, A.F. Vandevorst, Madeleine Vionnet, and Vivienne Westwood.

Exhibition Credits
The exhibition—a collaboration between The Costume Institute and the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters—is organized by Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute, working together with colleagues in The Met’s Medieval department: C. Griffith Mann, Michel David-Weill Curator in Charge of the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters; Barbara Drake Boehm, Paul and Jill Ruddock Senior Curator for The Met Cloisters; Helen C. Evans, Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator of Byzantine Art; and Melanie Holcomb, Curator.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), the interdisciplinary architecture and design firm, will create the exhibition design with The Met’s Design Department. Raul Avila will produce the gala décor, which he has done since 2007.

Related Content
A publication by Andrew Bolton will accompany the exhibition and will include texts by authors David Morgan and David Tracy in addition to new photography by Katerina Jebb. It will be published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press.

A special feature on the Museum’s website, www.metmuseum.org/HeavenlyBodies, provides further information about the exhibition.

The exhibition is made possible by Christine and Stephen A. Schwarzman, and Versace. Additional support is provided by Condé Nast.

The Atelier with Alina Cho: PROENZA SCHOULER

The next Atelier with Alina Cho will feature designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler, on Thursday, October 12, at 7:00 p.m. at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. American design talent standouts, Jack and Lazaro rocked the fashion boat in July with their journey across the Atlantic to show their Spring/Summer 2018 ready-to-wear collection during the Fall/Winter 2017 haute couture shows in Paris. Pioneers of style and craft since they launched their brand 15 years ago, the fathers of the 10-year-old perennial “It Bag” known as PS1, will chat with journalist Alina Cho about why they showed in Paris, how they manage their personal and professional relationship, and what inspires their collections.

Now in its fourth season, The Atelier with Alina Cho has featured fashion visionaries such as Alber Elbaz, Diane von Furstenberg, Michael Kors, Olivier Rousteing, Donatella Versace, Alexander Wang, and Anna Wintour in conversations that explore the intersection of fashion and art along with a range of personal topics.

This series is made possible by the Doris & Stanley Tananbaum Foundation in memory of Doris Tananbaum. Proenza Schouler is a New York-based womenswear and accessories brand founded in 2002 by designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez while they were students at Parsons School of Design. Known for drawing inspiration from contemporary art and youth culture, Proenza Schouler has played an important role in reinvigorating American fashion. Named after the designers’ mothers, using their maiden names, Proenza Schouler won the inaugural CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund Award and has won five CFDA awards including Womenswear Designer of the Year and Accessory Designer of the Year. The brand has six freestanding stores, the first of which opened in New York City in 2012, and is sold in more than 350 stores worldwide.

Alina Cho is currently Editor-at-Large at Ballantine Bantam Dell, responsible for acquiring and co-editing books in the fashion and lifestyle categories. She was previously National Correspondent at CNN and host of Fashion: Backstage Pass.

Tickets start at $40. Premium seating is available.
For tickets and information, visit www.metmuseum.org/tickets or call 212-570-3949.
Tickets are also available at the Great Hall Box Office, which is open Monday–Saturday, 11 a.m. –3:30 p.m.
Tickets include Museum admission on the day of the event.
Prices are subject to change.