La voce del diavolo. L’arte contemporanea e la moda

A new perspective on art history from the late 18th century to the 2000s that retraces the acrobatic developments in the wardrobes of yesterday and today. Scientific progress, electronic turmoil, and the storms sparked by the sexual revolution.

Who has never read the word “Minimalism” as they flip through networks and magazines? Who has never heard people talk about Dalí and Schiaparelli, or about Mondrian and Saint Laurent? And Gauguin’s colorful pareos, who has never seen them in the French Symbolist artist’s tropical paintings and his indecent “house of pleasure”? And who doesn’t remember Canova’s dancers in their provocative “veiled dresses”? Fashion and art exist through an endless intertwining of closely-linked weaves, of stories within stories that enchant, surprise, mislead, and entertain. No clothing trend, in its frenetic stylistic rhapsodies, has ever refused the embrace of the most famous artistic movements, from Neoclassicism to Pop Art. And yet, few people know about the subterranean forces that animate fashion, painting, and sculpture; few people grasp the profound reasons that push them into each other’s arms.
Over the long span of contemporary time, the art of dressing has seduced the human body in order to free it from distress and inhibitions, and caressed it to devour its energy. It has pushed it beyond its limits to shout out to the world “the voice of the devil”, as William Blake wrote, and it has carefully protected it to free it from the snares of morality and respectability, challenging the “voice of the master”.