China’s vibrant art scene is attracting the attention of one of the art world’s biggest players.
EVENTS
The Guggenheim Looks East
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Over the last decade, collaborations between luxury brands and contemporary artists have gone beyond mere artistic partnerships towards a new kind of luxury branding.
PARIS – Art and fashion have always developed side by side, for fashion, like art, often gives visual expression to the cultural zeitgeist. During the 1920s, Salvador Dalí created dresses for Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiapparelli. In the 1930s, Ferragamo’s shoes commissioned designs for advertisements from Futurist painter Lucio Venna, while Gianni Versace commissioned works from artists such as Alighiero Boetti and Roy Lichtenstein for the launch of his collections. Yves Saint Laurent’s vast art collection, recently auctioned at Christie’s in Paris, testified to his great love of art and revealed the influence of a variety of artists on his own designs.
In the 1980s, relationships between luxury brands and artists were advanced when Alain Dominique Perrin created the Fondation Cartier. In the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, a book marking the foundation’s 20th anniversary, Perrin says he makes “a connection between all the different sorts of arts, and luxury goods are a kind of art. Luxury goods are handicrafts of art, applied art.”
The Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemparain building in Paris
China’s vibrant art scene is attracting the attention of one of the art world’s biggest players.
China’s vibrant art scene is attracting the attention of one of the art world’s biggest players.
China’s art boom has caught they eye of the Guggenheim Museum. This week Richard Armstrong, director of the iconic New York institution, travelled to coastal cities in East China to discuss the possibility of branching out into one of the world’s most exciting emerging markets: “China is like a completely new world to me, everything here is so exciting, especially its art…I hope in the near future there will be further cooperation between Guggenheim and art museums here.”
Rather than building an entirely new construction, like the Guggenheim’s colossal project in Abu Dhabi, it looks more likely that the museum will partner with existing Chinese museums. Armstrong seemed attracted to the greater flexibility this would afford the museum, comparing his role to that a company director. And with China in the midst of an energetic museum building spree, the Guggenheim’s plans for collaboration could not have come at a better time for Chinese gallerists.
Sources
Jing Daily
