We’ve teased for months, but the wait is finally over: today, the exhibition “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” opens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Organized by Costume Institute curator, Andrew Bolton, author of YUP’s accompanying catalog, the show features approximately one hundred examples will be on view, including signature designs such as the bumster trouser, the kimono jacket, and the Origami frock coat.
Earlier this year, we interviewed Bolton on his reflections on how McQueen’s designs have contributed to fashion and the most memorable aspects of his influence.
Yale University Press: McQueen’s designs are popular with celebrities and the public alike; what is it about his designs that make them so special/appealing?
Andrew Bolton: Much of the appeal of McQueen's fashions derives from their theatricality, often conveyed through their historicized silhouettes. McQueen was drawn to periods in which fashions were particularly extreme and exaggerated, such as the 1860s, the 1880s, the 1890s, and the 1950s. But while he looked to these epochs for inspiration, his fashions always appeared emphatically contemporary.
YUP: For McQueen fashion was an art form, and his runway shows were often theatrical productions. Did you have a favorite show/collection?
AB: One of my favorite runway presentations was McQueen's spring/summer 1999 collection, entitled "No. 13." The collection was inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement, and featured the athlete and model Amy Mullins in a pair of hand-carved prosthetic legs. McQueen's promotion of beauty rarely adhered to classical or platonic ideals. For him, beauty was to be found in difference, in anomalies and irregularities.
YUP: McQueen has been called the most influential designer of his generation; do you think his work will stand the test of time? Where would you place McQueen in the fashion pantheon?
AB: McQueen’s impact on fashion is uncontestable. You only have to think of his “bumsters” to appreciate the extent and enormity of his influence. But his legacy extends beyond specific designs to his general philosophy of fashion. For McQueen, fashion was not just about utility and practicality but also about ideas and concepts. In this respect, he was an artist whose medium of expression happened to be fashion. Like many artists, McQueen’s fashions were reflective of his personality and state of mind. They were intensely autobiographical.
YUP: Other than McQueen's frequent use of tartan, are there specifically "British" qualities about his work?
AB: There are many British qualities to McQueen’s fashions. The most obvious is his tailoring. McQueen trained with the Savile Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard, and as early as his MA graduate collection in 1992 the influence of menswear tailoring could be seen in his fashions.
Typically, however, he would upend or subvert the principles of tailoring in his pursuit of modern, innovative silhouettes. He has turned suiting inside out, upside down, and back to front– ripping and tearing it apart like a demonic Edward Scissorhands. In fact, this punk attitude is typically British and typically McQueen. For McQuee
YUP's Fall 2011 catalog, covering new books to be published from August 2011 to January 2012 is now available online! See our forthcoming books in biography, art, architecture, history, literature, psychology, environmenal studies, featuring authors such as David Margolick, Melissa Harris-Perry, Tim Jeal, Paul Starr, Nigel Warburton, Garry Wills, and so many more. You can also subscribe to get updates on more of our catalogs on Scribd.
At the time of the 9/11 attacks, few people in America had heard of the Taliban. And in 2000, when Ahmed Rashid wrote the bestselling Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, based on his experiences as a journalist covering the civil war in Afghanistan for twenty years, traveling and living with the Taliban, and interviewing most of the Taliban leaders since their emergence to power in 1994, the book offered, and still does, the only authoritative account of the Taliban available to English-language readers. Last year, we published a second edition with a new introduction and an all-new final chapter.
Now that the story continues with the recent death of al-Qaeida leader, Osama bin Laden, Rashid has been interviewing and writing op-eds about bin Laden’s role within the organization and what his death means for the future. Yesterday, he appeared alongside John McLaughlin, Yochi Dreazen, and Paul Pillar on WAMU’s Diane Rehm Show, with guest host Susan Page. He also had an op-ed that ran in the Financial Times, and his book was even referenced in the New York Times obituary for bin Laden. Today, you can listen to Rashid as he interviews on WHYY’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
Five years ago, President George W. Bush set into law Jewish American Heritage Month that is now observed and celebrated every May in the U.S. According to the government website, http://jewishheritagemonth.gov:
The month of May was chosen due to the highly successful celebration of the 350th Anniversary of American Jewish History in May 2004, which was organized by the Commission for Commemorating 350 Years of American Jewish History. This coalition was composed of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, the American Jewish Historical Society, the Library of Congress and the National Archives and Records Administration.
As one of the preeminent publishers of Jewish studies, Yale University Press has no shortage of titles to help celebrate the occasion. For JAHM, we’ll have news and updates about our Jewish Lives biography series, to which the newest addition and first American is Baseball Hall of Famer, Hank Greenberg, as well as new books from and about Alfred Kazin, Gertrude Stein, Harold Bloom, Arthur Green, Bob Dylan, not to mention our books published in partnership with the Jewish Museum.
Paul Goldberger knows a little something about architecture. As the architecture critic for The New Yorker, writing his celebrated "Sky Line" column since 1997, he also holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in Manhattan. After beginning his career at the New York Times, he received a Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism. When he has something to say, there is a definite reason to listen.
The title of his book, Why Architecture Matters, might seem self-evident, even more so than the other books in the Why X Matters series, because architecture seems such a fundamental and foundational (no pun intended) part of civilization. Where would we be without buildings? Yes, that seems a dumb question. But, of course, that is not what Goldberger is writing. As we come to the end of National Poetry and Architecture months, Goldberger’s aesthetic appreciation of architecture, with his beautiful literary style, seem fitting to close:
The making of architecture is intimately connected to the knowledge that buildings instill within us emotional reactions. They can make us feel and they can also make us think. Architecture begins to matter when it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our heads. It matters when it creates serenity or exhilaration, and it matters just as much, I have to say, when it inspires anxiety, hostility, or fear. Buildings can do all of these things, and more.
So unless you live under a rock, buried at the bottom of the ocean, covered in deep sea moss, you might have heard something about a wedding today. Prince William, Duke of Cambridge married his longtime girlfriend, Catherine Middleton in a ceremony this morning at London’s Westminster Abbey. William has been in the spotlight since his birth, but now the media gets to turn its attention to his lovely bride.
But let’s be honest about our Joan Rivers tendencies: who is she wearing, who is she wearing? The rumors were true: the wedding dress was designed by Sarah Burton at the Alexander McQueen brand, and its elegant satin design and lace bodice are the newest topic of this Royal media frenzy. We don’t have pictures here, but you can see a slideshow on Slate.com, with an interesting article by Simon Doonan asking: “Could the elegant royal wedding signal the end of porno chic?” Well…
Congratulations all around to the happy couple! Next place to watch for Alexander McQueen's beautiful designs: the opening of the “Savage Beauty” exhibition, next Wednesday, May 4 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. YUP’s accompanying catalog is on its way to bookstores nationwide and many online booksellers already have it available, including our website.
Ivan Lett
When this book was first presented to me, the instinctive reaction, of course, was to think of E.M. Forster’s Room with a View, with Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own not far behind; some might call it my predictable train of thought. Those two writers, coming at the end of the long nineteenth century, followed in the paths of countless Victorian writers who used the window as a frame of perspective. How many heroes and heroines have stepped to the window to look out on the world before life-changing events like marriage, personal tragedy, and death? As a part of architecture, it serves a specific function in this regard. The image is iconic and fixed in our Western imagination and tied to a litany of feelings and emotions.
Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century, by Sabine Rewald, accompanies an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on view until July 4. Instead of Britain, it looks east to the continent, exploring paintings and drawings by German, Danish, French, and Russian artists, both popular and lesser known. In art, the ubiquity of window imagery in the early and Romantic nineteenth century shaped the organizational approach for this study, and earlier this week, The Met posted an interview with Rewald about putting together materials for the exhibition and catalog. Understanding the scope of the project and what Rewald has accomplished is enough to look upon and wonder: does the world see as I see?
Ivan Lett is Online Marketing Coordinator for Yale University Press.
The idea of the ineffable in architecture was first developed at Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp Cathedral; to many, it is the ultimate symbol of religion’s representation in modernist architecture. Ronchamp’s undulating and unregulated windows and walls address the emotional elements of religious experience. Concrete is molded and shaped to form almost sensuous shapes which are textured and create different entrances and alcoves. The walls are punctured with windows which adhere to no typical organization, occupying different spaces all along the walls of the main section of the sanctuary. Perhaps most notable is the manner in which the roof of the structure does not sit solidly on the walls; instead it leaves a line of light that traces throughout the whole building.
Though the idea of ineffable space was created directly in reference to Ronchamp, the questions of their connections can always be reexamined. What is the ineffable space, or the plastic emotion? Constructing the Ineffable: Contemporary Sacred Architecture, edited by Karla Britton, takes the question of the ineffable far beyond these roots. Many scholars raise questions and buildings to further investigate the intersections of architecture, religion, modernism, and sacred space.
Reading the many contributions, it becomes clear that the intersections of architecture and religion are so fascinating to interpret because in many ways the questions about them are very similar. Understanding the ineffable can only take you so far, as a number of terms and practices related to building and religion are required to navigate the widely divergent opinions on these very terms and practices. For some, the sacred is limited to a religious context, while others see it in a variety of contexts. Each writer takes a different tack when examining the contemporary sacred architecture named in the title. Ultimately, we are asked to consider the immense power of religion and its architecture over daily life in multiple faiths, and how that design reciprocally reflects on religious practice.
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