Vogue: Like a Painting

I’ve just touched down in Madrid, and whilst unashamedly flicking through flyers at a tourist information booth, I came across an advertisement for an exhibition entitled ‘Vogue: like a painting’. Needing no further persuasion other than those four words, I wandered over to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza without hesitation. I’d been here once before in 2014 to see a vivid, enthralling Pop Art exhibition and so I had high hopes for their Vogue display.

"With everything I do, it's as if I'm trying to manipulate it, to coerce it so it has that painterly feel."
The Dress Lamp Tree, Tim Walker

The premise for the exhibition lay in the inspiration taken by some of the greatest Vogue photographers from classical paintings. Examples of Spanish paintings from the Golden Age, Constable, and Vermeer are intertwined with photographs from the Vogue archives by Annie Leibovitz, Irving Penn, and Cecil Beaton to name but a few.

Erwin Blumenfeld mimics Vermeer's Girls with the Pearl Earring

In total, 61 Vogue pieces are exhibited. The curator of the exhibition, Debra Smith, selected which Vogue images would be included based on their pictorial quality and their link to historic art. All the selections “in one way or another, reflect devices commonly used by painters: theatrical settings, dramatic chiaroscuro, carefully devised compositional schemes and special emphasis on the beauty of the figures, their poses and the décor”. The connections between the Vogue photographers’ work and their inspirations have not been some long-held secret, but this clear array of artistic pairings demonstrates the interweaving nature of art, across different mediums and times.  

Peter Lindbergh is inspired by
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's expressionism

THE COMMON THREAD RUNNING THROUGHOUT, SAYS CURATOR DEBRA SMITH, IS A KIND OF SLOWING DOWN:

 "A TIMELESSNESS IN THE MODEL'S POSE; A KIND OF GAP IN THE MIND, WHERE EVERYTHING IS REALLY, REALLY STILL."

A wonderful insight into the careful deliberation and artistic influences behind Vogue's creations, I would wholeheartedly recommend this mesmerising and revelationary exhibiton. If you can't quite make it to Madrid, the exhibition catalogue is equally una obra de arte.