“There is the Pope and there is Valentino. In this city there is no one else as famous”. Right in the very Rome which anointed him as the emperor of fashion, it’s time for Orizzonti | Rosso (May 25th – August 31st), the exhibition that explores Valentino’s iconic colour. The occasion is the inauguration of PM23, the new cultural space designed by the Valentino Garavani foundation and by Giancarlo Giammetti. The result consists in a philologic dialogue between art and fashion
By Domenico Casoria
Few designers in the history of fashion have been able to interpret the totality of a colour. One is surely Valentino Garavani. In order to understand it, you just need to access the rooms of Piazza Mignanelli, in Rome. The exhibition alternates between fifty couture creations by Valentino and the works of some incredibly famous artists, from Warhol to Fontana, from Twombly to Basquiat. A single common denominator: red. At the point that, even if a precise and suggested exhibition path exists, the visit can be conducted freely, without necessarily following arranged rules.
Anyway, to welcome visitors, there are two iconic works. The Balloon Venus Lespugue by Jeff Koons and the Fiesta dress from the haute couture collection of Spring/Summer 1959. The truly first ever masterpiece in red. As in a space-time continuum, the dresses designed by Valentino essentially alternate with the artworks. On a wall it is displayed a cut by Lucio Fontana, which almost tears up the perfection resembled by the dresses of the maison. On one hand the fullness of the chiffon, on the other the linearity of silk.
Distinctive figure
A path composed of rooms that take on various themes. Starting right from the concept of horizon, which transforms itself continuously. There is also the strong presence of the theme of beauty, a pivotal element within the artistic process, underlined by colour. Precisely as the abstract expressionism which, during the Aftermath of World War II, sublimated beauty through vivid and bold colours, Valentino Garavani worked in the same way during the early 1960s. The designer, during the five decades of his remarkable career, has been capable of essentially transforming the fabric into a true canvas to be painted. So, identity, but also with the ability to continuously renew.
Valentino is (and has been) the only big couturier capable of producing such an iconic and recognizable corpus, so personal and personalizing, around a single colour. Around that archetypal red that has always been reproduced and declined, in various shades. A red that – most of the time – is a friend, but can simultaneously play the role of an enemy, which is necessary in order to shape history.
The exhibition, curated by Anna Coliva and hosted in the main floor of the PM23 building, once a religious institute of Propaganda fide, is essentially all of this, put together. It tells about the start and narrates about the end – about the total red dresses presented during the 2008 haute couture, the last designed by Valentino Garavani. In the middle – as a story which appears to be already crystallized – fifty years of undisputed reign. And the comparison with the artworks almost vanishes.
The dresses of Valentino boast a particular status. Horizons that overlap as the layers of the dresses. At first sight, and avoiding observing it from a lateral point of view, the red could appear as a cage. But, room after room, hallway after hallway, all the way to the central hall, here the exhibition showcases all of its expressive power and its ability to narrate different stories. A nostalgic journey into the deep (red) and the possible future.
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