M.SNAP

THIRTY

For dad's birthday yesterday I made him this card and this delicious ground almond chocolate cake (props to Bella for the recipe!)

TWENTY NINE / MACARON - FRENCH FOR BURGER

Made these rosewater macarons filled with rosewater & dark chocolate ganache yesterday. They are delicious but far from being the beauties on offer at Laduree...

THIRTY SEVEN / HISTORY THROUGH KNITTING

Lady Jane Grey

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When I was younger I was fascinated by Tudor England. With its larger than life characters, the scandal, intrigue and brutality of the period made its events seem better than any fiction. The period was riddled with memorable women, and one that particularly intrigued me was Lady Jane Grey, “The Nine Days Queen”. Incredibly well educated for a woman of her time, she was swept into the political and religious conflicts which followed the death of her cousin, King Edward VI. Hastily made Queen of England, her reign lasted less than a fortnight before she was imprisoned, charged with treason and later executed.

Paul Delaroche’s painting of the subject, The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, was rediscovered in 1973. Delaroche’s depiction of the scene is sympathetic, poignant and emotive. Art's emotional power becomes clear when looking at history paintings such as The Execution of Lady Jane Grey or The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David. Both paintings sympathise with their subjects, although history now perceives the figure of Marat in a particularly villanous light.

Art then, becomes a part of the construction of history. This work, Lady Jane Grey, is crowded with symbolism, exploring the questions raised by Jane Grey’s short life. Dominance and hierachy, innocence, youth, manipulation, power, ideas about life and fate from Greek mythology, and tensions between the masculine and feminine are all themes in this work. The work also becomes a metaphor for history itself – its construction, the sanitising effect of time and distance, the transition from the sensational to the mundane and the ways in which we learn about it.

THIRTY SIX / NOW FOR SOMETHING A LITTLE DIFFERENT...

THE FINE ART OF FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY

This evening as I flicked through a magazine, Julianne Moore appeared, lounging sumptuously across two pages for Bulgari. Flawless ivory limbs, velvet, feathers, that direct gaze, richly coloured and bejewelled – Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ La Grande Odalisque seemed an obvious comparison. One Google-search later I discovered that Julianne Moore had been photographed cast as Ingres’ Odalisque several years earlier in 2000 for Vanity Fair. This led me to consider the relationship between fine art and contemporary fashion photography. Clearly fashion photography has been and is influenced by the fine arts, but is the converse true, and does fashion photography deserve a place within the fine arts? Are the two mutually exclusive, or do their boundaries mingle somewhere between the paint and canvas and the mass-circulated imagery of billboards and magazine pages?

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres / La Grande Odalisque

Julianne Moore as Ingres' Odalisque for Vanity Fair, 2000

Julianne Moore for Bulgari

In principle, what separates them seems clear. While fine art conveys artist driven ideologies, fashion photography seems driven by more commercial intentions. Aside from making the products or the brand desirable, fashion photography is not required to communicate other messages. But upon further consideration, this dichotomy between fine art and fashion photography begins to seem arbitrary. Perhaps this reflects a greater trend in creative industries for boundary-blurring. Multidisciplinary work is seen as a norm, designers are now artists, stylists, photographers, film-makers; the vocations of artist and designer gradually becoming ever more interchangeable. Collaborations are increasingly commonplace, artist-designers often being called upon for commercial work and for their creative input in the production of fashion imagery.

When those responsible for producing fashion imagery hold these dual roles, both the work they produce which is considered ‘fine art’ as well as their commercial imagery are equally outputs for their creativity. While their ultimate aims may differ, the formal qualities of their work for the two separate categories can be very similar. Take, for example, German photographer, Juergen Teller. Stylistically, his personal work is consistent with the aesthetic of his photographs produced for Marc Jacobs’ advertising campaigns. Thus the arbitrary nature of the division between the two bodies of work is exemplified.

Just as photography initially struggled for recognition and validity as a fine art, perhaps likewise fashion photography is struggling for the same recognition. The commercial imperatives which direct its production need not be an excluding factor for the category of fine art, just as the religious and spiritual imperatives of a Masaccio painting no longer exclude it from the same category.

Fashion photography might then take its place among the fine arts, its images operating as thoroughly modern forms of portraiture. Just as in the canon of art history when portraits depicted members of society who possessed status and influence (often displaying these attributes through the depiction of their clothing and jewellery), so too does fashion photography depict those of high status in contemporary society, in this case a culturally elected elite of celebrities and models, similarly decked out in fashionable clothing and accessories.

Putting aside their differing intentions, fine art and fashion photography have much in common. The aesthetic appeal and technical skill evident seem to qualify fashion photography as a fine art in itself. It becomes apparent that clear-cut boundaries between the ‘purely commercial’ and ‘purely art’ do not exist. Just as there is an echo of Ingres’ in the tactile opulence of the Bulgari photograph, so too is there a glint of fine art in the glossy sheen of my magazine’s pages.

NOW SELLING...

[click to go to the store]

THIRTY FOUR / CLICK TO VIEW THE LARGER SIZE!

THIRTY THREE / BUNNY HEAVEN (PART TWO)

Rupert (our puppy) loves anything knitted or woolly, having stolen many balls of wool and a big floppy bow I knitted. So following on from my tiny bunnies I made this big soft bunny for him