Alexander Mcqueen at the NGV
Exhibition Review: Mind, Mythos, Muse
‘Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse’ is the latest sparkling fashion blockbuster at The National Gallery of Victoria.
A collaboration between the NGV and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), it is a striking example of a value-adding fashion and art exhibition, as it combines fashion with a wide range of paintings, textiles, sculptures, porcelain and even furniture, including many masterpiece-gems from LACMA. Framed in a dramatic set-like design, each room is a visual feast of the senses.
Alexander McQueen: NGV installation view. Photo by Dr Peter McNeil.
Distinguished Professor Peter McNeil visited for the press preview in December 2022, and also met with LACMA curator Clarissa Esguerra, and NGV curator Katie Somerville. In this article, Peter shares some of their thoughts, along with his own impressions of the exhibition.
Lee Alexander McQueen was born in the East End of London in 1969. His father was a cabbie and his mother a housewife. Lee was precocious with art but did not attend art school, instead going into the apprentice model with a Saville Road tailor. Clearly always a bad boy, he claimed to have chalked an image of a penis inside the lining of a suit he made up for Prince Charles, but only Prince Charles would know whether this was true.
So good was he at his tailoring skills, that he was invited to teach in a fashion school. He was then taken up as a student at London’s Central St Martin’s, the famed inner-city school in a rather crumbling but atmospheric setting which produced stars such as John Galliano (the school has now been moved from that location). The famed stylist and fashion impresario Isabella Blow (famous for her hats, and striking rather 1930s style) purchased his entire student collection and the Alexander McQueen label was born.
McQueen brought together his cutting skills as a tailor with a wild-ranging romp through art and fashion history, as well as the world of street fashion, gay clubbing and post-punk iconoclasm. He therefore produced clothes for women that were beautiful, but far from conventional.
Alexander McQueen: NGV installation view. Photo by Dr Peter McNeil.
He often based his collections around historical themes, such as the infamous ‘Highland Rape’ collection, criticised as being about violence towards women, but in his eyes, about the colonisation of Scotland. He produced bumsters for women that revealed part of the upper buttocks, sent people with differently-abled bodies down the runway – Paralympian Aimee Mullins with her prosthetic legs, for example – and created incredible parades that were more like baroque opera sets or fetish clubs than a staid and ladylike idea of fashion.
The great innovation of the late 20th century was perhaps to conceive of clothes as moving beyond three dimensions and into the fourth dimension, time, as in certain designs of the late Issey Miyake, Hussein Chalayan, and McQueen. Some of these garments are transformative and move; others have been literally buried in order to acquire the patina of time and decay; still others are completed on the catwalk with the use of robotic spray-painting devices. All of these McQueen innovations and phases of his career can be seen at the show in Melbourne.
Alexander McQueen: NGV installation view. Photo by Dr Peter McNeil.
Fashion was being turned upside down in the period of the 1980s. Some people believed that the French ‘haute couture’, custom made clothes produced for a tiny percentage of wealthy women, was on the way out. The notion of the quasi-aristocrat Parisian designer (Hubert de Givenchy had such a noble title) was suddenly replaced by the prominence of working-class English-trained designers such as John Galliano (b. 1960, Gibraltar) working for the house of Dior and Lee McQueen, who was brought in to work for the venerable house of Givenchy. McQueen worked with avant-garde artists including goldsmith Shaun Leane and the brand more recently worked with artist Damien Hirst.
The Melbourne show began its life in Los Angeles where its visionary director Michael Gove has built up world-class fashion collections (purchasing the entire Kamer-Ruff collection of historical and 20th-century men’s and women’s fashion – I met up with the Swiss collector Martin Kamer at the NGV opening). Gove has also proposed a massive redevelopment of the wonderful LA art museum which sits right next to the La Brea Tar pits, not far from the little art deco bungalows built for the minor stars and starlets. The new art campus will be completely inter-disciplinary – no more specialised halls with just one thing. So the curator Clarissa Esguerra rose to the challenge by proposing to show McQueen garments next to the types of art and design that inspired his designing. That is the great innovation of this Melbourne show and we have the opportunity to not only see great dresses, but also great art, from a great museum.
Alexander McQueen: NGV installation view. Photo by Dr Peter McNeil.
A few highlights for me… LACMA owns the most fantastic 18th-century painting of probably a French actress in Turkish dress, by the famed Greuze. This we can see next to McQueen garments inspired by contemporary Muslim women. There is also a room of 18th-century French terracotta capitals which personify the seasons. There is really beautiful medieval and Renaissance sculpture, a 16th century portrait of an aristocrat by Pourbus II, Louis XIV quality inlaid furniture, and fine 18th-century porcelain.
The NGV has added their own treasure into the mix: an intricate William Morris embroidery, for example. So I really emphasise: this show is not just about fashion. You will see remarkable art treasure too, framed up in extravagant room sets and installations, all of which are different. There is room after room…. with references to pagan and Christian iconography and belief systems, imaginary journeys across China and Siberia, punk-like shoes, clothing that features biomimicry (approximations of nature)….
Alexander McQueen: NGV installation view. Photo by Dr Peter McNeil.
The other great joy of McQueen is to see the development of the brilliant fashion collections of the NGV, by far the most impressive and comprehensive in the country. The NGV acquired a large private French collection some years back, and their fashion ‘myceanas’, Krystina Campbell-Pretty (who always attends these events in her remarkable French couture) has been funding the purchase of the NGV’s own remarkable McQueen collection for many years. Whether you like extreme style, or tailoring, or embroidery, or colour, there is something in this show for everyone.
Alexander McQueen: NGV installation view. Photo by Dr Peter McNeil.
So even if you have seen other McQueen shows such as the fabled one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London), this one is completely new and different. I think you will come away from the show like me, exhilarated and surprised, refreshed by the very high standards of display and imaginative interpretation that typify the NGV’s commitment to fashion in the museum.
Exhibition Details
Alexander McQueen: Mind Mythos Muse
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
International Ground Level
On now until April 16, 2023. 10am–5pm daily
Tour the NGV’s McQueen Exhibition
Join fashion historian Dr Peter McNeil in Melbourne on our four-day tour scheduled for next month, as we enjoy a private, before-hours viewing of the exhibition, along with a host of other activities including a day trip the excellent Castlemaine Art Museum, lunch at historic Buda House, a visit to the studio of acclaimed artist Catherine Pilgrim, and an exciting performance of the play Prima Facie by the Melbourne Theatre Company.
