30 September 2022

The image of women in art and fashion presented at the exhibition 'Look' at the Heidi Horten Collection in Vienna (21 October 2022 - 16 April 2023)

The upcoming exhibition 'Look' at the Heidi Horten Collection in Vienna will throw light on the life of museum founder Heidi Horten as art collector and her fashion looks, especially of haute couture pieces made for the collector by Christian Dior, Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent, Jean Patou and Jean-Louis Scherrer. The exhibition focuses on fashion from the 1980s, a time when the discussions held in the second wave of feminism in the 60s/70s concerning the 'image of women', an image that was created mostly by men in popular culture, media and advertising, in art and fashion, had resulted already in visual representations corresponding with the new roles of self-determined women. Fashion reinforced the changes in society. Couturiers like Yves Saint Laurent defined in the 60s a new aesthetic for confident women; Azzedine Alaia created figure-hugging fashion for the new athletically steeled women's bodies of the 1980s.

It's announced that designer Arthur Arbesser will collaborate for the fashion part of the exhibition. The title 'Look' can be read as tribute to Heidi Horten's critical look at art as collector, the 'look' in the meaning of the appearance of women in art as well as the look of Horten's personal fashion. Three storylines that will converge in the exhibition which shows the relationship and the dialogue between fashion and art with works from Heidi Horten's own collection by artists from the 19th century like Friedrich von Amerling, over the 20th century - Francis Bacon, Henri Matisse or Pablo Picasso, feminist artists Birgit Jürgenssen or Niki de Saint Phalle, to nowadays contemporary artists such as punk-feminist Sylvie Fleury who explores fetishization of fashion, status symbols and consumerism.

Images, from left: Yves Saint Laurent, Modell 122 / 1980, evening gown inspired by painter Henri Matisse. © Heidi Horten Collection, Foto: Ouriel Morgensztern. Right: Sylvie Fleury, Alaia Shoes, 2003. Heidi Horten Collection/Sylvie Fleury. Photo: © Helmut Karl Lackner.