I am not discovering anything new if I say that the ancient system of art was based on the idea of mimicry of nature, in search of beauty harmonica, requested And subsidized by social elites. With the changes brought about by industrialization, this search for beauty based on objectivity, which had existed for so many centuries, was replaced by the growing supremacy of the subjectivity of the artist.
The desired freedom, in artistic matters, also had an overwhelming impact. Since it was now the artist himself who decided what “art” was, the disorder surrounding the term was monumental, accessing this privilege that the condition of artist implied a a huge amount of counterfeiters and small characters showbiz, hungry for fame as a quick way to an easy life.
This happened fundamentally in painting, which was the medium that more interest has been aroused in recent decades. If someone who dared to stain a canvas and had the ability to make people believe that what he was doing was art rose to the celestial sphere of artists, the same thing happened with other creative disciplines. Sculpture, performance, and why not also fashion?
Man has used different supports and techniques throughout history to express themselves, but they were simply means of expression, not necessarily artistic expression in themselves. In other words, anyone can Paint a picture and call yourself a painterbut that does not mean that what he does is art, nor that he is an artist; the same could apply to the fashion designer.
Cutting and sewing fabric is not within everyone’s reach, I myself see that it is a difficult activity, which is beyond my abilities; However, there are many who can propose designs and then produce them, So they could call themselves designers, but in no way can it be understood that this is art, or even craftsmanship.
In the case of contemporary abstract painting, which is perhaps the most difficult to judge, the works and therefore their creator must be imbued with spiritual pretensionsinner resonances, inner or outer vibrations, which may be partly subject to chance or subversion, but which must always underlie a transgressive impulse, an intention devoid of any purely decorative character. This analysis is also valid for the discourse of fashion.
According to my criteria, and it is the one I defend in my last essay (The Fashion GameEdiciones Carena, Barcelona, 2024), it is not enough to try to beautify women, it is a simple surface, which can also be subjective. There must be a coherent speecha career that demonstrates a solid, if stormy, ideology, closely linked to the essence of the designer and which develops throughout his career.
The ideal is that this trajectory is upward and that you increasingly perfect both the content of your speech and the physical form that you use to project it. With this principle of censorship, the vast majority of fashion designers would be banned from the art world. In other words, more synthetically: a beautiful, well-stained decorative painting is analogous to a garment that feels good and to beautify a human being. Is it art? No.
