ARMANI – A CURATOR IN AN ALMOST CLASSICAL MODE
WRITTEN by Gianluigi Ricuperati Images courtesy of Giorgio Armani
The Armani exhibitions at Silos are the most perfectly classic fashion exhibits one can imagine.
Actually, let me correct myself.
They are “almost classic,” like the stories of the great American writer Harold Brodkey, famous for his sprawling tomes but especially for his almost perfect, almost-novel, almost-postmodern, almost-classic stories – the two collections anthologizing them are indeed titled Stories in Almost Classic Mode.
There are some parallels between Brodkey and Armani – they belong roughly to the same generation, those who achieved success between the 1970s and 1980s, and both have a supernatural gift for absolute elegance, the former in prose and the latter in designing clothes; moreover, both have known and suffered closely from the scourge of AIDS, Brodkey because he died from it, Armani because he lost his lifelong partner to the disease.
Furthermore, I imagine Brodkey wandering through the austere halls of the Armani Silos, the museum dedicated to the famous Italian designer, which exhibits a vast collection of clothing, accessories, sketches, and more, organizing exhibitions dedicated to photographers and other collaborators of the designer, offering a fascinating overview of his career and contribution to fashion
In fact, in early July 2017, I spent a few days of pure luck at the splendid Cala Gadir, Giorgio Armani’s property in Pantelleria. Reflecting on those still and wind-distracted hours, on the extreme beauty of the place and the house, inside and out, I felt that my words were not enough, so I intertwined them with those of one of my literary heroes, the American writer Harold Brodkey, a master of prose and poetic and verbal representation of what it means to “be alive,” to be in the world.
I mixed one writing with the other, assembling them together like in a collage of tributes and sensations, the text that is complete only in this way. Because while I was at Cala Gadir, I was reading “The Runaway Soul,” his lifelong masterpiece. It had been twenty years since I last picked it up, since I read it aloud in my room to better learn English, at nineteen, while my mother eavesdropped and perhaps felt proud behind the door.
Stories in an almost classic mode, photos in an almost classic mode.
I can’t imagine a better definition than this for Aldo Fallai, the artist to whom the exhibition hosted at the Silos until November 3rd is dedicated. In addition to shooting for Giorgio Armani, Emporio Armani and Armani Jeans, Fallai has also collaborated with other fashion brands. The project is curated by Giorgio Armani, Rosanna Armani and Leo Dell’Orco. The monographic exhibition is the first that a Milan institution has dedicated to the work of Aldo Fallai, chronicling the nearly 30 years of continuous artistic collaboration between Giorgio Armani and the Florentine photographer.
Giorgio Armani said of their collaboration:
“Working with Aldo allowed me, from the very beginning, to transform into real images the fantasy I had in my mind: that my clothes were not only made in a certain way, with certain colors and materials, but represented a way of being, of living. Because style, for me, is a total expression. Together, in a dialogue that was always fluid and concrete, we created scenes of life, evoked atmospheres, sketched portraits full of character. And reviewing today all the work done, I myself am struck by the strong suggestion that these shots can still emanate, and by Aldo’s great ability to capture the nuances of personality.”
The images are so well known that one sometimes focuses on other details, such as the brutalist concrete that gives rhythm and meaning to this space, or the role that an icon like Armani still plays in the cosmos of contemporary culture. While the distinctive sign of his dressmaking appeared revolutionary and liberating both for men and women in the heroic era of his irresistible rise, it now seems just like Harold Brodkey’s stories: “almost classic”.
Even his approach to curating this exhibition is almost classic, just like Fallai’s images, their creative collaborations elegant and oblique, surreal and theatrical.
I think Armani is now an almost classic curator, and he would have a lot to teach many art exhibition designers who can’t find their own “pace,” always trapped between the desire to be radical and the inability to make choices, the bulimia of putting “too much of everything” in exhibitions. The beautiful show dedicated to Fallai indicates that perhaps Armani has been a great exhibition curator all his life, starting from when he set up shop windows.
Being “almost classic” means distrusting summaries, seeking pleasure, loving with stubbornness the simple vibration of being there, of being in the world.
Brodkey also writes this in “Innocence,” one of his most popular stories:
“I distrust summaries, any kind of gliding through time, any too great a claim that one is in control of what one recounts; I think someone who claims to understand but who is obviously calm, someone who claims to write with emotion recollected in tranquility, is a fool and a liar. To understand is to tremble. To recollect is to reenter and be riven. An acrobat after spinning through the air in a mockery of flight stands erect on his perch and mockingly takes his bow as if what he is being applauded for was easy for him and cost him nothing, although meanwhile he is covered with sweat and his smile is edged with a relief chilling to think about; he is indulging in a show-business style; he is pretending to be superhuman. I am bored with that and with where it has brought us. I admire the authority of being on one’s knees in front of the event.”
These words could be ideal for describing Armani, the almost classic fashion designer, who is fully current.
