Cristóbal Balenciaga, Moda y Patrimonio—Conversaciones [Cristóbal Balenciaga. Fashion and Heritage—Conversations]. An Exhibition by Judith Clark at the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museoa, Getaria (San Sebastian), March, 24 2018 – January, 24 2019

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Museoa collections director, Igor Urria, and the Museoa’s communications leader, Zuriñe Abasolo, for their warm welcome and assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2019.1611306

Notes

1 Cristóbal Balenciaga Museoa occupies a modern building annexed to a majestic villa, formerly the residence of the Marquises of Casa Torres, patrons of Balenciaga during the early years of his career. For an analysis in English of the role of the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museoa in comparison to other exhibitions on the “boy from Guetaria”, see: Nicklas (2013).

2 It is interesting to note how this later exhibition is described on the website exactly as that, “instalment”: “Contexts, in this new instalment, prompts us to seek out the common places between history and fashion, the spaces behind the curtain, where everything’s done, the hows before the whys, and the formal parallelisms between the then of haute couture and the now of the museum work.” [online: http://www.cristobalbalenciagamuseoa.com/en/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/cristobal-balenciaga-fashion-and-heritage-contexts.html]. The title and exact dates for the third exhibition are yet to be confirmed.

3 In 2016 the museum welcomed 45,000 visitors, 46% of which were non-Spanish (23% from France, 4% USA, 2.7% U.K. and 2.5% German); 22% Basque and the remaining 32% from other Spanish regions. Online [http://www.cristobalbalenciagamuseoa.com/default/documentos/188_es-descarga_nota_de_prensa.pdf].

4 “…The exhibition Cristobal Balenciaga: Fashion and Heritage collects together moments in the history of the houses Balenciaga established in Spain and in Paris, and each chapter illuminates different modes of display…The exhibition format allows us to build up associations and conversations across collections…My own conversations and installations pay homage to the new routes through the archive in the way that a new visitor might, finding one’s own associations with the material. The design therefore quotes remembered past exhibitions that have paid attention to Balenciaga, bringing another kind of reference to the project…that are shown along the route as props…” Judith Clark, exhibition panel for Cristóbal Balenciaga. Fashion and Heritage - Conversations. An exhibition by Judith Clark at Balenciaga Museoa, Getaria (San Sebastian), March 24, 2018 – January 24, 2019.

5 To search in the Cristobal Balenciaga Museoa collections, check the Basque-museums search engine: https://apps.euskadi.eus/emsime/coleccion-online/museo-cristobal-balenciaga/museo-93.

6 The Ephemeral Museum of Fashion, An exhibition curated by Olivier Saillard and rranged in the Pitti Palace, Florence, June 6 – October 22, 2017. [https://www.uffizi.it/en/events/the-ephemeral-museum-of-fashion].

7 “J.C.: The draped Melinex over the garment is a homage to the Il Museo Effimero della Moda installed by Olivier Saillard at Palazzo Pitti, 2017 which itself performed the ironies of conversation, the face of the fragility of textile, synonymous with our own lives. The poignant attempt to fix a moment in order to be able to look at it again, is at the heart of the museum project and jeweller Naomi Filmer’s work. / C.E. The Jesmonite gesture… you have asked for the rhetorical question to which Naomi Filmer’s hands are the answer. 1. Why is the gesture best captured by casting? 2. If the cast is a ghost, a trace or a memory of a past action, how are these materialised in the cast? 3. What remains? What can be activated? The cast is indexical. In a single hand gesture, the cast captures the performativity of fashion: the cocktail hour in 1952, the park promenade in 1914, the Twiggy slouch in 1967. It makes the immaterial material, turns time into space, makes an entity of a gesture. Yet the cast gesture is not irrevocably fossilized: the object remains immanent with possibility. The gesture “suggests” Caroline Evans and Judith Clark in conversation, 2018, exhibition panel for Conversations.

8 Distinción. A Century of Fashion Photography. Cristóbal Balenciaga Museoa, October 9, 2018- January 27, 2019. Produced by the Museu del Disseny de Barcelona (Barcelona Museum of Design).

9 For further information on Balenciaga’s textile research and Balenciaga’s textile suppliers, see: Pallmert, Keller and Wälchli (2010); Join-Diéterle (2015); Miller (2017b).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Victoria de Lorenzo

Victoria de Lorenzo is a PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow undertaking the project “Connecting Threads: Circulation and Consumption of Textiles between Britain and the Spanish Speaking World in the Long Nineteenth Century” funded by a Lord Kelvin–Adam Smith interdisciplinary PhD scholarship. [email protected]