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Art and Fashion Rub Elbows
Work by Lucy and Jorge Orta at Maxxi, the contemporary art museum in Rome. The exhibition was commissioned by the luxury men's wear label Ermenegildo Zegna, which reaps visibility for the brand while providing the museum with needed funds.
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
Published: April 25, 2012
ROME — Fine arts and luxury brands have long crossed paths, creating a blend of culture, merchandising and branding.
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The most recent Italian example of this cross-cultural association comes via the Paris-based artists Lucy and Jorge Orta, who created an installation for Maxxi, the National Museum of the 21st Century Arts in Rome.
The artwork was commissioned by the Italian luxury men's wear label Ermenegildo Zegna in a win-win-win situation — the brand gets visibility, the artists get to work and the cash-strapped museum gets much-needed private financing.
At the presentation of the installation, Mr. Orta described the Zegna family as modern-day Medicis, citing the Florentine dynasty that commissioned work from Michelangelo and Bramante, the Renaissance archistar.
"Working with art makes a brand exciting," said Gildo Zegna, chief executive officer of the Zegna Group.
Mr. Zegna recently visited the art fair in Miami, where he was struck by the energy and the drive of the art world, and he hopes the association with art will help his label. "We're happy to do what we're doing, but there's business behind it all," he said.
Zegna's collaboration with Maxxi comes at a fortuitous time for the museum, which opened less than two years ago and faces an uncertain future because of funding problems. The Culture Ministry in Italy has initiated procedures to replace the board of directors of the foundation that manages the museum with a government-appointed administrator. The dispute centers on what the government says is the board's inability to attract more private sponsorship to pay for its activities.
Museum officials point out that ticket sales and collaborations with Zegna and other corporate sponsors like BMW helps Maxxi cover more than half of its operating costs: far more, the board says, than other contemporary art museums in Europe, where the state is the principal donor. But this is not enough, according to the culture ministry, which mandated when it set up the foundation that runs the museum that the state would be a minor financial contributor.
The tie between fashion and art is strong in the Orta piece. To create their piece, called "Fabulae Romanae," or Roman Fables, a microvillage of colorful tents and mannered mannequins, the artists visited Zegna's wool mill in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, where they were given access to Zegna silks, wools and other fabrics. The material was fashioned — along with French Army blankets, bundles of flea-market secondhand apparel and a multihued assortment of gloves and mitts — into the "dome dwellings" and "refuge wear" typical of the Ortas' work.
Maria Luisa Frisa, who curated the show, said the artists were the "perfect fit" for the project. Ms. Orta has a background in fashion, and the artists often use fabrics in their artworks. The installation has the support of the Center for Sustainable Fashion at the London College of Fashion. The Ortas have demonstrated a long "commitment to addressing the larger themes of contemporary society — ecology, extreme conditions and difficult territories," Ms. Frisa said, synching with the Zegna Group's own socially oriented interests that date back to when Ermenegildo Zegna took over the family wool mill in 1910 and built homes and public facilities for his employees.
Mr. Orta said the collaboration worked well "because we both speak the same language." But he was quick to point out that the fashion brand had not pushed its fabrics on the artists.
"They gave us carte blanche to use them or not, an ideal situation for the artist," he said. "It wasn't about business or promotion of their fabrics, but about exploration."
The collaboration with Zegna opens up new vistas "on the question of how artists can make art that is not just self-referential but in contact with realities like factories, or schools," said Giacinto di Pietrantonio, director of GAMeC, Bergamo's contemporary art museum. "It is a key point of contemporary research," that however also requires "enlightened managers" to be pursued.
Ms. Orta also teaches at the London College of Fashion.
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