The Politics of Savage Beauty

During the summer of 2011, Savage Beauty, an exhibit of Alexander McQueen’s work at the Met caught my attention and the attention of a million others.

As I waited in the long line to reach the Costume Institute on the second floor, my eyes wandered over the artifacts in the Ancient Middle Eastern Art galleries. When I finally reached the exhibit, I was not disappointed.

I had not followed McQueen before but I found myself increasingly interested in what I saw. Among the wide assortment of his work on display, many reflect an aggression that confronts the viewer. His themes include gender, identity, nature and history. It was the last of these that affected me the most.

McQueen’s parents were Scottish and he had strong patriotic feelings for his ancestral land. His collection Highland Rape was based on the Jacobite Risings and the ensuing Clearances: after suppressing the Jacobite uprising in 1745, the English began a policy of “clearing” the Scottish Highlands. This caused great hardship to the Highlanders and put an end to their traditional way of life. In McQueen’s words

This collection was a shout against English designers doing flamboyant Scottish clothes. My father’s family originates from the Isle of Skye, and I’d studied the history of the Scottish upheavals and the Clearances. People were so unintelligent they thought this was about women being raped – yet Highland Rape was about England’s rape of Scotland.

The dramatic Dress number 13, from his spring-summer 1999 collection, has an echo of the same theme. Inspired by installation artist Rebecca Horn, a model in a pure white dress on a circular platform is threatened by two robots that surround her and spray the dress with brightly colored paints. Model Shalom Harlow felt that this symbolized sexual submission, but I see a different interpretation.

The model has come between two technologically sophisticated competitors, who draw lines across her dress dividing the territory between them. She has no control over her destiny, reminding me of another English conquest. In the late summer of 1941, Great Britain and the USSR launched a surprise attack against Iran and quickly overran it. The scene of the two robots spraying and drawing lines on the white dress epitomizes that conquest to me. The purpose was to gain control of Iran’s oil and to secure supply lines into the Soviet Union. The occupation continued until the end of the war.

In its aftermath, Iran entered a turbulent political era. The old Shah had died during the war and his son took his place. The reformist prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry, setting in motion a series of confrontations with Great Britain that culminated in his overthrow in a coup that was supported by the British and US intelligence services. Mossadegh’s foreign affairs minister, Hossein Fatemi, was executed. These events set the stage for the close association between the Shah and the government of the United States, which eventually unraveled in 1979. Perhaps there might have been a very different outcome if Mossadegh had been able to remain in power.

The Met is a fascinating place. It embraces 5000 years of human creativity. A visit to the Arms and Armor gallery on the first floor completed my thoughts on dress number 13. The armors were beautiful. There is art even in savagery.

Leaving the Met, I took a last picture of a worker on its beautiful roof.