The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco have two outstanding exhibitions which have just opened at the Palace of the Legion of Honor Museum: Pulp Fashion, the art of Isabelle de Borchgrave, 2/5-6/5/2011; and the de Young Museum: The Olmec, 2/19-5/8/2011

    The Olmec is considered the “mother culture” of central America and the oldest civilization of the Americas, lasting from about 1800-400 BCE. That’s about the time of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom. Although their colossal sculptures of heads remain, along with smaller and finely wrought pieces representing humans and some animals and axes, everything about them is a mystery. Even the name, Olmec, is not what they called themselves; we do not know what they called themselves. There is at this time no Rosetta Stone with which to open the meaning of objects that have survived nearly four thousand years.

   The works are fascinating. The giant heads were made without metal tools, only stone working on stone. In the words of Alfonso de Maria y Campos, director of the Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico, “We have to discover the myth inside the stone. The Olmec civilization left a message for us to discover.”

   Entering the exhibition, the visitor is immediately face to face with the awesome “Colossal Head, #5.” It weighs 13,000 pounds. (My mother, Dorismae Friedman, a docent in the St. Louis Art Museum, called them “baby faced giants.” ) The exhibition also demonstrates the influence of the Olmec on the arts of later civilizations such as the Maya. Seeing these carvings of men crouching like jaguars and precisely incised masks gives the viewer the thrill of coming close to lives from thousands of years ago and an encounter with a mystery of human creativity and social life.

   Pulp Fashion is the art and ingenuity of Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave. She creates costume art entirely in paper. On first hearing of the exhibition, this viewer must confess she thought it sounded trivial. In fact, it is beautiful and astonishing. de Borchgrave and her team use only paper to represent the effect of textiles: ikat, silks, pleats, embroidery and more. There are pearls, feathers, laces--all paper. The work led me to consider the significance of the tactile nature of different fabrics and decor and to ponder the reason why men and women are drawn to use them in particular ways. de Borchgrave recreates and sometimes invents historical costume inspired by Renaissance, 17th or 19th century paintings and the sensibilities of artists of clothing design such as as Worth, Poiret, and Chanel.

   In one gallery, the artist built a studio and exhibition of fashion by the Venetian, Mariano Fortuny, an artist who used draped and pleated fabric. It was a magical installation with an enormous silk tent in the center--though it was of course paper and not silk--and a view of Fortuny from the back, seated at his work desk. Each object, whether of small dogs, ribbons, or jewels was made only of paper and yet looked like these other things. The fascination of touch is matched with the beauty of color and form in the exhibition. We are all told at some time: Look but don’t touch, and that’s appropriate behavior for this show, too, but it serves to remind the onlooker that seeing and touching want to go together. de Borchgrave’s brilliantly colored, patterned, and formed costumes celebrate human senses.

   One might think the two exhibitions could not possibly be more different, and yet there is a common theme that appears in both. Costume and personal adornment are ways that humans have chosen to define their rank in society or to invoke special powers from nature, spirits, or social alignments. It seems to have been true for 4000 years and from the bogs of central America to the courts of northern Europe.

photos:

Hollow baby figure holding a ball, 1200-800 BCE, FAMSF/Andrew Fox

Isabelle de Borchgrave at work, Creations de Borchgrave.