BALLET RUSSES

Ballet Russes was a very informative day for me becuase I was able to appreciate costumes from the past as art. I was also intrigued by the fact that some notable artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Braque with whom dominated the modernist art period (1900-), made some of the costumes or used their artisitic influences to the costumes produced by the Ballet Company. The amount of creativity and innovation of the costumes highly reflected an era of great imagination and fascination for the "surreal/avant-garde."

The first costume I was drawn by was Goncharova's The Golden Cockarel . I was immediately captured by the richness of the texture of the material used which was cotton velveteen and the intricate design features of the silk lame and ermine tales to give a very fine silhouette. The garments concept was also captivating as it echoed the historical context of the fall of the Russuan Tsar and royalty during the Bolshevik Revolution. It was a particular reflection of the wealthy being overpwered by the poor and middle class. This is heavily reflected by the King's costume. The colour of the King's robe looks very warm, rich and elite; it definietly makes him stand out.  However it was interesting to note that that his robe was heavy creating a sense of loss power and weakness. This costume was quite fascinating: it had an interesting historical context and fine attribution of textile details, worthy of artistic appreciation.


The Song of the Nightingale by Matisse was also one of my favourites as it seemed to had a very oriental feel about it. Matisse as an artist was also innovative as he used colours in a way to define meaning. In the samurai-like robe of the costume in the Song of the Nightingale, I was drawn into the costume because of the simple yet constructiveness of the design. The simple blue triangles repeated throughout the design  looked plain but when contrasted to a dark background absolutely stood out making it very eye-catching. The costume looked very stiff therefore boning or hard lining was used to give off the constructiveness of the design. To me this was a simple costume which was really eye catching and bold. It was definitely a far off design idea from the elaborate and intricacy evoked by other costumes within that period.

Lastly, Giorgio de Chirac's costume,  The Ball was also a fine highlight of the day. The costume drew me in fascination and awe because of its creativity which is parallel to de Chirac's influence from the Surrealist art movement which focused on the unknown, tangible/untangible forms of ideas, dreams and fanatsies. I loved how de Chirac effectively created a man's uniform suit reflecting a surreal side of the play, The ball. The suit had distinct forms of architetural forms which was a concept reflected by the architecture used in the play. It was also amusing to see how he used paint to create the art in the suit (the lines which gave off the surrealsit influence.) The suit definitely took me to another dimension!

Overall, it was a great experience, I witnessed past costumes as art. Art that is golden to capture the glory of our past history in costume and visual arts.