Product Description
Catalogue for the David Remfry Fashion Into Art exhibition (parental advisory: nudity. unsuitable for children). The exhibition of Remfry's drawings for designer Stella McCartney have been described by one reviewer as 'as retro as 1972...' but my first thoughts on viewing the drawings were of artists like Egon Scheile and Gustav Klimt.
His drawings have a sparse, elegant line and an uneasy eroticism - they aren't about the clothes. While the aforementioned reviewer considered the choice of drawings over photography to be 'risky', in an environment saturated with glossy, high-res photography, these sensual drawings do something that the most expensive photographer cannot do. They break through the visual clutter with their minimalism, and they posess an arresting shock value, with revealing poses that must have censors tearing their hair out. All the drawings are hand drawn, in graphite pencil, and some also have a watercolour wash. Yet, despite this simple technique, they are intended for the most glamorous and commercially cutting edge end of the advertising industry today. This challenge to our expectations and the striking artistic execution ensure that the drawings demand full attention. Stella McCartney was familiar with David Remfrys cutting-edge illustration work from the 1970s. He had illustrated the front cover of the third edition of the hip The Image with a semi-nude figure of a woman. Her decision to use fine art to advertise high fashion was daring and the drawings have been used in different scales in the United States 2002 ground breaking campaign: towering on the sides of buildings, on bill boards and in magazines.
