Icon of eccentric fashion. Sensual masculine mood. Powerful Woman. Provocation and elegance. Miss Grace Jones

Transcription

1 Icon of eccentric fashion Sensual masculine mood Powerful Woman Provocation and elegance Miss Grace Jones

2

3 I go feminine, I go masculine. I am both, actually. Considered the craziest, most iconic, sexiest and most chameleonic muse of the 80s, Grace Jones spent her life between her native country, Jamaica, and Studio54 in New York, where she was the queen of disco music and acclaimed by artists like Andy Warhol. She arrived in the USA and shaved her head, then immediately attracted attention owing to her stunning beauty. Her long-limbed ebony body, sculpted cheekbones, full lips and feline allure opened the doors to the world of fashion. She flew to Paris where she appeared on the covers of prestigious magazines of the likes of Vogue and Elle. The fashion biz adored her. Grace Jones was the new glamorous black goddess who treaded the most important catwalks in the world. It was precisely in Paris, during a party, that she gave a scratch performance that led to a contract with the record company Island upon her return to New York. Her live performances in the 70s and 80s were memorable. Grace played the role of an aggressive"man-eater" with an extraordinary theatrical presence. Her image was created together with the illustrator and director Jean-Paul Goude, with whom she had a long relationship and for whom she was an inspiring muse. She always wore gutsy, geometric trouser suits or tightly bound-up dresses with hood that accentuated her provocative air. Jones also loved to have her body tattooed during her artistic performances, and was the pioneer of body painting. Her photos taken while having her body painted by friend and artist Keith Haring are iconic. Icon devoted to eccentricity but never vulgar or biting, Grace Jones combined extravagance with elegance and got high-class results.

4 Woman with strong personality Visionary Architect Love for Brazil and its nature Research and respect for traditions Lina Bo Bardi

5

6 Lina Bo Bardi is, without a doubt, one of the most important and revolutionary figures of 20th century architecture. After getting her degree in architecture in Rome, she moved to Milan where she began her professional career with Gio Ponti s firm. At the same time, she became intensively active in writing (she contributed to the periodicals Stile and Grazia ) until reaching the point of creating and editing her own magazine. During the difficult times of the war, she took part in the underground movement, and it was at that early stage of her life that she showed a strong vocation for civil and social commitment. In 1946, together with her husband Pietro Maria Bardi, who was asked to manage the Sao Paulo Art Museum, she moved to Brazil. She adopted this land as her own, and indeed became a Brazilian citizen. It was here where she built her first work: the famous Glass House, her residence and place where she planned to melt nature and residence, men, women and roots. Architecture, design, art direction, museology, cinema, publishing and teaching were the fields in which she worked. Bo Bardi is a personality hard to place owing to the large number of topics she broached, and above all because of the intensity of her work style. The architect is a teacher of life. He has the poetic dream of an architecture that gives a sense of freedom. This designer with a combative and restless spirit was constantly driven by an impulse to experiment, in which political and social commitment and professional work are inseparable. Her visionary work offers an interesting interpretation of the theme of memory that goes hand in hand with that of modern, where the past is replaced by the category of historical present : innovation in line with tradition. Freedom told through beauty, anti-conformist comfort. Her Modernism is a point of reference, a beacon for designers around the world.

7 Eclectic Character Masculine to feminine Impeccable Style Make the ordinary extraordinary Quentin Crisp

8

9 Born in 1908 in England as Denis Pratt, Quentin Crisp lived a scandalous and eccentric life. It was a life born twice. At the age of 72, he decided to move to New York, a city that regarded him highly and that considered him a downright legend, the natural heir of Oscar Wilde. Crisp was fairly unknown in Italy, but very famous internationally as a writer, public speaker, man of theatre, journalist, columnist, actor and, above all, humorist in the tradition of Wilde. Evidence of his fame was also attested to by the fact that after spending three days talking to Crisp and being captivated by his extravagant figure, Sting dedicated his famous song Englishman in New York to him. After studying journalism and fine arts, and after teaching dance, he started to design book covers and was thus able to make a living as a commercial artist. During the war, he was declared unfit for military service because he was homosexual and became a civil servant, to then pose nude at several art schools. When in 1968 he published his autobiography, he gave it a title that precisely alluded to that job he When you know who you are, you can do it, you can be it, you can be seen to be yourself. That's the point. You first have to find who you are. Then, you have to be it like mad. had held: The Naked Civil Servant. The work received enormous critical acclaim and was turned into a film. Crisp also appeared in other films, including Philadelphia and Orlando, in which his en travesti role of Queen Elizabeth I was memorable. Despite his openness to homosexuality, Crisp rejected the title of pioneer of gay liberation. He did not identify with the movement, in which not everyone looked kindly on him, above all because of his effeminacy that almost spilled over into transvestism. Crisp took about an hour and a half each morning to put on his make-up and get dressed. Quentin Crisp is famous for the wit of his aphorisms. In his theatrical performance, a highly successful one-man show, he talked about his philosophy of life, he gave the public advice on how to live happily and how to develop their own personalities, and devoted most of his time to answering the questions the people in the theatre house asked him.