Wandering about exciting things to do in Milan during vacation when all your friends have left? Guy Bourdin’s exhibition is the hottest must-see attraction in August.
Guy Bourdin, “Vogue Paris”, May 1970 (2023), photo courtesy The Guy Bourdin Estate
Armani/Silos is a custom-made destination to refresh the mind, dominating the city map as a place-to-go for aesthetes and fashionistas.
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Here, Giorgio Armani gives us a chance to run into the wonderful works of Parisian artist and photographer Guy Bourdin through the exhibition ‘Guy Bourdin: Storyteller’; 100 artworks on display until August 31 at Armani/Silos, the fashion art space in Milan dedicated to the Armani style and contemporary culture.
A clash of styles
Giorgio Armani made the prudent choice of bringing an artist far apart from his brand identity within the walls of his aesthetic temple.
Giorgio Armani, courtesy of Giorgio Armani
“At first glance, Guy Bourdin is not an author close to me: his artistic language was clear-cut, graphic, strong,” Giorgio Armani told Icon, presenting the exhibition ‘Guy Bourdin: Storyteller’. “From his artwork, what is immediately perceived on the outward appearance is a provocation, but what touches me – this is what I chose to highlight – is rather his creative freedom, narrative ability, and great love for cinema. Bourdin did not follow the trend or compromise with anything: I can relate to this. I believe there is no other way to leave a mark on the collective imagination.”
Armani/Silos: Guy Bourdin, Storyteller, courtesy of Giorgio Armani
Guy Bourdin’s sense of Surrealism
Guy Bourdin was an artist with a tormented soul. A victim of his own talent, he never accepted being remembered for his photographs rather than his painting, which he considered his main form of expression.
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Guy Bourdin, Invite for MAF!A AD Agency, 1972 (2023), photo courtesy The Guy Bourdin Estate
Bourdin’s artistic production relied heavily on painting, with a particular focus on bright colours and obsessive attention to set creation and blow-by-blow design, which gave the final product the aura of innovation and uniqueness detectable in the artist’s works.
Armani/Silos: Guy Bourdin, Storyteller, courtesy of Giorgio Armani
Fascinated by surrealism, a pupil of Man Ray, an admirer of René Magritte and Luis Buñuel, Bourdin’s approach de-constructed the representation of glamour. It revolutionised the canons of fashion photography by finding a new, provocative, and distinctive style.
Obsessed with the silver screen
Bourdin had a cinematographic trace, inspired by many kingmakers of that historical period, starting with the thrillers by the ‘Master of Suspense’ Alfred Hitchcock and the directors of classic Hollywood. We can appreciate this in his photographs with models lying down, almost unconscious, surrounded by the white chalk typical of a crime scene.
The most recurring features in Bourdin’s photography are the women: beautifully sinuous figures, never obscene, wrapped in an aura of mystery and desire, able to pierce the target at first glance.
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The massive presence of womanhood was surely due to the artist’s non-existent relationship with his mother, an absent figure throughout his life, whom he will look for through each photograph.
Reinventing fashion photograph
Hands, arms and especially feet, almost inspired by Robert Bresson’s cinematographic vision, are a recurring theme, adding an air of mystery to the exhibition, leaving the audience to wonder about the identity of the foot on the staircase wearing a Charles Jourdan shoe, where it is headed or where it came from.
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Charles Jourdan, 1972 (2023), photo courtesy The Guy Bourdin Estate
Starting from the shoes of a French brand, Bourdin succeeded in being part of the Glamour Gang in the Olympus of fashion photography, along with such great photographers of the time like Chris von Wangenheim and Helmut Newton in the pages of Vogue.
How to be a contemporary icon
It is rumoured that Guy Bourdin had thrown his problematic, frustrated, angry personality into his works while unable to accept his innate talent. So much so that more than 30 years after his passing, he comes across as highly contemporary, able to attract an increasingly difficult-to-impress audience anesthetised by an image-saturated context.
Armani/Silos: Guy Bourdin, Storyteller, courtesy of Giorgio Armani
Guy Bourdin’s storytelling stops us from the doom scrolling of social feeds and keeps us stuck to a powerful image. Iconic. Unrepeatable. Unforgettable.
Gaia Vecchiotti
Fashion Styling & Creative Direction, 2nd year, Milan