Icon of style – an epithet that sets a high bar, obliges a lot and has been widely replicated in recent years, but more often for no reason, can be applied to Cecil Beaton with good reason. During his half-century career in photography, he earned the status of a trendsetter and aesthetic photographer, who became the creator of the landmark for the 20th century. the cult of celebrities. He had an impeccable sense of style and a rare flair for genuine talent. Starlets, imitators, speculators and dummies never became its heroes. Beaton was the fashion designer of the starry sky, and the coordinates of each star were verified by him with absolute precision.
The retrospective exhibition Cecil Beaton and the Cult of the Stars has been prepared by the Hermitage together with the Cecil Beaton Studio Archive within the framework of the Hermitage 20/21 project. It contains more than a hundred of Beaton’s works of different years from the archives of not only the photographer’s studio, but also Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines, as well as from the collection of the London Victoria and Albert Museum. The Hermitage retrospective of Beaton’s works will be the first in Russia.
A native of London’s Hempstead district, Cecil began his passion for photography at a young age. Moreover, it was the world of fashion that attracted him: with special interest the boy examined the images of luxuriously dressed celebrities and socialites on the pages of printed publications and art postcards. Beaton became the owner of his own camera at the age of 11, and took and processed the first pictures under the guidance of a nanny. Members of his family became the models of the young debutant. The path to the pages of the fashionable press was passed by Beaton easily and quickly. Already in the 1920s, in his twenties, the young photographer began shooting for Vogue and Vanity Fair. The aspiring photographer was able to get the coveted contract with Vogue largely thanks to the portrait of the British scientist George “Dadi” Rylands, made in 1924.
Beaton took an extraordinary move, dressing the scientist in the attire of the Duchess of Malfi, the character of the tragedy of the same name by John Webster’s revenge, written in 1612. Subsequently, “role-playing” will become one of the favorite techniques of fashion photography. Beaton was very fond of games with disguises and reincarnations – both literally and figuratively. “I don’t want people to know me for who I really am,” he said, “but for who I pretend to be.” Along with Beaton, glamor, ingenuity, modernism and audacity burst into the decorous and dull world of British salon photography.
He enthusiastically played with light and retouching, mystified the audience, openly called himself a “camera manipulator” and frankly enjoyed his visual provocations. He managed to create an unprecedented portrait gallery in both scale and range: from Hollywood stars of the first magnitude to bohemian artists; from outstanding ballet dancers to the first persons of the world fashion. He filmed rivals and lovers, triumphants and those eager for revenge. Its heroes were Willis Simpson, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli, Yves Saint Laurent, Cristobal Balenciaga, Charles James.
Staging of the apotheosis
The exposition in the Hermitage allows you to look into the backstage of fashion photography of the mid-20th century and plunge into Beaton’s creative process. Images that capture different stages of photo processing – a series of control prints with author’s marks, collages, photographs with traces of retouching – will help to get an idea of the professional laboratory of a fashion photographer. However, the portrait of Beaton himself would be incomplete without a bright touch – filming for Diaghilev’s Russian Ballets, and a special section of the exhibition is devoted to this episode of the photographer’s creative biography (by the way, connoisseurs of a theatrical and fashionable plot, it will probably be interesting to get acquainted with the exhibition B circle Diaghilev “in the Sheremetyevo Palace, which contains about 150 portraits of prominent personalities from the environment of the genius impresario of the XX century, the creator of” Russian Seasons “Sergei Diaghilev).
A talented photographer, Beaton was a man of many talents: he acted as a set designer, costume designer and interior designer, penning exquisite essays and memoirs. His achievements as a set designer and costume designer were recognized at a high level: in 1958 he was awarded the Oscar for the best costume design (for the musical by Vincent Minnelli and Charles Walters “Gigi” Beaton created more than 150 historical outfits), and in 1964 The Oscar jury presented him with another award – for his work on the film “My Fair Lady” as a production designer.
“Each era is trying to find its own unique look, which is a mirror that reflects reality,” writes Beaton in his book “The Mirror of Fashion”. His photographs have become just such a mirror in which emotional and delightful moments from the history of fashion of the 20th century and the lives of its main characters come to life for posterity. The outstanding Briton is fully worthy of the epithet “photographer of a generation”, which is so generously and quite rightly used by experts in fashion photography all over the world. The royal couple also could not fail to recognize Beaton’s merits: after World War II, Cecil Beaton became the official photographer of the British royal court, and in 1972 he was knighted and awarded the title of Sir.
“Art of XX – XXI centuries. it is impossible to imagine without photography, – rightly notes the curator of the exhibition Daria Panagiotti, a researcher in the Department of Contemporary Art of the Hermitage. “For example, the boom in celebrity culture – what we called the cult of the stars – was largely due to photography, which transformed the economy of visual images. Cecil Beaton has been a professional photographer for nearly half a century and was the creator of this culture. He understood the mechanisms of fashion and fame at a very deep level and reflected this in his photographs. ” Beaton himself considered his mission as a portrait photographer to “stage the apotheosis.” Behind this formulation lies the art that he mastered to perfection – this is the magic of a carefully thought-out and wow-effect arrangement of the appearance of a person in secular society and on the pages of glossy publications.
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