2023-07-02 12:26:06
HomeCultureSaint Laurent, Cai Guo-Qiang and a Trip in the Sky: Making Fireworks During the Day
Commissioned by Saint Laurent, the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang shoots pure beauty into the sky. Now the video is out.
Sabine Rothig
Almost better than the original: the Japanese cherry blossom catapulted into the sky with rockets.Saint Laurent/Cai Guo-Qiang
It is the pathos that at some point fell by the wayside. Who is considered psychotic in a society of self-optimization because he glorifies situations, turns living beings into gods, commits himself to decadence and refuses any obvious practical use. Art keeps this pathos alive. And fireworks too.
Renowned Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang brings both art and firecrackers together. The pictures he shoots into the sky are so beautiful that they take your breath away. What makes it so special is that it doesn’t bang at night, but during the day. And so the light blue sky acts like a canvas on which the colors explode. An admirer of Cai’s art is Anthony Vaccarello, creative director of Parisian luxury brand Saint Laurent. The fashion designer has now been able to win the Asian fire painter for a video collaboration in which the artistic approaches of both are combined in the most excellent way; the razor-sharp Saint Laurent elegance of Vaccarello and the explosive pathos of Cai’s “Fire Works”.
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The result is a nearly three-and-a-half-minute video titled When The Sky Blooms With Sakura, which premiered online a few days ago. In the clip, daytime fireworks that Cai realized on behalf of Saint Laurent on the Japanese coast are staged as a super stylish sky trip. Transported upwards in seconds by thousands upon thousands of rockets, white clouds of smoke blossom into floral formations high in the sky. Then come colors, blue, pink, orange. Black is also there. Strictly choreographed spacing allows the colored smoke to mix with the white to create pastel tones. A spectacular sight.
image series
As painted: the daytime fireworks by Cai Guo-Qiang.Saint Laurent/Cai Guo-Qiang
The colored smoke looks like watercolor.Saint Laurent/Cai Guo-Qiang
The fireworks choreography includes various acts, now pink comes into play.Saint Laurent/Cai Guo-Qiang
Gold was also shot into the sky.Saint Laurent/Cai Guo-Qiang
This formation stands for “Sakura” and is 400 meters long and 120 meters high.Saint Laurent/Cai Guo-Qiang
Sakura is the term for the cherry blossom in Japan.Saint Laurent/Cai Guo-Qiang
Also, twelve white chrysanthemum firecrackers were set off to commemorate the victims of the 2011 disaster.Saint Laurent/Cai Guo-Qiang
Dieses Element nennt Cai Guo-Qiang „weiße Welle“.Saint Laurent/Cai Guo-Qiang
Measuring 60 meters by 150 meters, the white smoke rose as a memorial here at Yotsukura Beach, near Fukushima.Saint Laurent/Cai Guo-Qiang
What is special about the video is that it adds further aesthetic dimensions to Cai’s fireworks installation with excellently filmed images and an epic soundtrack. The shots, some of which were filmed with drones flying through the fireworks, were produced by filmmaker Nathalie Canguilhem, who has worked with Saint Laurent for a long time and has mastered the house’s aesthetic codes inside out. The touching music that underscores the individual acts of the fireworks display also comes from a friend of the house. The French artist SebastiAn, who also scores Vaccarello’s fashion shows, succeeds in creating a mini-symphony that is perfectly matched to the visuals and even features an organ.
The approximately 30-minute fireworks were ignited last Monday on Yotsukura Beach in the Japanese city of Iwaki with a total of 40,000 fireworks. The area was devastated by the 2011 tsunami resulting from the earthquake that also destroyed Fukushima. Some acts of the staging make direct reference to the natural disaster. At the same time, the fireworks will open the solo exhibition “Cai Guo-Qiang: Ramble in the Cosmos – From Primeval Fireball Onward” co-curated by Saint Laurent at the National Art Center Tokyo, which runs from now until August 21.
In the future, we can expect more films from Anthony Vaccarello that go beyond the fashion show clips. In April of this year, Saint Laurent announced the founding of its in-house production company “Saint Laurent Productions” and the completion of the 30-minute film “Strange Way of Life” by director Pedro Almodóvar. The film, which stars Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
With his involvement in the field of film, Vaccarello is treading paths that other famous fashion designers have already paved. For example, Miuccia Prada promotes female film talent in particular with the short film series “Miu Miu Women’s Tales”, while Tom Ford has already given us the big screen with two gigantic, good glossy dramas. And last but not least, it is also Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent predecessor Hedi Slimane, who regularly delights us with artistically valuable clips in the course of new Celine collections. Fashion and film, that just fits. Fashion and fireworks lately too.
#fireworks #day