Savage Beauty

There's something extraordinary about the Savage Beauty exhibit. 

In the introduction to Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, published in 1972, Michel Foucault once famously remarked that 'perhaps one day this century will be known as Deleuzian'. 

Alexander McQueen - 

"When I'm dead and gone, people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen."

Despite the hubris, and in spite of the flamboyance, he was on to something.

You feel a sense of vital movement in his couture. Like a wind, steadily blowing in your face, confidently reassuring you of the course, even if it's not readily apparent, and you have to traverse unbeknownst obstacles ahead.

The work is not weighted down by despair or destruction. Rather, it's uplifting, even in its darkness - jarringly so, one would conjecture. It's a wellspring of hope and defiance, a resistance to that which subsumes the death spirals of existence.

"There's no way back for me now. I'm going to take you on journey you've never dreamed possible."

"I oscillate between life and death," says McQueen, like a seasoned ferryman. 

There's a feeling of complete and utter unrest in his work. Of not being satisfied. Of striving. Of always trying to keep on moving, back and forth, until the forth takes us somewhere new.

Movement is a major theme in the retrospective of Alexander McQueen. Nothing is static. It's all trying to get somewhere, even if it doesn't know where. Certainly, McQueen took us to places we never knew we could find.

"You've got to know the rule to break them. That's what I'm here for, to demolish the rules but keep to tradition."