Rima Dadenji, my personal impressions and details from “Fortuny, un Espagnol à Venise&r

Rima Dadenji, my personal impressions and details from “Fortuny, un Espagnol à Venise” (Fortuny, a Spaniard in Venice) exhibition, private view, at the Palais Galliera, Paris, 2017. I love Mariano Fortuny’s work for various reasons, I’ll quickly jot down a few: Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (1871-1949) was born in Granada, Spain (Allah gave me the tangible miracle I’ve been waiting, striving for, all my life, in Granada), his father, the Catalan painter Mariano Fortuny y Marsal (1838-1874), died when Mariano was three years old, the family then moved to Paris and later settled in Venice in 1888 (I’ve lived in Lido di Venezia and know the laguna by heart). Mariano Fortuny started out as a painter, then worked as a photographer, a furniture and lighting designer, a theatre and opera scenographer, a costume designer, before focusing on textile and fabrics and inventing new methods of textile dyeing and of printing processes onto fabrics (he was basically researching light). He was inspired by Minoan culture (I love Crete!), Japan (I love Japan!), and Islamic and Arab design. Palais Galliera completely omits the Islamic and Arab influences and changes it to Byzantine and Persian in their booklet although there are djellabas, abayas and burnous by Mario Fortuny exhibited within their retrospective - this intellectual dishonesty is very characteristic of the museum-curating industry in France. Not only was Mario Fortuny born in Granada, where their family house was filled with Hispano-Arab design, pottery, metalwork and armoury, and he often depicted Arabs in his paintings (see for example Arab chief) but Venice, at that time, had a long tradition of trade with Al Andalus and the Ottoman Empire — Mario Fortuny had extensive exposure to Muslim and Arab fashion and design in Venice as well. In fact Venetian architecture is very influenced by Islamic architecture. I studied a full semester in Venice (fall and winter) and I still remember whenever the laguna was covered with fog, I’d get this instant visual illusion, like a mirage, that I was approaching Istanbul whilst on the traghetto, same in Piazza San Marco I’d get visual flashbacks of the Ottoman porticos around the holy Kaa’ba in Mecca.You browse any publication/documentation on Mario Fortuny in Spanish and in Italian (and perhaps even in English but I haven’t had the time to check) and you can read how of all non-Western cultures, the one Mario Fortuny appreciated the most was the Islamo-Arabic — it’s quite obvious when you view his entire oeuvre. He created textiles with Islamic Arabic calligraphy, like how demented must one be to willingly lie and erase this knowledge in a curated retrospective and therefore humiliate themselves (I’m fully using ‘demented’ here in its old Latin meaning). This erasure is appalling but not surprising, it’s actually the ‘default’ in any exhibition and publication related to Islam and/or Arabs, in France. It’s the country that censors, distorts, confabulates and obliterates the most (on par with the British). Lastly, Mariano Fortuny inspired Issey Miyake (whose work still fascinates me) with his Pleats Please, amongst others fashion designers. I love Japanese design, and I appreciate the gracious rapport between Japan and the Khaleej and their creative collaborations.Fashion to me is how I present myself to pray to Allah, and how I choose to position and distance myself in society, many of Mariano Fortuny designs accommodates my preferences, and that’s why I love his work. -- source link

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