Lee Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse

Abstract

It began with the end. The first garment encountered in the exhibition Lee Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) was a gold-brocaded, belted jacket from the designer’s final, unfinished collection Untitled (Fall/Winter 2010–11) that was suspended from the ceiling with an invisible mount (FIGURE 1). Underneath, a separate vitrine displayed a pair of “Angel Heels” from the same collection. And on either side, vitrines contained small marble sculptures known as Fragment[s] with Two Seraphim, ca. 1460, that depicted angelic beings. By opening with the jacket, the Angel Heels, and the seraphim, even those who are unaware that Untitled was popularly dubbed Angels and Demons after McQueen’s 2010 suicide could see the conversation between religious art and iconography and the jacket inspired by it. In the years since McQueen’s death in 2010, his life and work have been the subject of two blockbuster museum exhibitions, a documentary film, and several books. Seeking to place McQueen’s canon within both art historical and dress historical contexts, this exhibition, Lee Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse, at LACMA set itself apart with a FIGURE 1 Alexander McQueen, Woman’s jacket (detail) from the Untitled (Angels and Demons) collection, Fall/Winter 2010–11. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift from the Collection of Regina J. Drucket. Photograph © Museum Associates/LACMA.