Chanel’s traveling “Mobile Art” exhibition

[ChrissyM]

Chanel's "Mobile Art"

The following article is from W's September 2007 issue:

High fashion's obsession with contemporary art continues. At June's Venice Biennale, Karl Lagerfeld unveiled plans for "Mobile Art," a traveling exhibition of art inspired by Chanel's signature quilted handbags.

The Kaiser has yet to announce which artists will participate, but he did let on that architect Zaha Hadid had been commissioned to create a collapsible structure in which the show will be displayed. Hadid came up with a white flying saucer-esque building with 6,000 square feet of exhibition space.

"Mobile Art" will make its debut in Hong Kong in January before travelling to Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, London, Moscow and Paris.

"I'm not an architect," Lagerfeld told WWD of his decision not to design the pavilion himself. "A poorly cut dress is not dangerous. A poorly built building can fall and even kill people."

Those who can't wait until January to sample the fruits of Chanel's patronage should visit the brand's Rodeo Drive shop this September. After renovations, it will reopen with commissioned works by artists Johan Creten, Peter Dayton, Francois-Xavier Lalanne, Jean-Michel Othoniel and Paola Pivi.

 

[ChrissyM]

2modern.blogs.com:

Architect Zaha Hadid and Karl Lagerfeld unveiled Channel's collapsible, futuristic pavilion for its "Mobile Art" exhibition that will debut in Hong Kong in February. Chanel has commissioned 15 contemporary artists to create works inspired by their most famous handbag (quilted leather, rectangular, chain handle - you know the one). The project is meant to appeal to customers, display the brand's heritage in a new way and reintroduce the iconic 1955 bag in an energizing way. Chanel is no stranger to commissioning artists to create works for their boutiques or for new jewelry lines but this collaboration trumps all. In an inspiring statement to the press, Lagerfeld said, "Architecture and fashion are like Russian dolls, one fits inside the other."

 

[ChrissyM]

from runway.blogs.nytimes.com

July 25, 2007, 11:18 am Zaha, Meet Karl



“I must say it was very fun,” says the architect Zaha Hadid of the mobile exhibition pavilion she designed for Chanel. The building, which is composed of continuously arching elements and calls to mind a flying wedge (or, hmm, a contemporary Chanel handbag), can be taken apart and transported. Next year, starting in Hong Kong, Chanel plans to deploy Hadid’s pavilion for an exhibition called Mobile Art. The structure will travel for two years, dropping in on Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Moscow and London. Karl Lagerfeld has asked 15 artists to create work inspired by the iconic quilted Chanel bag, which Coco Chanel first showed in 1955. Hadid’s sculptural building, started after a conversation with Lagerfeld last fall, seems to capture new geometries in design and architecture. The super-light, reflective exterior breaks down into seven-foot wide pieces for transporting. Inside the donut, there is exhibition space and a central courtyard for dinners and other events.
I asked Hahid, the architect of the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati and the BMW Central Building in Leipzig, if our shopping experience needs new stimulation by architecture. She cited the example of Rem Koolhaas’s work for Prada (and its great Tokyo boutique by Herzog & de Meuron). And what about a mobile retail store? “I think it depends on the brand,” she says. “But I think it could work.”

 

[papa_levante]

So what exactly is that? I figured it's traveling on a bus or something, but is that what it's traveling in?

 

[ChrissyM]

link to video of the Chanel contemporary art container


I think this whole idea and the aims behind it are kind of interesting...
obviously they are trying to build more buzz around the brand (as if they need it) and excite their customers in new ways..

maybe this is a ploy for more inspiration?
art inspired by the bags, and then maybe some new bags inspired by the art?

i think it will be interesting to see what the artists come up with and how it relates to Chanel as a fashion brand

this just seems like another one of those give-and-take relationships between fashion and art

both the artists and Chanel will be gaining some added recognition because of this collaboration

 

[ChrissyM]

So what exactly is that? I figured it's traveling on a bus or something, but is that what it's traveling in?

the structure is collapsible so it's definitely nothing as "crude" or common as a bus..

i don't like making this comparison but it's more like a circus tent from what i understand (or the same sort of concept at least) except that it is a building, which will then travel to the different destinations and exhibit the art.

 

[ilaughead]

It is a pretty cool building, but think of the costs and energy needed to build and transport it! Some pretty expensive marketing!

 

[ChrissyM]

^^good point!
not to mention the money they will have to pay the artists...
i'm assuming they will expect to make some sort of profit?
or could it all be for publicity?

i guess only time will tell...
i'm wondering where in these big, crowded cities this mobile building will have space to be set up...

 

[kissmesweet]

Oh wow, this looks incredible...

It'll debut in Hong Kong?! Wow that sounds fantastic.

 

[brad_tsye]

Fantastic design~~~~

 

[ChrissyM]

new article from brandweek.com that names some of the participants and includes some details about the exhibition:

(bolding is my own)

The Art of Promotion: Chanel Bags and the Mobile Art Project

October 09, 2007

By Eric Newman

NEW YORK -- It’s the kind of otherworldly brand messaging you’d expect from a house headed by the likes of Karl Lagerfeld.

But still, Chanel’s new “Mobile Art” project—a two-year tour of art installations paying homage to the French house’s iconic quilted bag, housed inside a collapsible, 7,500 square foot UFO-like pavilion designed by Zaha Hadid—is probably more out of the box than most marketers would feel comfortable going.

According to WWD, the installation, expected to first hit Hong Kong in January 2008, features the work of various noted contemporary artists, including Yoko Ono, Sylvie Fleury, Tabaimo, Loris Cecchini, Subodh Gupta and Sophie Calle, among others. Though admission is free, the company will only allow groups of 15 people to tour the installation at a time, where they’ll get to interact with the brand with works such as Ono’s, which asks visitors to write a wish on a piece of rice paper, attaching them to a tree when they are finished.

Definitely not your typical pop-up shop or brand communications platform, but then again, it’s the type of thing that’s bound to get consumers—fans and non-fans alike—talking.

“It’s another way to communicate, to let Chanel surprise you,” Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion activities, told WWD. “What we want to show is that creativity is not only for a product or an advertising campaign. It’s the engine and essence of our brand.”

After staying in Hong Kong for eight weeks, the exhibition is expected to hit Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, London, Moscow and Paris over the course of its world tour.

 

[oceanharlot]

very interesting. there have been a lot of recent crossovers like this between contemporary artists and more commercial pursuits, I just saw something at SFMoMA where an artist collaborated with BMW making a car into a piece of art. I was intrigued by it, I'd be interested in what Y.O. makes, she is incredible. I wouldnt be surprised if her version was a piece of paper on the ground that said "make mobile building, buy chanel."

 

[MUXU]

so...with all these fancy words around this building, 'mobile art', this is pretty much just a ship? or is it a building that travels across the sea on a ship?

this is definetly taking advertising to another level. all this trouble just for a bag...

when will this hit london?

 

[uberQuirkiness]

how weird....interesting
and how did he come up with this?
im gonna go see it when it comes to new york!

 

[BerlinRocks]

the "building" is good...
all the rest is non-sense...
this is not art... this is just s***!! I never understand...Louis Vuitton did the same some times ago... but they didn't built a nomad building... they just ask artists to think about their bag... wow wow wow...

 

[spiceboy]

i dunno Zaha had better so did Karl

 

[ChrissyM]

according to all of these blogs this was supposed to debut in Hong Kong in January..

January's almost over though

i did some googling but didn't really find anything new..
could they have meant January 2009???

has anyone heard anything

 

[cocosofia]

I investigated this project for uni and my understanding of it is that it is a modular travelling pavilion, made up of several modular pieces, each designed specifically to fit into shipping containers (so that it can be easily transported). It is unusual that they announced the opening of the exhibition to start only a few months after the announcement of the project details. Im sure this will take a while to actually get built, like most architectural projects do.

 

[ChrissyM]

right.. so maybe it will actually happen in 2009 after all..

 

[BerlinRocks]

Chanel Mobile Art - Chanel Contemporary Art Container

I guess this belongs there....
If you hadn't heard about it yet.... Well you will for sure those times....
Chanel Mobile Art Container is open......

There are many minor cities in China with populations of six and seven million, so perhaps it is natural that Hong Kong always feels like a small town. A tiny circle of storied capitalists and their socialite spawn sit at the center of a node in the global economy unlike any other. The local art scene does nothing better than organize panel discussions about its own shortcomings. Vague apparitions of the future—stalled plans for the West Kowloon Cultural District, a controversial Herzog & de Meuron design for an arts district amid a redeveloped police station and prison compound in Central—play to the idea that this is a city where big things could happen. For now though, it’s a place where one goes to bemoan how global capitalism has made the world into a giant mall, but also to buy a really fabulous suit or bag.
And oh, the shopping! The late critic Jonathan Napack once noted how the town “went directly from feudal poverty to postmodern consumerism without an intervening stage of ‘modernity.’” So perhaps there was no other place for Karl Lagerfeld and Zaha Hadid to kick off their plan to bring “mobile art” to five global cities, with a traveling exhibition installed inside a reverie by Lady Zaha herself, easily collapsible and transportable from one stop on a jetsetting trajectory to another.
If anything, the Chanel container, which opened to the public on February 27 for visits at rigidly enforced fifteen-minute intervals, provided a chunk of cultural capital that natives and visitors (never an easy distinction in Hong Kong) could play off each other. The production values are as high as one would expect, and the theater of the container’s vaguely Eurasian hostesses in matching black Chanel knit cloaks and white pants regulating entry, then presenting as fetish object the MP3 player that contains the exhibition sound track, was priceless. “Which language would you prefer?” they asked each visitor. “We have English, French, and four Asian languages.” Inside, Yang Fudong’s two-screen still video depicting a pair of aloof beauties seemed to capture and satirize the desired aesthetic, although Wim Delvoye’s no-holds-barred fabrication of a Chanel quilted bag (supposedly Hadid’s inspiration for the container itself) from his Beijing-bred tattooed pigs came in at a close second. Looking into an animated pit by last summer’s Venice star Tabaimo, one was warned by the husky baritone of Jeanne Moreau on the MP3 player: “There are secrets lying at the bottom of a well, just like in the bottom of a bag.” Not that I had higher hopes, but it was at this line that I had the Vestals switch my player to Mandarin, resigned to anthropological curiosity about how such inanities would be rendered in the language of the brand’s biggest, newest market.



“What did you think of the Chanel exhibition?” and “Are you going tomorrow?” were the parlor questions of the evening before the opening gala, as I sat on the fifteenth-floor roof deck of the China Club late last Tuesday, glimpsing out toward the Star Ferry car park where the container was installed. Artists and curators began to appear—Michael Lin, Loris Cecchini, Fudong, Fabrice Bousteau, Wu Shanzhuan, MASS MoCA’s Joe Thompson—and mingled with daughters of the major families, girls with American first names and surnames like Woo and Chou. There were four eminent lacquer craftsmen on that roof, three members of the Koolhaas family in from Guangzhou (“A great town, full of pink buildings and African clubs,” exclaimed Charlie), and even leading 1980s critic Pi Daojian, now better known as the father of Beijing gallerist Pi Li. In a nearby room, Club founder Sir David Tang held court with Hadid and Project Runway’s Nina Garcia (in town to promote—at Lane Crawford, of course—a new book urging women to be less brand conscious). The latter duo was complemented by a rotating cast of notables shepherded in for individual audiences by Tang’s longtime collaborator, the dealer Johnson Chang. For a brief moment, the Club’s dynamite collection of Chinese contemporary art, assembled by Chang and Tang in the early ’90s as they essentially wrote the playbook that the auction houses still follow today, seemed worth every dollar it would bring if put on the block tomorrow.
Fashion parties happen every week in Hong Kong (by all accounts the Louis Vuitton event two nights later was “so much better”), but fashion parties with the veneer of art—that is another story entirely. And for Chanel, art was as good a reason as any to enforce that key brand attribute: exclusivity. Just ask the executive director of one of the city’s major art institutions (herself also a fixture of local party rags like Tatler and Prestige) who was invited explicitly sans husband (the Asia director of a competing brand). “It was all just a little too precious,” she said on the roof of the China Club. Another friend with deep family ties to the fashion industry got her invitation only after a guilt-tripping call from a publicist explaining that she would be allowed in—but only in place of a Chanel executive who had flown in just for the event from Paris.

It was this friend with whom I arrived, walking unsuspectingly before the paparazzi with her and an Artforum colleague—until we two guys were kindly asked to move over so that the dog-catchers (as they’re called in Cantonese) could shoot “just her look, please.” Hand-stamped and inside, we were reminded of Akbar Abbas’s pithy formulation about Hong Kong as the land of the déjà disparu, a place with no visible past, or even Napack’s idea of the city as the “apotheosis of the bogus.” Why was it so empty? Had people been already and left? Had Chanel gone so far in the name of brand exclusivity that no one actually felt like showing up? We mitigated this curiosity by frequent vertical moves from the party scene downstairs to the container-bearing rooftop, exchanging empty champagne glasses for full ones with every climb. At one point Lagerfeld and Hadid arrived, but it seemed the only people left to notice were photographers paid to do so. Charlie and Rem D. Koolhaas ran downstairs to say hello to their old family friend, as we blew kisses and agreed to meet again a week later in Dubai.

Philip Tinari @ artforum

official website here :
http://www.chanel-mobileart.com/

.... I have nothing to say about this.....

But if you want to do your dissertation about art & fashion, those years are full of things for you....