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Lot Essay
Like a reel of celluloid, the pictures in Vincente Minnelli Was an Embroiderer appear one above the other, yet each is framed and several are decorated with stitched silver tears. Vezzoli combines the worlds of film and embroidery in this way, as well as in the title, which refers to the great director Vincente Minnelli, sometime husband of Judy Garland and father of Liza Minnelli. This sequence of images focuses not on Minelli himself, but instead on Judy Garland, his wife. Is the implication that Minnelli has caused the tears? Or that directing a film is much like needlework?
Minnelli, having lived a huge life and created many famous and lasting contributions to the world of film, is a source of fascination for Vezzoli, and this is doubtless heightened by his relationship with Garland. A child star, a famous actress and now a gay icon, Garland as a person and Garland as a persona, open to public interpretation, are widely different and allow Vezzoli an intense investigation of the nature and perceptions of fame, and also of femininity. Where some of his films show former screen stars now past the prime of their popularity as a means of contemplating the fickle nature of celebrity, in Vincente Minnelli Was an Embroiderer he has taken images from the past in order to force the viewer to contemplate the changes exerted both in terms of Garland's life, in terms of the wider world's perceptions of her, and in terms of the discrepancies between them.
By giving this work a title that refers to the absent man and not to the subject of the images, Vezzoli hints that Minnelli himself is somehow still a creator of this work. Perhaps this is intended to be a critique of gender relations, perhaps it implies that Minnelli himself has been behind the camera. In either case, Vezzoli introduces a deliberate tension between the man's world of Minnelli and the more feminine embroidery that punctuates the surface. By extension, this work investigates both the nature of woman and the nature of man, linking Minnelli not only to a woman's craft but also to a gay icon. In this way, Vincente Minnelli Was an Embroiderer manages to serve as a discreetly camp and humorously subversive work while also touching on issues that are a cause for both melancholy and reflection.
Minnelli, having lived a huge life and created many famous and lasting contributions to the world of film, is a source of fascination for Vezzoli, and this is doubtless heightened by his relationship with Garland. A child star, a famous actress and now a gay icon, Garland as a person and Garland as a persona, open to public interpretation, are widely different and allow Vezzoli an intense investigation of the nature and perceptions of fame, and also of femininity. Where some of his films show former screen stars now past the prime of their popularity as a means of contemplating the fickle nature of celebrity, in Vincente Minnelli Was an Embroiderer he has taken images from the past in order to force the viewer to contemplate the changes exerted both in terms of Garland's life, in terms of the wider world's perceptions of her, and in terms of the discrepancies between them.
By giving this work a title that refers to the absent man and not to the subject of the images, Vezzoli hints that Minnelli himself is somehow still a creator of this work. Perhaps this is intended to be a critique of gender relations, perhaps it implies that Minnelli himself has been behind the camera. In either case, Vezzoli introduces a deliberate tension between the man's world of Minnelli and the more feminine embroidery that punctuates the surface. By extension, this work investigates both the nature of woman and the nature of man, linking Minnelli not only to a woman's craft but also to a gay icon. In this way, Vincente Minnelli Was an Embroiderer manages to serve as a discreetly camp and humorously subversive work while also touching on issues that are a cause for both melancholy and reflection.