Designer’s Art Collection Is a Passionate Triple Mix
By KAREN ROSENBERG
Fashion designers are some of the most original collectors, as the art world was reminded when works owned by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé hit the block in Paris in a sale organized by Christie’s a couple of years ago. And the designer need not be a European couturier; “Mannerism and Modernism: The Kasper Collection of Drawings and Photographs,” at the Morgan Library & Museum, celebrates the unusual collection assembled by Herbert Kasper, the American designer whose garments were sold at Lord & Taylor and other department stores from the 1950s through the ’80s.
The occasion for this exhibition of some 100 works is Mr. Kasper’s 11-piece gift to the Morgan (that number includes partial and promised gifts). These sorts of collection shows can be relentlessly sycophantic, but this one is redeemed by its idiosyncrasies.
For one thing, Mr. Kasper collects in several well-defined areas: old-master drawings, modern and contemporary works on paper, and (mostly recent) photography. So the show, as a Morgan curator writes in the catalog, is really “three collections in one.”
And while some contemporary fashion designers view their art collections as an extension of their brands, Mr. Kasper’s approach is more instinctive. One might not expect a designer known for his affordable American sportswear to gravitate to the Italian Mannerists, or the art brut of Jean Dubuffet, or experimental photographs by Adam Fuss — but Mr. Kasper is clearly passionate about all of them. After a while this unmuseumlike mix starts to make sense. As a visiting dealer once told Mr. Kasper, the collection has “a thread.”
It helps that the Morgan’s curators, with assistance from Axel Vervoordt, the dealer-designer-tastemaker and Philip Feyfer, the art historian, have loosened up their typical installation structure. Drawings and works on paper hang in the East Gallery and photography in the West, but the contemporary artist Vik Muniz’s irreverent homages to Bernini and Delacroix infiltrate the ranks of Mannerists. Smaller pieces hang in clusters, emphasizing Mr. Kasper’s eclectic frame choices.
Right up front in the East Gallery you’ll see the first old-master drawing Mr. Kasper bought: a woman’s head by Baccio Bandinelli, a Medici court artist. Its subject, softly modeled in red chalk, has a vivacious, dimpled smile. (She might, the label suggests, be the artist’s mistress.) Also captivating, for more technical reasons, are three pen-and-ink figure studies by Perino del Vaga. His versatile hand gives brawn to legs and feet but makes voluminous capes look as light as chiffon.
The selection of Flemish drawings, though small, is richly varied. The wiry pen strokes of Maarten van Heemskerck’s “Susanna and Her Relatives Praising the Lord” make expressions of gratitude look almost grotesque. Meanwhile, a chalk drawing by Hendrick Goltzius, of the nymph Callisto revealing her pregnancy to a furious Diana, defuses tension with graceful C-curves.
Also here is Hans Hoffmann’s watercolor and gouache affenpinscher, its luxurious coat and manicured paws rendered in a meticulous style reminiscent of Dürer.
Then, without much warning, the collection skips from Mannerism to Cubism: collages by Picasso and Gris, a painting (“Woman at Her Toilette”) by Léger. A Degas nude is there to ease the transition.
One of the high points of the installation, though, is a mid-20th-century mix of Dubuffet works on paper and photographs of graffitied walls by Aaron Siskind, Helen Levitt and Brassaï. Here, an interest in marked and abraded surfaces links writing, drawing and photography. (According to the Morgan’s director, William M. Griswold, this particular section of the show is closely modeled on an arrangement in Mr. Kasper’s apartment.) A bit of that same aesthetic is apparent in the West Gallery, where modern and contemporary photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jenny Holzer, James Casebere and many others play illusionistic games with light, space and architecture. Fashion photography is conspicuously absent, which is rare — and refreshing — for a designer’s collection.
Here, for instance, are Abelardo Morell and Vera Lutter’s urbane deployments of the ancient camera obscura: the Morell converts a Whitney gallery into a cityscape, while the Lutter performs strange reversals on the Pepsi-Cola sign along the Queens waterfront. Nearby, William Eggleston’s shot of a Hollywood back lot confuses a painted sky with the real thing.
This wing of the show isn’t as balanced because Mr. Kasper collects certain photographers in depth. In addition to the multiple Munizes, he owns many large-scale works by Mr. Fuss, whose wild experiments with darkroom chemicals and organic matter produce images that are not always recognizably photographic. To make “Details of Love,” for instance, he placed rabbit entrails on Cibachrome; the result looks a little bit like a Brice Marden.
Over all “Mannerism and Modernism” has an interesting message for collectors: don’t feel pressured to pick a single concentration. Realize, as Mr. Kasper says, that “artists in one area affect artists in another, a photographer like Newman can be influenced by a painter like Léger.” And whether you’re a designer or not, always look for the “thread.”
“Mannerism and Modernism: The Kasper Collection of Drawings and Photographs” is on view through May 1 at the Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street; (212) 685-0008; themorgan.org.
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