- That day in march 2007
- Hedi’s legacy
- Fans galore
- Fashion without Slimane
- Hedi in the art world
- So what’s next?
Hedi in the art world
While awaiting Hedi’s hypothetical return, his fans and the fashion press have followed his artistic adventures. He has shown his black and white photographs, which document the rock scene, in several exhibitions. On May 19, the Musac, Barcelona’s contemporary art museum, will exhibit the pictures he took at last year’s Benicassim rock festival.
But as Almine Reich recounted, people’s reactions to Slimane’s art has been quite. “extreme”. “Some people loved it, others pooh-poohed it by saying: he is not a real artist. Those negative comments mostly came from French people or people who do not live in big cities,” she said. Someone even told me, “If he wasn’t Hedi Slimane, he surely wouldn’t get all this attention and those prestigious galleries”.
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Yet, Reich insists it was the quality of his artwork that caught her attention. She remembers first meeting Slimane around 2000. ” We had mutual friends,” she said. “We clicked because he likes the same artists I like: Anselm Reyle, Johannes Kars,…” . But it was her discovery of his work in Berlin in 2003 that really triggered their collaboration.
“Hedi became so famous in fashion that people saw his photography as just a footnote”, said Agustín Pérez Rubio, the MUSAC’s chief curator. “But he has been taking pictures since the age of 8 or 9, I think. He is a classic photographer. His photos are perfect. Believe me, if I presented his work under the name of some Englishman named Matthew Bla Bla, people would still love it.” What is more, Reich said she sold a lot of Slimane’s artwork, which is priced from 7000 to 50000 euros, to people who have no clue who Slimane is. “You know, many art buyers don’t really care about fashion. They just buy art because they love it.”
Among the admirers of Slimane’s art is the Canadian artist Paul P, whose romantic drawings of boys were featured in Dior Homme’s summer 2006 ad campaign. “I'd heard about Hedi’s Berlin book of photographs before I followed his collections. I've always followed art first, but once I discovered the clothes it all made perfect sense that these were the works of one man”, he said. As Rubio declared, “You can’t really dissociate Hedi’s fashion and artwork .He is a Renaissance man, and his ability to diversify is performance art in itself”.
