Visiting Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion? You must join the virtual exhibition queue when you arrive. If capacity has been reached for the day, the queue will close early.

Learn more
ticketsMember | Make a donation
Search

Deconstructing Madame X

Maleficent Twemlow
July 5, 2013

Artwork by Anna (left) and gallery view of PUNK: Chaos to Couture (right)

Left: Anna. Deconstructing Madame X, May 2013. Charcoal, pen, oil pastel, digital media, torched paper. Right (white dress): Zandra Rhodes (British, b. 1940). Wedding Dress, spring/summer 1977. Courtesy of Zandra Rhodes. Right (black dress): Zandra Rhodes (British, b. 1940). Dress, spring/summer 1977. Courtesy of Zandra Rhodes. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. See more gallery views.

«In my drawing at left, I wanted to create a visual response of sorts to what I saw in PUNK: Chaos to Couture, namely the D.I.Y.: Hardware gallery.» In this room, classic evening silhouettes are deconstructed and, if you will, corrupted. I attempted to do the same thing to John Singer Sargent's classic image of Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau) by breaking her down into flat planes of color scrawled onto burned and frayed paper.

Related Link
PUNK: Chaos to Couture

Maleficent Twemlow

Maleficent Twemlow (a.k.a. Anna) is a member of the Museum's Teen Advisory Group.