(story to be published in tomorrow’s issue, March 24)
Friday, 31 March 2000, Janine Fashion Design launches its 10th couture collection, ” A la recherche de Brancusi.” 1, one, 10, ten, 2000, two thousand. A date in which the combination of figures suggests astrological connotations. Whether it was premeditated or not, this “coincidence” has specific numerological significance. One is the beginning, ten, the completeness of the world of numbers and 2000, the most common inscription in the world today – is perhaps the best name for the present we live in. Beyond the rumble that the millenarian ideologies had stirred, the year 2000 possesses a certain secret magic and, from my point of view, positive. The New Millenium, the New Age, the New Spirit. The ninth Janine collection, “The eclipse” was related to a special astronomical event in the summer of 1999 (her ninth collection was in 1999). The eclipse was used to reiterate the central theme in Janine’s creations; saving humanity through art and belief. Now, in the “no man’s land” between millennia, the tenth collection is set in a round year. For the creative spirits, the free and the daring, the numbers that superstition deemed as ill luck can bring moments of victory. “A la recherche de Brancusi” is the end of a creation stage that began in 1997 with the “Metropolis” show and the beginning of another – by opening the horizon to a new vision, signification that fits perfectly in the symbol of the year 2000 as a rite of passage in the new millenium. The artistic search that “Metropolis” initiated underwent an alchemy process: it was molded and forged in the incandescence of ” Ember” (1997), chiseled in the “Jazz” (1998) spirit, sublimed through the gate of the “Eclipse” (1999). Now it orders the results in the logic inspired by the vision of Brancusi’s masterpieces. After this long, transforming process, the elements came back to their original matrix. Shapes and colours, volumes, the void and the fullness, matter and emptiness, shadow and light build a world starting with the fundamental laws: module, structure, system – and are all articulated according to the theory of proportions. In the book “The art of shape” (1993), critic and Art historian Adriana Crainic Botez wrote about Brancusi: “In accordance with Blaga’s affirmation , in the works of Brancusi one can find revealing synthesis of the geometry we find in nature as well as the invented geometry. Little or no influence comes from the cult or urban reflexes of European styles. To the echoes of prehistoric art, the Romanian sculptor adds natural motifs, stylised and interpreted in a language of Universal communication value. (…) A harmonious synthesis between intuition and initiation, between the sensibility of the Romanian peasant and the equilibrated mind of the sage, Brancusi’s work is built on the constants of the Romanian spirituality: TEMPERANCE AND EQUILIBRIUM, MODESTY AND INNER PEACE. The power of focus and synthesis, the structural peace, fulfilled through initiation, reflection and knowledge are the spindles of his work. Earth, wood, stone, steel, bronze are a universe of benefic energies, a solar world of beings, of mater and ideas, a world that has a place for everybody. The collection “A la recherche de Brancusi” proposes just this kind of approach for ordering the compositional elements and for the volumes. The constructive principles are transferred and adapted to the Haut Couture Art. The pieces are architectural images for different types of human personalities.