Cecil Beaton: Celebrating Celebrity

Video for the UK Friends of the Hermitage

Cecil Beaton is one of the most famous photographers of the XX century. He was a fashion photographer, celebrity photographer, set designer, costume designer, and essayist. He spoke on behalf of fashion and beauty, avoiding vulgarity.

For 50 years, Cecil Beaton managed to create a huge portrait gallery in scale and scope. His lens caught both Hollywood stars of the first magnitude, and bohemian artists; as dancers of the ballet, which was a connoisseur of the photographer himself, and fashion designers of the first magnitude-Coco Chanel and her main rival Elsa Schiaparelli. Among his heroes were Charles James, Cristobal Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent. It was in Beaton's pictures that some iconic models went down in history — a portrait of the scandalous Wallis Simpson in a" Lobster Dress " by Schiaparelli; he shot Princess Margaret in a luxurious, feminine dress from Dior, which became a symbol of the return to peaceful life after the war.

The curator of the exhibition — Daria Panaiotti, a researcher at the Department of Contemporary Art of the State Hermitage Museum, commenting on the role of photography in the museum's exhibition projects, notes: "Art of the XX-XXI centuries is impossible to imagine without photography. For example, the boom of "celebrity culture", what we called the cult of stars, was largely due to photography, which transformed the economy of visual images." Cecil Beaton has been professionally engaged in photography for almost half a century and was the creator of this culture. He understood the mechanisms of fashion and fame on a very deep level and reflected this in his pictures. Beaton is one of the most famous photographers in the UK, who is still little known in Russia. But it was important for us not only to introduce him to the Russian audience, but also to use the example of his works to tell about the visual culture in which we live, and to build a bridge between modernity and the culture of the past."
Видео на русском языке доступно по ссылке: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXYc5N267CQ&t=218s
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Видео Cecil Beaton: Celebrating Celebrity канала Государственный Эрмитаж