The final parade of the film Prêt-à-Porter (Robert Altman, 1994) is full of subversive rage. The models show no clothes on the catwalk in Paris. The nude is an activist gesture that shows the dynamite the structure of the fashion industry since its foundation. A slap to the growing power of frivolity without commercial substance in the guidelines that govern our desires and our relationships. The fashion world is crushing artistic creativity that voraciously devours all appropriating iconography and radiate beauty to the world in the form of trends. Even Robert Altman’s film has just the industry digested and converted into a mere publicity spot devoid of venom. It is useless to speak out against it. Even the most irreverent fashion designers are crowned by the system as wayward gods. Only the advertising industry has a similar system of conversion of matter in critical docile and productive for their own benefit. In this playroom, disobedience can never be dissent, but a distinctive individuality and paradoxically, has rewards. The fashion photographer is a militant agent. Their work is aimed at providing a double dose of clothing object of desire in front of the viewer. His creative contribution is subject to a deliberate commercialism. The most innovative and artistic work, the greater the degree of their involvement in this perverse game. The more you try to remove the stereotypes of the imagery of fashion, the greater its contribution to the differentiation and uniqueness of the object for sale. The fashion photographer is a mercenary in the pay of iconic brands. It is expected to upset in this vicious circle if it has real artistic aspirations. David Arnal is an example of such photographers serving the promotion of textile collections and a hairdresser looking for new forms of expression. The nakedness of the models exceeds the resistance to the system of promoting fashion. Use of the average torque approach to achieve an authentic-style offense.
Fashion Is Dead in challenging poses of the actors are the same as in the traditional iconography that sell clothes, but there are no clothes to sell. There is a misrepresentation of other directionoriented approaches which are irreverent. Models shout slogans written on their bare skin, multiplying the disturbing power of their slogans. The fashion is dead because it abused the visual language and message. It has been the cry hoarse shouting until it was hoarse. With its eagerness to make us believe that sells content, has been left alone in the blank canvas of their emptiness. Just as any of us choose the clothes they wear as a projection of ourselves, or we use a t-shirt with printed text as a vindication and a sign of identity, these labels painted on the chest of the models come from the models themselves. It is they who have chosen the text that look on the skin. David Arnal’s work in this case with artistic concept approaches and surpasses the usual relationship between photographer and model. The message is the medium and the body is the watchword. “The medium is the message” which Marshall McLuhan exemplified here by the letter. The whole of this photo series is just the first half of the project. Arnal’s apparent disregard for the fate of their models is observed from a new perspective. Significantly, the assembly of pairs of images: each image has its counterpart in the graphic interpretation of Gonzalo Cervelló. The photos are provided to an intervention that pulverized into pieces, projecting to a plastic free from figuration. Each of them is reflected in its corresponding broken mirror. In this case, as in the historical dialogue between painting and photography, sharing common tools, technical or thematic approaches, photography coexists with the graph in a turbulent evolution, a new field-oriented expressive experimentation.