Philip-Lorca diCorcia: Heavenly Bodies

“The photograph’s frame either delineates a self-contained world, or it suggests a much larger world just outside the boundaries of the frame.” —Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Philip-Lorca diCorcia: Heavenly Bodies

Heavenly Bodies presents three photographs from a series of works by Philip-Lorca diCorcia, originally created on the occasion of Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, The Costume Institute’s critically acclaimed 2018 spring exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Featuring models wearing ornate and refined clothing taken directly from the exhibition, diCorcia’s images weave together rich displays of visual elegance with subtle references to historical works of art and broader social realities.

Unseen since their initial publication in Vogue in 2018, these photographs are being made available here for the first time. The artist and David Zwirner will donate one edition of each work to The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Photography Department.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Vogue, May 2018, #6, 2018
Archival pigment print
Image: 32 x 39 3/4 inches (81.3 x 101 cm)
Framed: 39 1/8 x 46 7/8 inches (99.4 x 119.1 cm)

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“The process was slow, it was as if the models were sitting for paintings.
And the pictures are like paintings.’’
—Phyllis Posnick, Contributing Editor, VOGUE, who collaborated with the artist on Heavenly Bodies

[Left]: Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Vogue, May 2018, #6, 2018 (detail); [Center]: Constantin Brancusi, Bird in Space, 1923.
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY. © Succession Brancusi - All rights reserved (ARS) 2020; [Right]: Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Vogue, May 2018, #6, 2018 (detail)

Highlighting the beauty of the clothes, diCorcia stages the figures in contrived settings with dramatic lighting, contrasting the display of luxurious, flowing, papal-style garments and porcelain-white gowns against checkered marble or wooden floors. The resulting photographs have a tableaux-like, monumental quality that balances glamour and grit, imagination and irony.

Installation view, Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters, Fuentidueña Chapel, New York, 2018.
Photo Credit: Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY

“The wedding dresses by Marc Bohan and, especially, Cristóbal Balenciaga, recall the cone-shaped silhouettes of gowns worn by statues of the Virgin....The Balenciaga headdress, like the veil on the statue, echoes the lines of the gown, which the fashion industry has anointed the ‘one-seam wedding dress.’...If, indeed, the dress were made from a single length of fabric, it would claim biblical sources: Jesus’s seamless robe at the Crucifixion is described as woven from the top in a single length....Arguably Balenciaga’s most masterful achievement, it warrants its iconic status in fashion hagiography.’’

—“Langon and Fuentidueña Chapels,’’ Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018

Watch an interview between Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Greg Lulay about these photographs and go behind the scenes
at the Heavenly Bodies shoot.

“When we looked up, we saw objects of beauty, an iconography that represented magic and miracles and mystery and power and classicism and drama.” —Maureen Dowd, Vogue

“European Catholicism and fashion enjoy a particularly close bond, especially in their mutual devotion to art and beauty....Consider the centuries of ravishing Catholic artworks: medieval altarpieces, Raphael Madonnas, the stained glass at Chartres.” —Rhonda Garelick, The Cut

Raphael, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints, c. 1504. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Raphael, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints, c. 1504 (detail). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

“The essential mysteriousness of the world comes off the surface of his pictures like the essential character of a stranger comes invisibly from his skin....You feel it before you can define it, even if you can’t ever define it.” —Mary Gaitskill, “On Philip-Lorca diCorcia,” Eleven

Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Vogue, May 2018, #3, 2018
Archival pigment print
Image: 32 x 39 3/4 inches (81.3 x 101 cm)
Framed: 39 1/8 x 46 7/8 inches (99.4 x 119.1 cm)

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El Greco, Cardinal Don Fernando Niño de Guevara, c. 1600 (detail). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

El Greco, Cardinal Don Fernando Niño de Guevara, c. 1600 . The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

“The choir dress of cardinals...is depicted in a portrait of Cardinal Fernando Nino de Guevara by El Greco. Choir dress, which is worn by bishops and cardinals for all public liturgical celebrations, follows their colors of rank.’’

—“Medieval Art Galleries: The Clergy and the Hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church,’’ Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018

In their subversion of tradition, for example by portraying female models adorned in the patriarchal regalia and iconography of the Catholic church, honoring the visual and material cultures of the religion while challenging its traditions—diCorcia’s heavenly bodies reflect the tension that characterizes the artist’s oeuvre.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Vogue, May 2018, #3, 2018 (detail)

Raphael, Madonna del Prato, 1505/1506. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Raphael, Madonna del Prato, 1505/1506 (detail). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

“As a curator you’re always interested in what lies behind creativity and the creative impulse....Some of the garments we’ve selected relate directly to the artwork within the galleries, so through juxtapositions, we create conversations between fashion and religious artworks from the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries to the Renaissance.’’
—Andrew Bolton, curator, Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination

“Fashion shares with tourism an emphasis on surface. You’re not supposed to see the underside. I tried to show both the visible and the psychological sides...the official version and the hidden twin.” —Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Vogue, May 2018, #4, 2018
Archival pigment print
Image: 32 x 39 3/4 inches (81.3 x 101 cm)
Framed: 39 1/8 x 46 7/8 inches (99.4 x 119.1 cm)

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“Catholicism is both a public spectacle and a private conviction, in which beauty has the force of truth and faith is experienced and articulated through the body.”
—Jason Farago, The New York Times

[Left]: Attributed to Pedro Roldán, Virgin of Hope of Macarena, Seventeenth Century, Basilica of Macarena, Seville.
Photo © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro; [Right]: Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Vogue, May 2018, #4, 2018 (detail)

Installation view, Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters, Fuentidueña Chapel, New York, 2018.
Photo Credit: Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY

“You don’t follow the script.” —Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Philip-Lorca diCorcia, 2014

Explore the artist's current solo exhibition in Paris

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