Presented by The Lee Miller Archives and Gray M.C.A Gallery, this first of its kind exhibItion examines the similarities, the complexities and the differences of working with lens and brush respectively and the relationship the two mediums have as they complement each other in documenting fashion to audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.
Both artists, beloved by Condé Nast’s Vogue magazine from the 1920s through to the late 40s and beyond were considered consummate masters of their chosen fields. Their influence, style and language reached far beyond a Vogue readership. Miller challenged convention and broke boundaries, whilst Erickson elevated fashion through his interpretation of social realism; their work bringing focus to women in fashion from the traditional couture house model to the world’s most glamourous sirens of the silver screen. Together they forged new trajectories, revolutionising the interpretation of fashion in the interwar years. Pioneers of Fashion salutes each artist and celebrates their vital contribution to the history and evolution of twentieth century fashion.
Artist Biographies
Lee Miller (1907 - 1977) American
Lee Miller began her photographic career as a fashion model for American Vogue and Vanity Fair. In 1929 she became the lover and collaborator of Man Ray in Paris and within a year ran her own photographic studio in Montparnasse, Paris. In October 1932 she returned to America and set up ‘Lee Miller Studios Inc.’ in Manhattan, New York at which, despite the depression, her portraiture, advertising and fashion feature work enabled her to operate at a small profit. By spring 1934 Vanity Fair hailed her as one of America’s top photographers. Lee Miller closed the studio mid 1934 to live in Egypt with her husband Aziz Eloui Bey. Fascinated by desert travel, her Surrealist images from this period are among her most famous. In 1939 she left Egypt for London as WWII broke out and became a freelance photographer at Vogue.
Between 1939 and mid 1944 Miller’s fashion work was published in over 400 pages of British Vogue, its export books, knitting and pattern magazines and in American Vogue. In 1942 she became a correspondent to the US Army which gave her access to photograph the women’s war effort in Britain alongside her fashion work for Vogue. After D-day she reported from Europe and among her many exploits she witnessed the siege of St Malo, Liberation of Paris, fighting in Alsace, liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau and was billeted in Hitler’s apartment.
Whilst still working at Vogue, in 1947 Miller married Roland Penrose and contributed to his biographies of Picasso, Miró, Man Ray and Tàpies. Her portraits of 20th century artists are powerful which along with her extraordinary Surrealist images, WWII fashion and combat photographs have earned her a key place in the history of art.
Carl Erickson (1891 - 1958) American
‘Eric’ as he was known throughout his career, is recognised as the most influential pioneering fashion illustrator of the twentieth century. From the early 1920s, Erickson was to revolutionise the way fashion was portrayed away from the stylised approach made fashionable by the illustrators of the period. Most specifically by placing his models within a context, Erickson deployed an acute observation with an elegant line, loose brushwork and colour washes that achieved a distinct, seemingly spontaneous feel. His success as a fashion illustrator led him to receiving commissions to paint the portraits of many leading figures of the post war period including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Elizabeth II, Frank Sinatra, Gertrude Stein and Horst P. Horst.
Image credits:
(left hand side)
Carl Erickson (1891-1958), 'Empire Coat by Schiaparelli', 1936 watercolour & gouache on paper, signed, 55 x 33.5 cms, published American Vogue 1936 © Condé Nast / Gray M.C.A
(right hand side)
(detail) London Fashions for America, Vogue Studios, London 1940 by Lee Miller, © Lee Miller Archives, England 2024. All rights reserved. www.leemiller.co.uk
