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Steven Meisel Shoots Arty Nudes for Pirelli’s Provocative Annual Calendar
Is the tire company taking a page from Allen Jones?
Christie Chu
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Each year, Pirelli, an Italian tire manufacturer based in Milan, releases a calendar featuring fashion models and actresses, which is regularly shot by a famed photographer. Past photography legends who have worked with Pirelli include Richard Avedon, Peter Lindbergh, Annie Lebovitz, and Patrick Demarchelier.
For it’s 2015 calendar, Pirelli had Steven Meisel, a well-known fashion photographer shoot up-and-coming models Gigi Hadid, Anna Ewers, and Sasha Luss, including other seasoned faces such as Natalia Vodianova, Joan Smalls, and Adriana Lima. And it may be the artiest calendar of pin-up girls yet.
An “appropriate” use of Pirelli’s main-stay, rubber, the images (most of them NSFW) feature the models in latex-clad outfits or stay-ups—evocative of the racy work of Allen Jones (see “Is Allen Jones Still Sexy After All These Years?“), in particular an image of Kate Moss, Body Armor, (2013), which was sold this past year at the Christie’s sale “Kate Moss from the Collection of Gert Elfering,” and seems to have been the inspiration for Meisel’s portrait of Gigi Hadid.
“In my opinion, these are the key aesthetic models of today’s world. They represent the stereotypes that the fashion and star system impose upon us right now,” Steven Meisel said in a statement. “I didn’t want to make a conceptual calendar, or link it to some particular location, but rather to create 12 posters in which women, in all their sensuality, are the absolute protagonists of 12 very different images. Since I wanted to limit the use of clothes and accessories and since I had absolute creative freedom, I found it very exciting to play with the colours, the makeup, and the materials. It was a very rewarding experience.”
Rewarding for sure, and useful. With the new year fast approaching and all, tis the season. Just the other day, Art F City released its own arty contribution to the genre (See “Artists Dress as Nude Pandas for Art F City Calendar“).
Très chic. Très BDSM.
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