When I was on exchange in L.A. for a semester of law school, my roommate and I made a point of driving the 100 miles or so to the San Diego Zoo. In search of the exotic, we eagerly parked the car and rushed around to the various exhibits, cooing over koalas, gawking over (er, under) giraffes and ogling over otters. While all of the animals were entertaining, sometimes it was the other people — our fellow zoogoers — that took the spotlight as they exclaimed over different creatures. Screaming children, their haggard parents, slurpee-sipping teens…they all looked like animals too. I realized how amusing it is that we humans — really just animals ourselves — pay money to walk around and stare at other animals in a zoo.
Flash forward to last weekend, when I took in the Vanity Fair portrait exhibit at the ROM. There I was, doing it all over again. There we all were: a bunch of artistically minded Toronto folk, nicely dressed, civilized little mammals, milling around some of the most beautiful photographs of the rich and famous I’ve ever seen. Edward Steichen, whose AGO exhibit I covered last week, Annie Liebovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe and Mario Testino’s work are all represented, along with a host of other well-known Vanity Fair photogs. The exhibit traces the life of the magazine in both periods of its incarnation: the beginning (1913-1936) and its current relaunch years (1983-present). The usual suspects — Madonna, Demi Moore, Drew Barrymore — line the walls, alongside more provocative portraits of Mariel Hemingway and, in their 1920s movie star way, Lillian and Dorothy Gish.
Museums are zoos of another kind, and the Vanity Fair portraits an exhibit of cultured animals looking at other cultured animals. There were the men (and women) salivating over a shot of Gisele riding a horse, and downstairs in the cafeteria, post-exhibit, some pretty angry ROM patrons stormed off like dogs denied table scraps when they learned the evening’s chicken special had been finished for nearly two hours. The portraits themselves drive home the blurry distinction between human and animal. One of the most striking images is Hilary Swank, muscled and taut, mid-run, reminiscent of a glorious cheetah. Lance Armstrong evokes a similar feline quality atop his bike, veins popping below billowing muscles. Kate Winslet dances, mermaid-like in a fish tank, an homage to her role in Titanic. Gloria Swanson, face lined with a black lace veil, cuts tiger eyes from her frame. Julianne Moore, lithe and white, lies statuesque and poised, holding a peacock fan. (These portraits seem to say that one of the most exotic humans of all — the celebrity — has heightened animalistic characteristics.)
A “Vanity Fair” is defined as a place of rascality and frivolity, and the cultured zoo I’ve described is just that. It is a little frivolous to put money down to walk around and look at still images of ourselves, but it’s also a little delicious to be able to consume such grand eye-candy, remember our commonality as human animals and search for satiation in each other’s gazes.
Leanne is an associate at Heenan Blaikie LLP. She spends her free time indulging in art, film, music and literature and swears that culture tastes better than chocolate. Her column will appear every Friday here on lawandstyle.ca.
Photo: Hilary Swank by Norman Jean Roy 2004
Vanity Fair, March 2005
© Norman Jean Roy