HABIT FORMING: Dior’s new creative director Jonathan Anderson has had a busy few months, but he’s still found time for contemplation, recreating the traditional nuns’ headdresses that appear in the work of one of his favorite artists, Gwen John.
Anderson has made a series of “cornettes,” an elaborate headdress historically worn by Dominican nuns and depicted in many of John’s late works on paper. His designs will be displayed as part of “Gwen John: Strange Beauties,” a landmark exhibition marking the 150th anniversary of John’s birth that opens at the National Museum Cardiff on Saturday.
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Anderson owns a significant collection of John’s works, including a rare watercolor depicting a nun on her deathbed. Some of those works are hanging in the new JW Anderson flagship on London’s Pimlico Road.
The five cornettes have been made using different fabrics and colors, and will stand at the entrance to the exhibition, “offering a contemporary counterpoint to her unique artistic vision,” according to the museum.
John, who was born in Wales and lived in France for much of her life, was a convert to Catholicism. She repeatedly depicted the nun’s habit and especially the cornette, a starched white headdress fashionable in 18th-century Paris and later adopted by the Dominican Sisters of Charity.
Although the house of Dior redesigned the habit in the 1960s, Anderson has reimagined the earlier iteration of the headdress, drawing on John’s colors, patterns and repetition of styles.
Anderson said he “never got bored of Gwen John’s works — they grow on me and every time I see them in a different way.”
The designer added that a woman painting a woman “is very different to a man painting a woman because there is an understanding of the female form, there’s an understanding of emotion that is very difficult to get. I think that is why she is one of the greatest painters in British history because she changes that dynamic.”
Lucy Wood, senior curator of Art at Amgueddfa Cymru and curator of “Gwen John: Strange Beauties,” said Anderson’s cornette designs “harken back to an earlier time. They echo John’s use of repetition and are made in colors influenced by her palette. I am delighted that these works are being donated by JW Anderson to Amgueddfa Cymru and that they will become part of Wales’ national collection.”
Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales is home to the world’s largest public collection of works by Gwen John. The exhibition runs until June 28, after which it will tour internationally.
