Fashion & Painting
From fashion and painting to the „ironically decadent” Miss P. series
Dresses paired up with their painted paraphrases, often accompanied by jewellery, make up Adele Frank’s twin pieces, in which the mirror effect is enhanced by the application of a unique 3D crumpled sewing technique. Painting and fashion design do not appear as distant genres in these twin works but much rather as complementary elements of an integral whole. The crumpled sewing paintings were first featured in her Starving Beauty series and the series Flags (the portraits of such iconic women as Queen Elizabeth II or Marilyn Monroe).
Modern Venus III. The woman might be slightly familiar she is Botticelli’s Venus, now behind iron bars.
The starving Beauty series explores how the ideal of female beauty is distorted and manipulated by economic interests. In an age when the fulfilling experience of womanhood is replaced by fashion models dying on the catwalk and hundreds of thousands of women undergo excruciating and unnecessary cosmetic surgery in the name of ‘beauty’. Buttock enlargement, breast surgery, and liposuction – the target of the commercial profit making is the modern woman, who is pulled into a vortex of illusions of perfection.
The Geishabride concept: The designer made a self-portrait called “Geishabride” – a painting that manifests a latent paradox of femininity put on a pedestal (both being a geisha and a bride, pipedream of men)- for her fashion show in 2014.
In 2008, 2010, 2014 and 2021 Adele’s paintings were exhibited along with her collections.
Inspiration of the dresses:
Historical references, which may appear in the form of a unique Baroque or Gothic sleeve, an imitation of a Stuart collar, a small and dense Renaissance button pattern, or an Art Nouveau element. These details can be divided according to seasons; each era is represented in its pure form. However, they are focused in an eclectic way even within a single dress. The overall effect is always modern; the past is just a reference. For example in the London collection the bustle from the end of 19th century was combined with a modern twist and pull technique.
The designer’s favourite materials are silk, muslin, shantung, taffeta, leather, and for the more extravagant pieces she likes to use vetex mounted paper, canvas, metal, or even wood inserts. She doesn’t shy away from designing enamel buttons or silver and gold Yin-yang ones either.
Starving Beauty I.
130/90cm
Starving Beauty II.
120/80cm
Starving Beauty III.
130/90cm
Starving Beauty IV.
140/90cm
Starving Beauty V.
100/70cm
Starving Beauty VI.
100/70cm
A trapéz- Miss P. iszonyúan élvezi a Brexitet
160/60cm
A híd- Miss P. nagyszerűen érzi magát
60/60cm
Modern Vénusz II avagy Miss P. örömteli módon leleplezi a meztelen igazságot
Irony and humour subdued in the series of Miss P.
Miss P. frightfully enjoys the Brexit (The trapeze). The cadaver like white woman is hanging upside down from a trapeze with an unworldly smile on her face symbolizing the „country in trouble”. This gag meant to be an ironic imprint of the moment.
In the other pieces of the series we see how Miss P. cares about people (The marionette), and Miss P. having a great time (The bridge). The inspiration for Miss P. was Frank’s own 2007 Modern Venus II. painting, where a dead white woman is currently undergoing plastic surgery, while resting comfortably under a green medical blanket with an open belly, seemingly enjoying the process. For the 2007 original the artist used a medical fabric, like the ones used in Hospitals, to conceal the „procedure” halfway. At one of the Adele Frank fashion shows a ballerina in medical roll bandages gave a performance in front of the painting. The artist renamed the Modern Venus II to „Miss P. reveals the naked truth with pleasure” in 2022, adding it to the Miss P. series.
Playing a chess game with God
100/100cm
Dress painting paraphrase
40/80cm
Drag Queen on the catwalk
Modern Venus
Modern Venus III.
120/200cm
Waving Desire
Flags I.
100/70cm
Flags II.
100/70cm
Self-portrait Geishabride
150/100cm
Self-portrait II.
80/60cm
Introducing Mary Bride
100/70cm
Introducing Mary Bride II.
120/80cm
Pleasant
calmness I.
Pleasant
calmness II.
100/70cm
Pleasant
calmness III.
100/70cm
Embrace I.
Embrace II.
2x 50/70cm
Embrace III.
100/70cm
Embrace IV.
Short Cut
4x 30/20cm
New Age
100/70cm
Power is our Pride
Micro - Macro II.
40/50cm
Micro - Macro III.
Artistic Ars Poetica
Emotional Aesthetics – A new emotional dimension that searches for the balance between timeliness and timelessness.
The accelerated change of styles and trends is typical both in art and in fashion. A concept or an idea may take precedence in the work (Concept Art), or conversely we may claim that the art is primarily an aesthetic activity (New Aesthetics), but the cultural background always determines the interpretation of the work. When studying the techniques of construction and composition, interpretation and the relationships defining such them, painting as a solution and reflection of the questions posed by the age and culture must get priority again. The language of art does not need to be adapted to the intense scientific progress which has inspired so many artists both in the past and in the present. The revved and exalted lifestyle further estranges people and uproots relationships. Excessive consumption that is manipulated by the interests of those in power diverts and engages people, and leads to significant environmental pollution, therefore speculating about whether a possible Armageddon will occur within a short or a longer period of time is merely an equivocation and insolence. The excessive amount of information with its small truths and spate deviation is just another tool for economic and ideological manipulation. Emotional aesthetics is a new emotional dimension that aims to search for the balance between timeliness and timelessness, the paradox of accelerated development and defects, the opposites encompassing existence, the all-embracing superficial freedom and deep-rooted insecurity, which have been observed over the last decade.
(Artist and fashion designer) Adele Frank had artistic debuts in London, Paris, Moscow and Budapest. She treats painting and design as equal, not as a remote branch of arts positioned in a strict hierarchy, therefore she often displays her clothing collections in an exhibition combined with her paintings and installations. Her debut was in London, at the Hungarian Embassy in Belgravia. In Paris, besides her collection, she also presented an extravagant oil-textile-inflatable metal-paper-rubber woman sculpture installation called “Modern Venus”. In her paintings female beauty is displayed as a product where the woman is understood as a destination where the product is predestined to be delivered, referring to the new aesthetic revolution and the results of industrialized plastic surgery. The emotional dimensions of the static and turbulent, yet sublime series entitled “Top Model – the Starving Beauty” incorporate a protest against the revved and superficial reality of our time, and on the other hand, they are also understood as mapping the sufferings of the manipulated and voiceless modern woman.
The direction of the approach can be a breakup with the manipulative trends, a journey to the inner self in order to return to the more natural states and tempo by rediscovering integrity and microenvironment. Furthermore, this separation and concealment may lead to a new poise of the individual, on the basis of which emotional harmony may be achieved. Some of her paintings are twin productions bridging the different periods of the artist, to which an article of clothing representing creative arts is also attached as a basis. A 3D crinkled seam application on some of the paintings further enhances this effect. Her collections reflect metropolitan elegance built on the traditions of artistic trends and deep professional knowledge, and her dresses filled with unlimited fantasy reflect the autonomy of the mature female experience of freedom. Her speciality is personal made-to-measure with a designer consultation, which ensures the exclusivity of revalorisation.
The designer was honoured the Victor Vasarely Art Award in 2014.
This content is protected by the register of works.
The painting was inspired by the title of the famous book by the philosopher Peter Popper. The painting portrays the 19th move of the 5th game of the Final in the 2004 Chess World Championship. We can see the black (Kramnyik’s) pieces. The moves of the champion (Péter Lékó) – playing with the white pieces- cannot be seen. The chess table is a symbol. The moves of the loser- the black pieces- represent the inevitable self-defeat of mankind in the chess game of life, opposing a Force, which can’t be defeated, or grasped. Megalomaniac dictators, religious and ethnic differences, false accusations and reasons for war, or committing inhuman crimes in the name of humanitarian interventions, such ungodliness. The progress of mankind is serving destruction; the 20th century is a good example, where the technical developments were the means of meaningless wars, cruel massacres. We will lose eventually, the question is when. „ It was very important for me to create a rigid, disciplined, monochrome picture, to produce an effect contradicting its content. I was looking for a game of chess which has a kind of symmetrical discipline, and the symbolic number ten appears.” Queen d8: 6th Aug, 1945: The American airplane, called Enola Gay drops the first atom bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. The bomb was named ‘Little boy’. Rook e8: Dec, 1937: 300000 people were killed and 20000 women raped in Nanking, China by Japanese soldiers. King g8: The Jews had to wear this star during the Nazi regime. Rook a7: 21800 Polish soldiers and civilians were killed by the NKDV in 1940, in Katyn. Although the manslaughter was ordered by Stalin, the Soviet Union denied it and blamed the Nazis. In 1992 the files turned up. Pawn f7: 22nd Apr, 1915 – I. World War: The first German poison gas attack at Ypern. The Germans placed 170 tons of gas at the frontiers. After that the gas became a common chemical weapon. Pawn g7: Sarajevo, 1993: It was the biggest war in our time in Southern Europe: the nationalities, that used to form one country, massacred each other. One of the mementos of this war was the Olympic Stadium in Sarajevo, which functioned as a cemetery at the time. Pawn h7: 19 was the average age of the soldiers killed in the Vietnam War. Bishop b6: Sudan- Darfur: Since 2003 armed militias kill civilians – 400000 is the estimated number of the dead. The manslaughter is similar to the one in Ruanda, in 1994. Pawn d5: Osama bin Laden started his war in the name of Islam. Bishop h5: Iraq: The USA admitted not to have found evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
