Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World review – a narrow view of beauty from a borderline stalker | Art and design

On the entrance to the Nationwide Portrait Gallery’s new Cecil Beaton exhibition, there’s a wall-sized replica of a 1948 color transparency, initially printed in Vogue. In it, eight coiffed white girls put on elegant night robes by designer Charles James, chatting and preening in an 18th-century fashion French-panelled room. They interact solely with one another, uninterested within the digital camera, looming larger-than-life above us. The impact on the viewer is of being excluded, unseen. This sense solely mounts as you proceed by way of Cecil Beaton’s Modern World, a present that presents the photographer as a sharp-tongued socialite obsessive about excessive society, magnificence – and himself.Beaton’s first exhibition on the NPG was in 1968. It was then the primary ever solo present by a photographer at a British museum. Sixteen surviving silver gelatin prints from it are introduced within the present’s first room. They’re lavish, theatrical portraits of brooding beauties with dark-painted lips, a swansong to the age of class.He photographed Greta Garbo dressed like a clown. She thought it was a non-public shoot, however the image ended up in VogueBeaton was generally known as the “King of Vogue” – he labored for the journal for nearly half a century, however was additionally a really prepared topic himself. The exhibition consists of an edifying caricature of him by Anthony Wysard and images by Dorothy Wilding and Francis Goodman. Every exhibits his panache as a performer – he by no means performs the identical character twice. As quickly as he had the best equipment for it, he began to take self-portraits, although you may by no means ensure which pose represents the actual Beaton. The wall textual content factors to a telling diary entry he wrote as a toddler: “I don’t need individuals to know me as I actually am, however as I’m attempting and pretending to be.”A really prepared topic … Cecil Beaton, c 1935. {Photograph}: The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive,This made him a very good trend photographer, however not a very good portraitist. The expressions of his sitters are flat, the poses repetitive. Beaton’s backdrops are sometimes extra attention-grabbing than his topic – he experiments with foils, materials and recent flowers, including totally different transparencies and textures to the picture. This understanding of textiles made him an amazing success as a dressing up designer, from the garments he made for his little sister for a ball to his Oscar-winning creations for My Honest Girl, which finish the exhibition.The present features a segue right into a small collection of Beaton’s battle pictures. His {photograph} of a three-year-old blitz sufferer sitting in a hospital, head bandaged and clutching a doll, appeared on the quilt of Time journal and have become world-famous. But another footage appear to aestheticise battle – troopers have smouldering stares like fashions in a trend shoot. They’re proven in a room subsequent to shiny portraits of smiling Royals – one other frequent topic.It’s uncomfortable to see how slim Beaton’s concept of magnificence was, particularly once you keep in mind the infamous incident during which he included an antisemitic slur (so small {that a} magnifying glass had for use to see it) in a cartoon he drew for Vogue. I’m drawn to a 1929 image of the Chinese language American actor Anna Might Wong, during which she poses laconically, whereas Beaton brings all his romance and photographic method to the picture, to scintillating impact. The portrait stands out for its magnificence but additionally as a result of Wong is the one girl of color I see within the exhibition, which has greater than 200 works. It’s a mirrored image of the occasions, but additionally the place Beaton was wanting and what he was considering – white girls with classical, barely masculine Edwardian options. His work wasn’t about illustration, however the artificiality of all of it turns into wearying.Even his wartime troopers appear to be trend fashions … Plane Recognition Room, 1941. {Photograph}: The Cecil Beaton Studio Studio AOne of Beaton’s first topics exterior his household was the late historian Steven Runciman. They met at Cambridge after Beaton by chance set hearth to a passerby’s straw hat, when he chucked a cigarette out of the window. Beaton described Runciman as “big and ugly and robust”. However within the image, he appears pensive, shy, a younger man holding a flower. Beaton noticed one thing else in him. It’s one of many few moments of emotional depth within the present.skip previous e-newsletter promotionYour weekly artwork world round-up, sketching out all the most important tales, scandals and exhibitionsPrivacy Discover: Newsletters might include details about charities, on-line advertisements, and content material funded by exterior events. In case you wouldn’t have an account, we’ll create a visitor account for you on theguardian.com to ship you this article. You may full full registration at any time. For extra details about how we use your information see our Privateness Coverage. We use Google reCaptcha to guard our web site and the Google Privateness Coverage and Phrases of Service apply.after e-newsletter promotionCecil Beaton’s Modern World raises extra questions in regards to the man who made the pictures than the evolution of trend pictures – and there’s definitely loads of grime on Beaton, a lot of it drawing on the customarily vicious accounts of occasions he recorded within the diaries he stored all through his life. All of it will get borderline stalkerish within the scrapbooks he stored on Greta Garbo, with whom he had an on-off romance. He as soon as photographed her dressed like a clown in a ruff – and although she thought it was a non-public shoot, the image ended up in Vogue. There appears to have been few limits to what Beaton would do to climb the social ranks – he even tried to have his household house’s postcode modified to W1.It appears tough to get away from Beaton for the time being. One other present on him at London’s Backyard Museum has solely lately closed. Fantasy and frolics are tremendous however A Modern World is pat, reinforcing a really English concept of magnificence and trend that now appears constricted and parochial. It could be Beaton’s world, however I’m glad I don’t should dwell in it. Cecil Beaton’s Modern World is on the Nationwide Portrait Gallery, London, from 9 October to 11 January