Diane Von Furstenberg's "Faceless" Campaign Channels Surrealism

Good advertising instills a desire in the viewer to become a part of the scene, and good ads frequently invoke the masters of art in order to get their messages across. Diane Von Furstenberg's "Faceless" campaign for her Spring 2012 collection takes a hint from Surrealism to take the image of desire to a whole new level.

In this surrealist homage DVF captures a model whose face has been covered by a mirror and reflects the sky. The faceless model echoes John Baldessari's blipped out faces, treating the face as irrelevant and distracting. There is a strong reference as well to Rene Magritte's self portrait "The Son of Man," which hides the face and features the motif of blue sky.

Of his work, Magritte said: "Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us."

The bottom of the "Faceless" ad reads: "Be who you want to be." The image both invites you to into the images and exposes the very impossibility of the image. On the one hand the model's face is a mirror; she could be anyone, even you. And yet the mirror will always reflect the sky. Revealed is the myth, a fabrication.

What do you think of the ad? Is it more Magritte or Baldessari?

Does it make you want to buy a wrap dress or head over to the nearest art museum?

Let us know in the comments section below!

Comments

[coreten]

10:27 AM on 02/26/2012

I would have to say it leans more to the Magritteside.

[Holly H]

10:09 AM on 02/24/2012

Salvador Dali-esque

[brownjw]

07:38 PM on 02/21/2012

So much fashion photography is blatant rip-off's of artists' work. (Much is highly innovative on the other side of the coin). That you would choose to celebrate such a lack of creativity in your arts section is troubling.

[jdevans]

04:23 PM on 02/21/2012

The ad doesn't have any surrealism to me. It reads more as a Baldessari ripoff than a Magritte.

[eric14]

02:59 PM on 02/21/2012

The bottom of the "Faceless" ad reads: "Be who you want to be."
------------------------
Wow! Be who you want to be. Amazing Who could have thought up such an original, oh wait a minute, that can't be right! It gets 4 billion results on Google in 0.25 seconds. A record for such an original expression.

Well, you can Google it yourself.

[alphi1026]

02:29 PM on 02/21/2012

I think that the DVF ad looks eerily similar to a short film shot and conceptualized by my friend Derek. Here is an article recently published about it.

http://highasstyle.com/2012/02/07/2078/

[eric14]

02:55 PM on 02/21/2012

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