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June 24, 2008 9:58 am
London-based Chantal Joffe began painting from fashion magazines as “a ready-made, endless source for images of women.” But for her new show at London’s Victoria Miro gallery, Joffe presents a body of work painted from life. Invited behind the scenes at Paris fashion week, Joffe acts as an updated Degas—who painted ballerinas as they prepped backstage at the Paris Opéra—of the modeling world. But while Degas was interested in depicting the dancers’ stretching and preparing, Joffe aimed to capture glimpses into the girls’ identities. “In Degas you get an extreme physicality: bending backs and cropped legs,” she says. “In one sense what I saw backstage was like that, perhaps, but it was also something completely other. You are plunged into thinking about the sort of girls who model and what was happening to them socially.”
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