Prints Charming: A Survey of the Summer Art Scene Via Spring 2014 Menswear

As models sauntered down the runway for the spring 2014 men’s shows, I found myself considering a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art instead of desiring a stroll down Madison Avenue. Indeed, the collections could be read as a revealing survey of the current summer art scene (made even more revealing by some of the runway’s cut-to-there swim trunks and bare chests). Dolce Gabbana’s kitschy sepia-toned prints of Greco-Roman sculptures evince **Jeff Koons’**s plaster gods (bearing shiny glass baubles) at David Zwirner Gallery; **Kay Kwok’**s ethereal, diffuse patterns conjure **James Turrell’**s takeover of the Guggenheim’s rotunda; and **Christopher Raeburn’**s poetic splatters of sand and shoal-gray shades look as if they were caught at MoMA’s Rain Room by Random International. On the opposite spectrum of the menswear stratosphere, Burberry’s bold color-blocking in electric blues and reds recalls **David Hockney’**s first video installation, The Jugglers, at the Whitney Museum of American Art. There’s plenty of eye candy in Versace’s colorful lozenge-shaped splashes (which look as if they were plucked right from **Carroll Dunham’**s prismatic work at the Whitney’s lithograph In Parts), while Missoni’s mind-bending zig-zag prints channel Hans Richter’s work on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The affinities continue in quite a surreal way, but for a dose of Surrealism with a capital S, look no further than Calvin Klein Collection’s sigh-inducing sky and sunset imagery, reminiscent of **Ben Jones’**s heaven-bent ladder at Los Angeles’s Ace Gallery. Onward and upward!