Artist: Geneviève Sevin Doering
Date: 1989
Museum: Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations (Marseille, France)
Technique: Board
This costume was made for the 1989 Marseilles Carnival. After dying off at the turn of the 20th century, the Marseilles Carnival was revived that year by a group of artists and intellectuals living in the Rive Neuve district, south of the Old Port. Their plan was to create a “Venetian” carnival on Place d’Estienne-d’Orves, which was then occupied by a car park, to help contribute to its renovation. This initiative was not the only one of its kind: during the 1980s, folk festivals were frequently revived by local scholars and intellectuals.The costume was made by Geneviève Sevin-Doering, a famous costume designer for the theatre, for the cutting and stitching, her husband Reinhard Ubbelohde-Doering for the dyeing and Jean-Pierre Ive, a visual artist and poet from Marseilles, for the accessories. Its execution was of the highest quality whilst remaining true to the spirit of Carnival. For example, Neptune’s trident was made from a straw broom. Worn by two of the city’s public figures, Jeanne Laffite for the allegory for Marseilles and Jacques Mayol for Neptune, the costumes illustrated the theme of “Wedding of Marseilles to the Sea”, a local transposition of the Venetian ritual of the wedding of Venice and the sea, during which the doge would through a gold ring into the Adriatic. They also indirectly conjured up another wedding, that of Gyptis and Protis, the legend of the foundation of Marseilles.
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