2009-03-16
Francesco Vezzoli’s artificial perfume “Greed” was recently exhibited in Rome. A flirt with Hollywood and the fashion industry with an obvious reference to Marcel Duchamp’s “Belle Haleine: Eua de Voilette”. © Gagosian Gallery
Not only fabric
Kristoffer Poppius reflects on art’s foray into the fashion houses – on the lobster dress, Warhol’s emptiness and life-style concept stores.
Shoes with stiletto heels on pedestals at Louis Vuitton’s futuristic flagship store at No. 101 on the Champs Élysées in Paris look as though they are displays of phallic sculptures; dresses that are like minimalist abstract colour compositions on hangers; or little bags that are reminiscent of shiny objets trouvés at a gallery. There is a staircase – or rather a lift – designed by Olafur Eliasson – that has neither sound nor lighting so that one has no idea in which direction one is travelling.
Metamorphoses
Hyongkoo Lee’s “Homo Animus” hands on the white walls, a series of realistic skeletons of cartoon figures like Pluto and Bugs Bunny. Together with works by nine other young Korean artists they form an exhibition entitled “Métamorphoses”. The theme – visions of our changing relation to society, our bodies and architecture in the face of modern urban life, if one so will, could hardly be more apposite to the time and place.
More than a PR coup
Art’s foray into the fashion houses – the trend for self-regarding fashion brands to make some sort of space available for art, is undeniably a sign of something and not merely a PR coup. What began with the Fondation Cartier in 1994 continued with Prada’s Fondazione (which has exhibited Anish Kapoor, Louise Bourgeois and Nathalie Djurberg) and which was taken to new heights last year with Chanel Mobile Art which visited Hong Kong, Paris and New York. Karl Lagerfeldt’s ambulating exhibition presented works by Sophie Calle, Tabaimo, Yoko Ono and The Blue Noses in the Chanel Contemporary Art Container, a spectacular design by architect Zaha Hadid.
Lobster dresses and pork-cutlet hats
That art approaches fashion is no new phenomenon. Ingres in his day or, later the impressionists, tried to catch the signs of the times in a skirt fabric at a bar or on a Sunday walk and Gustav Klimt commissioned specially made gold tunics from Emilie Flöge that would look good in a picture. Elsa Schiaparelli’s and Salvador Dalí’s surrealist social criticism in lobster dresses and pork-cutlet hats; Cindy Sherkan’s posing models and Andy Warhol’s emptiness or, perhaps, his insight that the surface is not all. A glossy, visual spirit that contemporary artists have continued to work in. For example Jeff Koons and Francesco Vezzoli.
Translating works of art into clothing
Fashion has become more than mere fabrics to keep the cold out or to look good in: a visual expression with expectations ever since Sonia Delaunay started translating works of art into items of dress in order to question how we regard ourselves as this finds expression in what we wear. From the aesthetic totality of the Bauhaus School to Commes des Garçons’ device that nothing that has been seen previously is worth displaying and Margiela’s recycled material, via Mette Prawitz (and later Minimarkets) Bærtling dress and Yves Saint-Laurent’s legendary Mondrian one, Stephen Sprouse’s clothing and bag graffiti and fashion photography that has become increasingly free since the seventies.
Attractive and ugly, masculine and feminine
It is clear that these related disciplines have a great deal in common and much to learn from each other. In an encounter between them at the intersection between traditional values like attractive and ugly, masculine and feminine, eternal and changeable, something can arise and be created that reflects our contemporary situation with its dissolving hierarchies and increasingly relational aspects; whatever this may be called.
“Life-style concept store”
I am not claiming that it is wrong to experience or consume art in a shop environment. In a punky DIY shop in London or an exclusive haute-couture showroom in Milan or even in PUB’s new “life-style concept store” in Stockholm with a floor for each type of personality, where art and clothes go hand in hand, rather than in a museum or gallery sponsored by corporate donors with a bad conscience and vintners from Champagne who are eager to cooperate.
Consumption as religion
I merely note that in our own time religion is exchanged for consumption, identity
is a matter of social and cultural codes that are up for sale and that art is just one significant (though rather meaningless) sign out of a multitude to be embraced – for the fashion industry, for the millionaire patron who thinks that money is ugly and who wants to “give something back”, or for the man in the street – to get depth, cred and cultural capital such as a pair of dark glasses and a matching polo-necked sweater at an opening. Maybe the greatest, most sublime art exists outside the narrow confines of the capitalist system and cannot be bought for money.
Kristoffer Poppius
Freelance journalist
Stephen Sprouse, Debbie Harry Cut Out Dress Polaroid, Courtesy Sprouse Family Archives
© Deitch Gallery, New York
Stephen Sprouse, TV Sketch, Courtesy Sprouse Family Archives
© Deitch Gallery, New York
|