Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion?
My personal response to 'Burka' and 'Afterwords' is one of extreme discomfort, especially in regards to 'Burka'. 'Burka' is visually very powerful and haunting in its boldness and simplicity. And it's very confrontational in that it forces one to think about one's own perceptions about modesty, and about the idea of objectifying women, or people in general. On the surface, it seems to be expressing the idea that the arabic custom of shrouding women in black robes is a gross infringement on their individuality. But underneath that, there might be an underlying idea that perhaps there is no difference between the west and the east. Maybe society objectifies women(and people) equally everywhere, as evidenced by the fact that the models from left to right, are all equally impersonal to the viewer, despite their varying degress of nudity. i.e. No matter to what degree people are exposed, they can still be viewed as impersonal objects if displayed in a particular way, which is quite an unsettling concept.
As for 'Afterwords', I don't really have have a personal reaction other than:"Oh, that's pretty clever, the furniture is turning into clothes. Cool." To me, there isn't really anything deep and intellectual to talk about there, even though I quite like the work as it is visually interesting, and has an interesting practicality to it. But I don't think there's any deep statement in it.
But then again, 'Afterwords' is a lot more fashion-y as well, so maybe it is both. In the case of Afterwords, there probably is no clear distinction regarding whether it is art or fashion. It could easily be both. It's fashion in the very basic sense that it is clothing, and it's art in the sense that it's very stylized and 'designed'. And it appears very art-like in the sense that it is presented to almost resemble a piece of installation art, rather than a straight forward fashion display on the runway.
Overall, there probably is no real categorical distinction between art and fashion. There are clothes which are cheap and mass-produced, like a sweatshirt one would buy from K-mart, which has very little 'art' to it, and then there are elaborate dresses designed by highly talented designers, who would definetly consider their works to be art. So maybe the difference is not between art and fashion itself, but between the individual works, and their respective ratios of 'style' versus 'practicality', as well as the intentions of the person responsible for creating them.
Chalayan himself though, seems to think of himself as fashion designer, as the following quote would suggest:
"..I first wanted to be a pilot and then I wanted to be a hairdresser,
no sorry, first a hairdresser, then a pilot, then an actor,
then an architect and then a fashion designer. yeah."
(designboom.com)
2. Chalayan has strong links to industry. Pieces like The Level Tunnel (2006) and Repose (2006) are made in collaboration with, and paid for by, commercial business; in these cases, a vodka company and a crystal manufacturer. How does this impact on the nature of Chalayan’s work? Does the meaning of art change when it is used to sell products? Is it still art?
Having commercial endorsement and funding behind his work probably affected the nature of Chalayan's work in several ways. For one thing, it provides him with more freedom in the sense that his ideas are not as limited by the cost of materials. But on the other hand it probably forced him to make certain stylistic adjustments because there is more pressure to present something slick and sophisticated and proffesional. This really shows in 'Repose' and 'Level Tunnel', because both those pieces look very technically polished and proffesionally engineered.
(note the immaculate standard of craftsmanship in the above pictures)
Also, being commisioned would certainly dictate the nature of his subject matter. Something like 'Burka' for example, while being very bold and art-like, would not be considered proffesional in a sponsored design project associated with a major brand or label. In that sense both 'Repose' and 'Level Tunnel' are very clinical, and to the point. As for the nature of whether it is art or not, I don't think that changes just because there are parameters involved. The project still involves creative design and execution. The only thing that changes is perhaps the 'genre' of art. On a commisioned project like these two, it can no longer be just a randomn abstract intellectual expression like 'Burka', with no practical purpose behind it other than 'art'. It now has to fullfill a purpose, and as such, meet the confines and requirements of a design brief. But I don't think that having a practical purpose makes it any less credible as 'art'. If anything, it probably makes it more credible. Afterall, a movie for example, has to adhere to millions of different parameters in order to fulfill its purpose of entertaining the audience, but that doesn't mean it's not art. In fact it probably ranks a lot higher on the art food chain than some installation in some obscure gallery somewhere, because the degree of difficulty is a lot higher, just as the degree of difficulty was a lot higher with 'Repose' than it was with 'Burka'.
There is a school of thought out there which would say that art is no longer as pure when it is used to sell products. Movies, songs, books and video games all sell products in one way or another, but to say that they are no longer art because they are commercially viable, is absurd. If anything, the opposite is probably true. Afterall, it probably requires far more effort and dedication to make a blockbuster movie which brings entertainment and joy to millions of people (and thus, sells tickets), or to write a popular song which moves millions of people, than it does to throw some black garments over a few women and line them up in some gallery.
3. Chalayan’s film Absent Presence screened at the 2005 Venice Biennale. It features the process of caring for worn clothes, and retrieving and analysing the traces of the wearer, in the form of DNA. This work has been influenced by many different art movements; can you think of some, and in what ways they might have inspired Chalayan’s approach?
Uhm, I couldn't find a copy of the actual film anywhere, but judging by the photograph, it seems that maybe Chalayan was somewhat influenced by modernism, simply because of the sterile, machine-like aesthetic to it.
4. Many of Chalayan’s pieces are physically designed and constructed by someone else; for example, sculptor Lone Sigurdsson made some works from Chalayan’s Echoform (1999) and Before Minus Now (2000) fashion ranges. In fashion design this is standard practice, but in art it remains unexpected. Work by artists such as Jackson Pollock hold their value in the fact that he personally made the painting. Contrastingly, Andy Warhol’s pop art was largely produced in a New York collective called The Factory, and many of his silk-screened works were produced by assistants. Contemporarily, Damien Hirst doesn’t personally build his vitrines or preserve the sharks himself. So when and why is it important that the artist personally made the piece?
There really is no right or wrong answer to this, particularly when it comes to modern art, where there is such a wide variety of mediums and formats and genres out there, that the lines become very blurred. I guess there are certain categories of art where it is important that the artist made the work personally, and some categories where it is not. When it comes to straightforward paintings for example, then I guess it is very important, because every inch of the canvas is a direct representation of the artist's skill and interpretation of the subject matter. A Monet would no longer be a Monet if someone else had painted it. The same could be said for sculptures. Ron Mueck's work for example, is every inch his own work, and only he would sculpt the vivid expressionson his sculptures faces the way he does it, so it is very important that those sculptures be made by Mueck personally, or they would certainly have a different feel to them.
However, there are certainly areas where it is not nearly as important. For example, some art is actually impossible for any one person to create, simply from a technical standpoint. A beautifully designed building for example, could be conceived and designed by an artist, but that artist couldn't actually go and build the whole thing himself. Yet the fact that it was built by a team of construction workers and engineers doesn't mean that it is no longer the creation of the artists who designed it. The same could be said for movies, whose scope and technology dictates that it must be a collaborative process, even though the finished product can still be a direct manifestation of the writer/director's vision, particularly auteur-films like 'Citizen Kane'.
And perhaps the genre of the project can also dictate whether it's important for the artist to make the work him/herself. A sculptor for example, may be commisioned by a wealthy patron to create a majestic marble portrait bust of himself. In this case it s important for the artist to sculpt the face him/herself, because the patron is paying for the artist's personal interpretation. And only the artist himself can capture certain nuances of expression, which would be lost in the hands of a different artist who has a different style. But the same sculptor could then be commisioned to design a Han Solo action figure, and it would no longer matter whether he personally sculpts the torso, or lets his assistant do it according to a quick pencil sketch, because the overall design is still his own, and the genre of the work does not require finely tuned artistic nuances of expression.
So overall, the artists personal hands-on involvement in the creation of his work is only as important as the medium, or perhaps genre, dictates.
REFERENCES:
http://www.designboom.com/
http://www.brand.swarovski.com/Content.Node/ourinitiatives/fashion/hussein/gallery/
http://vimeo.com/4187825
http://www.impactlab.net/2009/04/12/designer-hussein-chalayan-wearable-portable-architecture/
http://www.husseinchalayan.com/#/home/
http://fashiontecture.tumblr.com/post/94187137/hussein-chalayan-afterwords-furniture
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/review-23626540-hussein-chalayan-is-fashions-techno-wizard.do
When an artist or designer doesn’t personally make their work I also agree that it just depends on what they are creating, like with a fashion collection the designer doesn’t personally construct each garment they will work closely with a sample sewer who will make the first toile and then the designer can adapt or change parts they are not happy with. Then send the designs of to produce as many as the want. But then when you look at artists who aren’t producing hundreds of the same thing like a fashion designer they still get people to help them depending on the scale of the project but they are still directing and creating it how they want.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with you and Madi, Chris. It completely depends on what the artist or designer is making in terms of it being psychically made by them on not. There are so many contributing factors, scale being a massive one that comes to mind. You make a very interesting point, one that I hadn't considered when your wrote that maybe the difference is not between art and fashion itself, but between the individual works, and their respective ratios of 'style' versus 'practicality', as well as the intentions of the person responsible for creating them. You make a very thought-provoking point.
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