Calder’s World

Alexander Calder, Jealous Husband Necklace, 1940

At the entrance of Alexander Calder’s jewelry exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is “the Jealous Husband” Necklace. A seemingly witty reference to chastity belts, the piece sports spikes across the neck opening to stave away potential suitors. This necklace encapsulates the spirit of Calder’s jewelry, which appears witty and whimsical yet, at times, reads as constricting. Suggestions of boundedness and containment seem to transpire in some of the pieces—particularly a number of chocker-style necklaces. These are overlaid with Surrealist influences, as well as references to medieval and non-Western jewelry traditions.

Alexander Calder, Silver Bracelet, 1948

The majority of Calder’s jewelry pieces are reminiscent of his work with wire. Some, like a number of pieces on display a short walk away at the Whitney Museum of American Art, are abstract representation of animals through a continuous sculpted line. Other pieces make more subtle references to the rest of his oeuvre: some of the jewelry pieces are reminiscent of the ankle and arm bracelets worn by Josephine Baker in her Parisian performances, while the pointed wire structures Calder devised to represent Baker’s breasts resurface here in a bracelet. (It is interesting to note how Calder’s rendition of Baker’s breast is highly reminiscent of Jean Paul Gaultier’s conical bra, famously worn by another era’s pop star, Madonna, in the early 1990s. One is left to wonder whether Gaultier might have been directly influenced by Calder’s work. )

Alexander Calder’s “Josephine Baker IV"

Additionally, much of the jewelry entered the realms of wearables, as with a chain mail necklace, which in its size and shape is more akin to a see-through metal “waistcoat” than a necklace (and, once again, brings to mind later fashion designs: Paco Rabanne’s chain mail wearables from the 1960s). Also, of notice are a number of hats and tiaras, which show Calder’s interest in clothing and garments, in addition to jewelry. This interest is perhaps most evident in the circus exhibition at the Whitney, where one can admire the beautifully and painstakingly rendered miniaturized clothes the artist created for the circus’ performers. And, at least in one instance, the clothes take center stage as one of the performers is revealed to be wearing an innumerable numbers of jackets in a Russian doll-style disrobing act, which is part of Calder’s circus performance.

Francesca Granata

Sarah Palin: How Post-Feminism turned into Pre-Feminism

Sarah Palin's Red Shoes

Sarah Palin’s much publicized fashion choices and, now, fashion budget make for an interesting argument about how the post-feminist look can be appropriated in ways which are antithetical to what the look was originally meant to portray. If we understand post-feminist fashion as a reappropriation of symbols of femininity—high-heels, form-fitting skirts and colors which have traditionally being coded as feminine—by a “sexually liberated woman,” we can see how the vice presidential hopeful has been sporting some tenants of that look against the grain, as she is campaigning on a platform critical of sexual liberation altogether.

Post-feminism is best exemplified (as media theorist Angela McRobbie has pointed out) by media representation of women, such as Sex and the City and the Bridget Jones’ Diaries. Ultimately, the fact that the Republican nominee is embracing at least some central elements of the look not only goes to show the popularity of such representations, it also stands as evidence that the longstanding criticism of post-feminism as reactionary might, in this case, be accurate.

Francesca

Frau Fiber, Knock Off Enterprises

UE Western Regional Council Building

"Frau Fiber, activist and textile worker, will mimic the expenditure of apparel production, reconstructing a white shirt and business suit originally produced offshore. A suit and shirt, the archetypal white-collar uniform, is an American icon, standing for quality, dependability and style, enhancing the wearer’s professional image.

The remade garments will be available for purchase in the storefront, priced on a geographical sliding scale (hours worked to make the reconstructed garment multiplied by the wage scale in the original garment’s country of manufacture—China, Guatemala, Taiwan—equals KO’s cost of the uniform)."

For detailed information on dates and locations, please visit Gallery 400

"Tescos’ White Collar Shirt, purchased for 4.50 euro; KO White Collar Shirt, assembled from recycled fancy dress."

Yeti on Leigh Bowery

Leigh Bowery outside his flat, 1993

Yeti—the Portland based journal—just published an interview I conducted with Nicola Bowery.

I had visited Nicola Bowery—wife of the late Leigh Bowery—in her Brighton, England home last summer, to interview her for my PhD thesis, a chunk of which revolves around Bowery’s extravagant costumes and performances from the ’80s and ’90s. My interest in Leigh Bowery had been spurred by Hilton Als’ New Yorker profile, which discussed Bowery’s varied “career” from fledging fashion designer to notorious club figure to performance artist—three strands of his practice which remain inextricably intertwined.

Nicola was extremely kind in taking the time to show me a number of her husband’s elaborate costumes which, having been painstakingly made to measure to Bowery’s large girt, appeared eerily empty—particularly as a complex systems of understructures kept them in shape, further highlighting Bowery’s absent body. Nicola also took the time to discuss her role as the slime-covered baby in the humorous, unsettling “birth scenes” which Bowery staged as part of his performances with his band Minty, from the early ’90s until his untimely death in 1995.

Francesca

Leigh Bowery, Ruined Clothes Exhibition, 1988

Blonde Tresses at the Park Avenue Armory

MK Guth, Ties of Protection and Safekeeping 2007-08.

The Park Avenue Armory portion of the Whitney Biennial just closed this past Sunday. In great part dedicated to the more ephemeral and time-based medium of performance art, it included the work of the Portland artist MK Guth. Previously New York–based and the founder of the Red Shoe Delivery Service (the art collaborative that Fashion Projects interviewed in the first issue), MK Guth contributed an interactive sculpture to the biennial show.

The piece started by asking viewers what they felt was worth protecting. The answers were then written on strips of red flannel and woven into an ever-growing braid made of artificial hair, which the audience braided together with the artist. The day I visited the Armory, the performance had come to a close and the braids draped the dark-lit wood paneled rooms of the Armory, where the performance had taken place. Yet some of the artificial hair was left in an adjacent room together with pieces of red felts—the remnants contributing to the melancholic and morbid feeling conveyed by the braided blonde tresses.

Francesca