blog.mode and meta-blogging at the Met

Junya Watanabe, AW2000-2001

blog.mode: addressing fashion is opening at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute December 18. “Designed to promote critical and creative dialogues about fashion,” the exhibition presents the Costume Institute’s recent acquisitions, which range from a Miguel Adrover 2000 ensemble made from Quentin Crisp’s discarded mattress to a 1730’s English suit.

The exhibit is meant to foster a discussion with museum visitors, as it invites the visitors to share their reactions via a blog, which is accessible both in the exhibition space and via the Met’s site. Comments from the blog together with the curators’ commentaries will be included in a book to be published after the exhibition closes. Meanwhile, in a classic instance of meta blogging, you can follow the curators—Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton—blog about blogs.mode on T magazine’s recently launched blog.

We were struck by Andew Bolton’s description of the blog as a way for the viewer to add to the strata of meaning and the history of the garments. Talking with W magazine, he mentioned how “Every object in the museum has a particular life history, and we hope the comments will contribute to the life history of [the clothes].”

It is a rather lyrical way to conceptualize a blog, especially the ability to contribute to these garments’ history and to some extent modify it. It seems to suggest a virtual way of adding traces and stains onto the clothes.

Francesca

La Superette 2007

Erica Weiner, Vertebrae Necklace (Bone)

La Superette—the annual holiday art sale is being held this year at Chashama's Times Square location. Conceived as a temporary store where artists sell functional art in multiples at affordable prices, it features a great number of wearable pieces like Erica Weiner's jewelery above. This year, to celebrate their 10th Anniversary, La Superette is expanding the event into a festival taking place from December 13th to the 16th. For more information, you can visit their site.

Pinar Yolacan at Rivington Arms

Pinar Yolacan, Untitled, 2007

The second solo show of Pinar Yolacan is opening Thursday November 19th at Rivington Arms. Titled "Maria," it consists of a series of photographs of Afro-Brazilian women from the island of Ithaparica in Bahia off the northeastern coast of Brazil. The women are photographed wearing garments made by the artist from cloth bought in local fabric stores, as well as placenta and other animal parts. Their cut and color is inspired by the Baroque era and Portuguese colonial style architecture prevalent in the nearby city of Salvador.

Francesca

Open Season

Nava Lubelski Side Dish, 2004 Hand-embroidered thread on ink stained cotton canvas. Photo: Nava Lubelski (courtesy of www.madmuseum.org)

Fall always brings out interesting museum exhibitions, and this season especially. Over the past week I was able to view three incredibly different, yet intriguing shows. Here in NYC, the Museum of Art and Design just opened Pricked: Extreme Embroidery, which is the sister show to the crowd-pleasing Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting exhibition held earlier this year. Taught to embroider as a little girl, I found Pricked an energizing and fresh take on the "virtuous art" of needlework. Thematic sections reflect on embroidery's rich history and then move on to its ability to express politics, words, memory, and the body. Artists such as Angelo Filomeno, Elaine Reichek and Judy Chicago are represented, but it is often emerging artists that provoke the visitor most. Benji Whalen's surreal tattoo sleeves cheekily mimic the still slightly-taboo body art while Nava Lubelski subverts the idea of a stain as something imperfect by emphasizing its abstract and dynamic possibilities. Other favorites of the show included Paul Villinski and Paddy Hartley.

On a completely different note, I had the opportunity to visit a few museums while I was in Washington, DC over the weekend. One exhibition that stood out for its pure beauty was the Textile Museum's show on the Textiles of Klimt's Vienna. This show contained an original Klimt, along with many examples of some the most talented artists in the first part of the 20th century. Represented in force were several Wiener Werkstätte artists like Josef Hoffman, Dagobert Peche and Maria Likarz-Strauss. Interestingly, a textile called Bavaria by Karl Otto Czeschka shown in this exhibition is also included right now in the Multiple Choice: from Sample to Product show at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in NYC.

A third thought-provoking experience was found at the National Museum of the American Indian. Identity by Design: Tradition, Change and Celebration in Native Women's Dresses elegantly illustrates the transition of Native women's garments in the Great Basin area, starting with the influx of new materials into the region during the early 19th century. Through garments and illustrations, the exhibition explains the difference in construction techniques, such as 1-, 2-, and 3-hide dresses, as well as the symbolic and economic importance of specific materials and motifs. Most touching were the Ghost Dance dresses tucked away into a silent and shadowy corner. These garments are rarely seen due to their sparse survival and intensely sacred meanings, and, as the text panels indicate, they should only be viewed with the utmost respect.

It's wonderful that we live in a time when museums are including fashion and textiles as serious arenas of exploration for the public. Each of these exhibitions offers a transporting experience to the visitor, whether it is subversive, aesthetic, or historical.

Sarah Scaturro

Performa O7

Robert Whitman’s Flower 1963 (Photo from reconstruction in 1976), Photo Babette Mangolte

Don't miss Perfoma O7, currently underway throughout the city. One focus of this year's event is the relation between performance and dance. Among the many interesting events and performances which caught our interest is a talk on November 14th at the New School, which, judging from the line-up of speakers (Marina Abramovic, Vanessa Beecroft and Babette Mangolte), is bound to tackle discussions of the body and perhaps its relation to clothes. (Hopefully, a topic of a Peforma to come!)

And don't miss Christian Jankowski's calisthenics November 3.

Francesca