Henrik Vibskov "The Visit" at MU

Installation shot, Henrik Vibskov, "The Visit" at MU

A retrospective of the Danish designer Henrik Vibskov has just opened at MU in the Netherlands. An interesting space featuring art design and fashion exhibitions, MU has previously shown installations and performances by Cosmic Wonder and Susan Cianciolo.

In its unorthodox approach to exhibiting fashion, Vibskov’s exhibit entitled, “The Visit,” focuses on the designer's fashion presentations. More akin to performance art than traditional fashion shows, the presentations remind us of the increasingly blurred line between the two, particularly when it comes to avant-garde fashion. As a result, the exhibition-goer—or, according to the title of the exhibition, "the visitor"—becomes the performer of Vibskov's installation. Those are often interactive displays, that invite a range of activities, from music-generating cycling to lying down surrounded by disembodied giant breasts!

Thus, “The Visit”—an exhibition dedicated to the fashion show as opposed to actual dress—is a further reminder not only of the blurred line between fashion and performance, but of the centrality of image and spectacle in contemporary fashion. Francesca

Interactive Installation, (Music-bycicling and other instruments), Henrik Vibskov, "The Visit" at MU

Lynn Yaeger

Lynn Yaeger at Ann Klein show, 2007. Photo from Coutorture.

It is sad to report on the dwindling rank of fashion journalists. Now that Lynn Yaeger is no longer at the Village Voice, one is hard-pressed to think of anybody who could fill her eccentric shoes. Reminiscent of Anna Piaggi—the veteran Vogue Italia reporter—Yaeger pioneered an unmistakable look, which Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton of the Costume Institute recently described as "Porcelain-Doll-via-the-Weimar-Republic,” and which made her a staple of downtown New York.

Her irreverent and unique style reflects her equally irreverent and original fashion reporting, which eschews the usual devotion to all things luxury and celebrates the original and affordable—particularly in her now-defunct column “Elements of Style.” What is most refreshing about her style, as well as her writings, is that she is never shy in exposing the aspirational and unattainable nature of much fashion and fashion reporting, which she counters with an ironic and subversive take on luxury goods and status dressing.

Hopefully, an exhibition of her unmistakable style and take on fashion will soon be organized alongside the lines of the Anna Piaggi exhibition, Fashion-ology, curated by Judith Clark at the Victoria and Albert in 2006.

For Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton on Yaeger's style, see T Moment's blog.

Francesca

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

Chicago’s Small Press

Golden Age

Upon a recent visit to Chicago, I was surprised to find some really interesting new publications, in particular the art journal Proximity. Beautifully laid out and edited by Rachel and Ed Marszewski, it focuses on contemporary art and culture in Chicago and beyond in the aim of fostering “sustainable creative communities.” Among its engaging articles is a review of a new fashion magazine called Stitch Magazine and produced by students at Northwestern University. Stitch seems to provide an irreverent and novel approach to what constitutes a college fashion magazine.

Also, of notice is the year-old store and gallery Golden Age, which is entirely devoted to small press and art publications. This new addition, together with Quimby’s—a stalwart of indie publications—makes Chicago one of the most interesting cities to produce as well as consume small press.

Edward Steichen In High Fashion

Models Claire Coulter and Avis Newcomb wearing dresses by Lanvin and Chanel at 1200 Fifth Avenue, 1931.

Don’t miss the recently published book Edward Steichen In High Fashion: The Condé Nast Years, 1923-1937, which discusses and re-publishes Steichen’s fashion photography and celebrity portraits. The images—all from the Condé Nast archives—were originally published in Vanity Fair and Vogue, and illustrate Steichen’s contribution to the burgeoning field of fashion photography and celebrity portraiture. That these two fields did not sit in high regard within the fine arts and photography realms with which Steichen had been previously associated, made his choice controversial and, to some extent, unusual. However, as Tobia Bezzola—one of the book’s authors—explains, his previous work as a painter and a fine art photographer clearly informed his “commercial” work—particularly in his rendition of clothing, as well as his choice of poses for his subjects.

The lavishly illustrated book, published by W.W. Norton, developed as a result of research that curators William A. Ewing and Todd Brandow completed in the Condé Nast Archives for the exhibition “Edward Steichen: Lives in Photography.” Steichen in High Fashion undoubtedly benefits from their extensive knowledge of the photographer’s work, which allowed them to fully contextualize this aspect of Steichen’s output within the rest of his career.

Spanning a period of 15 years, it is interesting to notice how the early prints from the 1920s--featuring theater actors alongside fashion models and silent film actors--are more painterly in their softer lights and greater gradation of grays in comparison to his later works, which feature a more stark contrast of black and whites and geometric shapes. (One of the book’s authors, Carol Squiers, describes this as Steichen’s “evolution from pictorialism to modernism.”)

Gary Cooper, 1930

Among the most iconic portraits included are those of actress Gloria Swanson and Pola Negri, and, later, Greta Garbo and Anna May Wong alongside those of dancers as Martha Graham, as well as Winston Churchill and Walt Disney.

An accompanying exhibition on Steichen’s photographic work is currently on view at the Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg through January 1st, 2009, and will be traveling to the International Center for Photography in New York on January 16, 2009. (For a full exhibition schedule, please visit the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography.)

Francesca