Song Dong's Waste Not at the MoMA

Installation view of Projects 90: Song Dong. The Museum of Modern Art, NY, 2009. Photo: Jason Mandella.

A moving installation titled Waste Notby the Beijing-based conceptual artist Song Dong currently occupies the MoMA's Atrium. Organized by Barbara London and Sarah Suzuki, it consists of the entire belongings of Song Dong's mother spread out across the floor of the atrium—including the frame of her small wooden house. Raised during the cultural revolution and following its wu jin qi yong, or "waste not" dictum, the artist’s mother seems to have thrown very little away during her lifetime—a fact that, while effective within the restrictions and scarcity of the early years of the Cultural Revolution, became problematic as the country entered a period of relative affluence and a greater range of goods became available.

It is touching to observe the scraps of fabric dutifully preserved alongside little bits of thread and heavily used shoes of her now-adult children. Alongside the wall of the exhibition, Song Dong’s mother’s writings make for a poignant description of the process of doing the laundry in 1950s Beijing, where soap was rationed—a fact that led her to save soap bars throughout the years. “Some of the soap [that is included in the exhibition] is older than Song Dong,” she declared.

The careful preservation of what to most Westerners and a later generation of Chinese would appear as junk brilliantly exemplify what amounts to a completely different relation to the material world—one where every single object shows the signs of heavy wear and is saved no matter its value.

Update: Holland Cotter just wrote a beautiful review of the piece in the New York Times, which I strongly recommend!

Francesca

Installation view of Projects 90: Song Dong. The Museum of Modern Art, NY, 2009. Photo: Jason Mandella.

Sustainable Fashion for a Living World

.A look from Susan Cianciolo's Fall/Winter 2009 Collection. Photograph by Sarah Scaturro

I will be moderating a panel discussion on sustainable fashion this coming Wednesday, May 27th at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. The panel features Rogan Gregory and Scott Hahn from Loomstate, Julie Gilhart from Barney's and Leslie Hoffman from EarthPledge. Issues that I'm hoping to explore with the discussants include the rise of greenwashing, the inherent tensions between eco-lux and mass sustainable fashion, the place of technology, and the role of the consumer. Please let me know if there are specific questions you might want me to ask (that is, if you can't attend the discussion yourself!) The panel discussion is held in conjunction with the Cooper-Hewitt's new exhibition called Design for a Living World, and the exhibition will be open for a private viewing an hour before the event.

Here are the details:

May 27, 2009, 6:30 – 8:30 pm

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
2 East 91st Street
New York, NY 10128
www.cooperhewitt.org

Members/Students: $10
Others: $15

Register online or by calling the education department at 212-849-8353

Sarah Scaturro

CAA 2009 Los Angeles (and fashion)

Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons, Spring/Summer 1997. Photo Paolo Roversi.

The recently completed College Art Association Annual Conference had a surprisingly small numbers of papers which could fall under the fashion history and theory heading. More numerous were papers revolving around the theme of craft, ornamentation and the body.

I spoke on Rei Kawakubo’s collection from Spring/Summer 1997 titled “Body Meets Dress,” and her subsequent collaboration with Merce Cunningham for a dance of the same year, Scenario. The paper was part of a panel organized by Victoria Rovine and Sarah Adams titled “Clothing, Flesh, Bone: Visual Culture above and below the Skin.” The papers presented in this stimulating panel ranged the gamut from architectural history—how German Körperkultur translated into architecture—to participatory art practice—the work of Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica —to medical science (i.e. discussion of reconstructive plastic surgery).

Merce Cunningham, Scenario, 1997. Photo courtesy of the Merce Cunningham Archives

Unfortunately, I missed a panel organized by Alla Myzelev of the University of Western Ontario dedicated to the convergence of fashion and furniture, as well as a panel on ornament organized by Patricia Flores, which included a paper by Glenn Adamson, currently at the V&A. However, the latter’s work seems to have inspired a very interesting and lively panel on Queering Crafts, which featured mostly practioners’ presentations. Among the most interesting papers was Jesse M. Kahn’s. which introduced a range of queer practioners’ work, including his own. Among them were Bren Ahearn—who seems to be commenting both on gender and labor processes, by carefully embroidering the word “manmade” on cheaply mass-manufactured goods.

Francesca

Symposium at FIT

Cue Club, Notting Hill, 1966, Photo by: Charlie Phillips (from the V&A exhibition Black British Style).

FIT is currently hosting its annual fashion symposium. Organized by Valerie Steele cuncurrently with the Gothic: Dark Glamour exhibition, this year's symposium is dedicated to the topic of subcultural styles.

Among the speakers are Carol Tulloch, who completed extensive research on black British style and curated an exhibition on the topic at the V&A in 2004, and the anthropologist Ted Polhemus, known for his pioneering theories on subcultural styles. A special space seems to be occupied by Japanese style, with three speakers--Yuniya Kawamura, Hiroshi Narumi and Tiffany Godoy--discussing various aspects of Japanese subcultures and street styles.

Please visit the FIT site for a complete schedule.

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