On the V E R G E_ F A S H I O N I S M: A Collapsible Model
Benefit Events + parties frequently bring art and fashion together. An event like Art + Sole opened on the 25th of September, combining a launch for Bergdorf Goodman’s redesigned shoe salon with a benefit for the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Proceeds from the initial sale of limited edition shoes created by artist / designer teams like Koons/Pfister, Simmons/Figueroa, Hirst/Blahnik go to the New Museum of Contemporary Art with a ticket to the after party @ the Chambers Hotel on 57th street where emerging artist’s works are on exhibit_
Artwalk NY takes place for the 8th year on October 10th_ Each year, the Coalition for the Homeless honors a single artist for his or her support as well as their outstanding contribution to the arts. This year, the award will be presented to Jeff Koons in recognition of his exceptional influence on contemporary art. ABC News Anchor Peter Jennings is the event’s chairman. The afternoon consists of 10 walking tours taking place throughout New York City–in Chelsea, Greenwich Village, Tribeca, SoHo and NoHo. The day wraps up with an evening gala reception at New York’s Metropolitan Pavilion where a live, silent auction of more than 200 works of donated art takes place. Funds raised through ARTWALK NY directly benefit the work of the Coalition. Incorporated in 1981 as a non-profit, tax-exempt initiative, it is the nation’s oldest and most progressive direct service organization that helps homeless men, women and children,.."The tremendous outpouring of resources and caring could not have been possible without the steadfast support of the artistic community."
Last November The Pioneering Spirit: Colbert Art Walk 2001 brought 9 artists from the Williamsburg area to place installations in a selection of French boutiques along Madison Avenue. Kim Kimbal’s elegant hanging sculptures in Chanel on 57th Street might almost have been the work of interior designers had they not contained distinctive elements of his wit and ability. Toru Hayashi showed an elegant series of black on white paintings in a calligraphic style at Hermes and Jeff Gompertz of Fakeshop installed a phenomenally assertive installation of monitors in styrofoam structures at Longchamp. The Downtown Arts Project was an instigator of this event and joined by The Colbert Foundation independent juries selected 5 emerging artist recipients to receive grants of $8,000 apiece in fine art, new media, dance, music and fashion design_
Madison Avenue: Where Fashion Meets Art will hold its fourth annual evening next spring; for two weeks, boutiques on Madison Avenue between 57th and 86th Streets display "…a unique art piece reflective of the style and vision of each store and the focus of its individual designer…" There is a silent auction that benefits the education department of the Whitney Museum, which since its inception in1996 has supported their mission to encourage people of all ages to develop an understanding for and appreciation of American art + culture. The program serves more than 22,000 students and teachers each year_
The Bryant Park shows were hosted again this year by Mercedes-Benz + as always they are fascinating spectacles_ The music + the electricity of the crowd, the Looks that models wear + are asked to convey–bored, angry, sexually alert, available_ Games about sex and class_ The space inside the tents was clear with a suffused white light_ Flat screen interactive monitors displayed in shallow water ringed the monumental pink granite fountain_ Often fabulously attired and beautiful attendees gathered for each show which were held in cavernous spaces, the floors black, walls draped in black cloth + the Celeste Bartos Forum in the New York Public Library was used again this year, a marvelous location_ The Spring 2003 Collections are extremely varied + needless to say it was not possible to see most of them_ Anne Bowen and Korean designer Haneza each presented elegant and eminently wearable clothing + as Suzy Menkes stated "…it isn’t fashion if you can’t wear it…" Historically artists + photographers have worked with art directors for magazines, to present extraordinary visions for the models-as-actors to sell clothing, offering the viewer an escape to other possible realities_ It is the theatre of the fashion show, choice of location + means of presentation that mark really inventive designers_ Imitation of Christ used a strategy taken from French Situationists and invaded the Galliano couture show in Paris, bringing their clothed models through security checks in ambulances, thus presenting their Spring 2003 line outside the building. Advertising campaigns are more and more often launched by the visions of photographers, from Man Ray to Bruce Weber, or the marvelous series by Herb Ritts in a recent New Yorker that referred to the depression era + the glamor of movie stars of that period_ A recent launch for Benetton ready-to-wear includes a t-shirt displaying the word HOPE which hybridizes the popular form of a t-shirt with conceptual-art-as-advertising_ The images in the campaign, like Thomas Ruff’s portrait heads, are of a range of people of all ages + cultures, with brief text quote of their individual hopes, the eyes are all closed_ W and Harper’s Bazaar, like most fashion magazines contain little editorial material compared to advertising, but it is significant that they offer in-depth articles about artists, like Thomas Struth, art events like the Basel Art Fair + features about emerging fashion designers_
If artists are devoted to discovering and expressing their singular visions + the field of design generally applies to objects that are made for mass consumption that have deliberate use value, then a central connection between art + fashion must be that they are both seen to be ‘luxury goods’_ It is the people who create and who live with those objects who are the ultimate interpreters + appreciators of their meaning_ In 1996 Gemano Celant wrote "the language of fashion has now joined the other languages of contemporary expression… We can no longer continue to consider its presence merely a journalistic concern involving only personal adornment and frivolity. For one hundred years now, fashion has been cutting through surfaces, drawing lines, producing images and colors; our very visions of the body and of sex have taken shape through its formalizations. Fashion is an aesthetic object that implies projections and arguments that are at once sociological and anthropological, psychological and technical, economic and creative…"
