Kathleen McDermott

Chic Clicks: Creativity and Commerce in Contemporary Fashion Photography Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston January 23 - May 5, 2002

Gallery talk, February 7, 2002

House of Style. "Yes, yes. We know that you simply love to go to museums, galleries, and the like and sashay around as if you've seen it all before. The truth is, though, that if you sat down and listened to someone who knows something about an exhibit, you might actually learn something. Start with tonight's free gallery talk at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Kathleen McDermott, instructor of fashion history ay the Massachusetts College of Art, will weigh in on the ICA's latest exhibition, Chic Clicks: Creativity and Commerce in Contemporary Fashion Photography. The talk, and a tour of the show, starts at 6:30." (The Boston Globe, February 7, 2002, C14.)

TWO REVOLUTIONS IN FASHION IMAGERY

Welcome to everyone: dear friends, family, colleagues at Mass Art, fellow students at the Museum School, lovers of fashion, lovers of history, and the just plain curious: welcome to the fascinating world of Fashion History.

My talk will go like this: I will present a set of slides and then take any questions on the slide presentation. Then we'll go upstairs and take a look together at 5 of the works in light of the presentation.

So let's begin.

The show upstairs is about a revolution in fashion photography that started in the late 1960s and is in full flower today.

How many people have been through the show?

Tonight I'm going to talk about some elements of that revolutionary impulse, and to look back into fashion history-at another similar moment, at a revolution that occurred in fashion drawing and imagery. That moment was 1900-1939.

By comparing then and now-illustration and photography-we can get some perspective on the current show.

So let's begin with the sheet that was on your chairs.

First thing I'd like you to do is hold it up and fold it down the middle line that separates Fashion Plates and Fashion Photography.

Then turn it to the half labeled F Photo. You'll see that I've divided F photo into two eras - Classical and Revolutionary Postmodernism. You'll also see that I've listed various characteristics of the two eras.

I've drawn all of this information from the wonderful essays that are in the Chic Clicks catalog-I encourage you to take the time to read them-they are extremely interesting and informative.

The essays explain the premise of the show, which is that today, in the postmodern era beginning in the early 1970s, fashion photography is being reclaimed by Artist-Photographers who are rejecting the formulaic portrayal of fashion. This formula, established during what the essays call the "classical period" of fashion photography, from 1949 to 1968, consists of:

Glamorous surface
Product is primary; Clothes easy to understand and carefully shown
Artist is invisible
Stimulating the urge to buy
Bland whiteness
Fashion formula is unchanging

Sometimes the way that Artists-Photographers reject the formula is by simply doing the opposite. So for example, looking at the chart-the opposite of the glamorous surface is to make content-laden work focusing on gritty every day reality. Or in another example, if the formula focuses on product as primary, the artist-photographer will put the product off to the side, make it minimal.

But over all, the most important point about the show is that, by imposing their own aesthetic vision on the fashion photograph, these artist-photographers are rescuing the fashion photograph from the formula and the commodity and transforming their work into Art.

So, as I was reading the essays and assimilating these ideas, my mind kept going back to another time in the history of fashion, when the images used to portray fashion and chic also changed very dramatically at the hands of artists.
So now let's turn over the page, look to Fashion Illustration and start looking at some slides.

SLIDE
French Court Dress, from Galerie des Modes and Costumes, the first series of fashion plates-published between 1776 and 1787. This one is ca. 1780s.

The very first fashion illustrations were fashion plates: engravings that were printed and hand colored and distributed in limited edition subscription fashion journals (the forerunners of today's fashion magazines).

These plates depicted nobility and royalty. The equation at the time was that nobility equaled glamour and chic. Rich aristocratic women in England, Germany and America wanted to know what French counterparts and style setters were wearing. So they subscribed to these journals and copied what they saw there. The luxury and display of the French court made France the center so fashion plate/journal production. There was a 20-year hiatus beginning with the French revolution and continuing during Napoleonic wars when the artists, engravers and production people moved to England along with the aristocratic émigrés. Once everything settled down again after 1820, France then resumed its place as fashion journal producer and style setter for the Western World.
But the world had changed.

SLIDE
Here is a plate from 1825 showing a private concert dress from The Lady's Magazine.

Newer, cheaper paper, less expensive printing, new improved distribution, plus an end to slavish mimicking of aristocrats in favor of promoting the values of the rapidly expanding middle class led to a new role for the fashion journals. It was now the handmaiden of the middle-class woman.

What we see in this slide is the development of a formulaic language for portraying fashion based on:

· Showing the correct, proper, middle class thing to wear
· Clearly showing the product front and center, with all its folds, ribbons, flounces, and patterns, along with painstaking literal description of each of the very complicated aspects of the garment
· Uniform blandness of the people shown, a neutrality bordering on the insipid.
· Glamour and fantasy in the impossibility of these clothes
· The women are portrayed as calm and serene
· The artist is not important.

So let's quickly look at some other examples:

SLIDE
1831 Dress and Corset

SLIDE
From Godey's Lady's Book, American fashion journal, ca. 1860s

SLIDE
Hats from La Mode Illustrée of 1870

SLIDE
Visiting and afternoon dresses from 1880 from Mrs. Shield's Monthly Journal. bustle

SLIDE
1901 Gibson Girls
These Gibson Girls are the last gasp of this classical period in fashion illustration.

SLIDE
This slide is from 1913.

A new generation of illustrators, deeply under the influence of revolutionary thought will change fashion imagery altogether.

Revolutions in art: particularly modern art movements of Cubism and Fauvism
Revolutions in philosophy: Futurism
Revolutions in technology: cars, planes, trains, speed and motion

This slide from 1913 shows the dress of a revolutionary French fashion designer named Paul Poiret who transformed the fashion word in the 19-teens. He was helped in his work by two wonderful fashion illustrators Georges Lepape and Paul Iribe, printmakers. It is the first time that a fashion designer looked to modern art to represent his creations and it is a redefinition of fashion illustration.

These men were deeply involved with the avant-garde artists; Lepape attended the same painting atelier as Toulouse Lautrec, Van Gogh, Matisse had studied.

Poiret collected Matisse, and called himself a "fauve" or wild beast, which was a school that Matisse briefly adhered to, characterized by deep rich colors and primitive themes. Poiret had deep ties with Raoul Dufy, another Fauvist painter, who worked for Poiret as a textile designer for many years.

In this slide we see the modernist principles at work in fashion illustration.

First of all, the artists' conception of the fashion and the woman is more important than the clothing. Composition and line are all important.

The woman is not portrayed in the painfully literal way of the past, but in a poetic way. Her clothes are elaborated in broad, flat bands and planes of color. She is a geometric abstraction-ovoid head, cones and rectangles. Picasso and Braque experiments with Cubism are known-their collaboration began in 1908, so their work would have had influence.

She is a fantasy figure. Instead of being static or heavy, she looks like she could waft up into the air like a balloon.

She is not a correct middle class figure who is portraying correct middle class dress, but bohemian or avant-garde dress. She has hints of orientalism in her eyes and lampshade tunic top.

It is hard for us to look at her today and realize how shocking this image was. Without a corset, with cropped hair, and odd, almost Japanese makeup, she could well be a prostitute. If you think that the photos upstairs seem disturbing, remember that it was a common charge leveled at modernists that their work was difficult, ugly or unpleasant, and that they delighted in shocking the middle class out if its complaisance. That could be through art, through disrupting theatre performance, reciting nonsense poetry, and so on.

Let's look at some other examples:

SLIDE
1913 Gazette du Bon Ton, Kimono Coat by Lepape

SLIDE
Umbrellas

SLIDE
1913 Le Minaret, Gazette du Bon Ton, by José Lamora

SLIDE
1922 Poiret, Gazette du Bon Ton.

The work that Lepape and Iribe did in transforming the fashion plate was pushed even further by the Futurists.

SLIDE
Came out of Italy, and had strong political ideas about clothing. They believed that one should design a mode of dress that integrated the sense of movement.

This slide, from 1922, again published in the Gazette du Bon Ton is by an Italian who takes the name "Thayaht" and illustrates the designs of Madeleine Vionnet.
You can see the effort to place the illustration in the midst of speed lines, effort to show velocity, abstraction, and lack of symmetry.

SLIDE
Here is another example by the same artist, and you can see clearly the reduction brought on by cubism

SLIDE
By now photography has entered the mix, and by the 1930s it will completely surpass and eclipse the art of fashion drawing.

But in this early period, fashion photography participates in the very fertile interplay between art and fashion, most notably through the influence of Surrealism.

This slide shows a 1934 fashion photo by Man Ray that appeared in Harper's Bazaar. Translated it is called "Observatory Time, The Lovers." The coat is by Jacques Heim, a Parisian couturier.

Equation of the female body as object that can be taken apart and disassembled-lips
His painting up top-explicitly creating the fashion photo to include a work of art-the Artist imposing his vision on the fashion photo. They are more important in the composition of the photograph:
Woman off center; Can't see the clothes
Non-literal
Fantasy
Dream

SLIDE
Another example is this fashion photo from 1936, also from Man Ray involving another Surrealism theme of doubling, mirroring.

But the interesting thing is that it requires the viewer to have some kind of emotional interaction-is it disturbing, or interesting-you have to interact with the entire composition, not just the clothes.

This brings us to 1939 and World War II. Although fashion and fashion photography continue during the war, when the world resumes in peacetime 1946 fashion photography has taken a very conservative turn.

SLIDE
This is a fashion photo from 1949, showing the latest fashion from Dior in Paris. Right away you can see the remarkable retreat from the movements that led up to Surrealism, and that this photo is similar to the classical formula set before 1900 in fashion illustration.

Model is front and center
Clothes are detailed and clear
Glamour
Fantasy
Static image.

SLIDE
Here is a slide from 1959, showing a Chanel suit. Could not be clearer that we are looking at a commodity with a brand name.

SLIDE
Another slide from the 1950s, although not a fashion photo it is clear that we are trying to equate the fashion product with stimulating need to buy or urge to acquisition. Consumption product

SLIDE
Another part of the formula is a bland whiteness and a retreat from exotic influences:

This is a slide from the Sears catalog-until the mid 1960s you did not see a black model-the first was one named Beverly Johnson, who was beautiful but as a black women who looked white.

SLIDE
There were artists photographers who worked in fashion that broke out of the formula

Here is a slide by Irving Penn from 1950, from Vogue.
Can't tell what the dress actually is
Picture is more a composition in back and white of abstraction
A lot like Poiret and his illustrators.
You have to engage with the photo, not just turn the page.

SLIDE
But for the most part throughout the 1950s (1953)

SLIDE (1958) and 1960s (1963)

the fashion photo adhered to the old formula.

In the 1960s, as the essays explain, the formula came under attack
and since then, we have been living in dual system. Upstairs, we will see the attack of revolutionary post modernism. Here we will finish out with the old formula that is still in place for the most part today.

SLIDE
Christian Lacroix 1987. This slide showing luxury and glamour, clothes easy to read

SLIDE
Versace Showing a black woman (Naomi Campbell) who is neutral or white

SLIDE
Gap ad: Fashion is a commodity and the function is to stimulate you to buy

SLIDE
Chanel slide with Claudia Schiffer. It is nothing less than the legacy of 350 years of creating fashion images. This Harper's Bazaar photo of Chanel from 1993 looks remarkably like the fashion plates I showed you from the 19th century, and even harks back to the court dress of the 1880s.

And this brings us to the current show.

We are going to go upstairs and look at 5 fashion photographs in which the photographers are actively rejecting a formulaic vision of fashion photography by imposing their own artistic vision. In the words of one of the essayists: Fashion photography claims the artistic high ground due to the autonomy of its images.

With the hand-out I have given you, and the background from fashion history, let's go up stairs and look at how these postmodern fashion photographers show their autonomy.

Tour of Images from the Show:

1) Laetitia Benat: Greg, Purple, 2001. (Non glamour-No! to system, Non-consumer)

2) Banu Cennetoglu: Tsumori Chisato Campaign, 2001. (Non consumer-what is it? Fashion as fetal position)

3) Horst Diekgerdes, Two for the Road, Arena Hommes, 2001 (The one in the car) (Clothing minimized, off center; must confront story that seems to be asking to be deciphered)

4) Takashi Homma, Louis Vuitton Campaign, 2000. (Clothing minimized, off center)

5) Koto Bolofo, L'oumo Vogue 2000 (one with 4 figures holding basketballs in the air) (Ethnic subcultures)

6) Larry Sultan, Vogue Hommes International 1999 (Fashion system as obscene or pornographic)

7) Cindy Sherman, Untitled #298, Comme des Garcons (the big one on the first floor) (Fashion as endless mutating, never constant; viewer must engage with her image first, long before the product)