This work is from the Musée Carnavalet - Histoire de Paris and was accessioned as early as 1884.
Oct 23, 2013
The Hammer Wig
This work is from the Musée Carnavalet - Histoire de Paris and was accessioned as early as 1884.
Jun 22, 2013
The Belly of the Beast
While Martin Magiela made a splash in spring 2009 with his wig jackets (below), I was unaware of his Fall 2005 Artisinal Collection that included a jacket, top and collar utilizing the reverse of wigs. By reversing the wigs, the patterning and decoration produce a wonderful tactile texture, formed by the wigs' interior stitching and elastic construction.
"Artifice is a standard tool of the fashion system, but Margiela is uniquely adept and willing to expose it for all to see. Just as Margiela turns a garment inside-out to flaunt its construction, so the artifice behind contemporary beauty itself is revealed and hence called into question."1
While Margiela is no longer involved with his namesake company, while he was a designer he consistently questioned orthodox notions of beauty and attraction. In both his 2005 and 2009 collections those questions relate to the seduction and revulsion of hair. Sure, this is not real hair. Rather it's fake hair but with the finest level of workmanship applied to it, thus calling into question an essential paradox of luxury - that its value rarely lies in anything of literal material worth.
Are these wiggy fashion objects really something we should want to wear? Margiela taps into cultural anxieties about taste, attractiveness, and being "cool." Oh no, could fake really be better than real? What would it mean if i wanted to wear human hair? Am I grotesque? Am I hip? Is this fashion? These objects sit uneasily on a narrow ledge between that special and elusive sensation of desire that is called up by fashion and the revulsion fed by the common subtext of self-hatred we feel towards our body, its features and its functions.
1. "Mind Games" by Alex Fury, December 11 2008, showstudio.com
"Artifice is a standard tool of the fashion system, but Margiela is uniquely adept and willing to expose it for all to see. Just as Margiela turns a garment inside-out to flaunt its construction, so the artifice behind contemporary beauty itself is revealed and hence called into question."1
While Margiela is no longer involved with his namesake company, while he was a designer he consistently questioned orthodox notions of beauty and attraction. In both his 2005 and 2009 collections those questions relate to the seduction and revulsion of hair. Sure, this is not real hair. Rather it's fake hair but with the finest level of workmanship applied to it, thus calling into question an essential paradox of luxury - that its value rarely lies in anything of literal material worth.
Are these wiggy fashion objects really something we should want to wear? Margiela taps into cultural anxieties about taste, attractiveness, and being "cool." Oh no, could fake really be better than real? What would it mean if i wanted to wear human hair? Am I grotesque? Am I hip? Is this fashion? These objects sit uneasily on a narrow ledge between that special and elusive sensation of desire that is called up by fashion and the revulsion fed by the common subtext of self-hatred we feel towards our body, its features and its functions.
1. "Mind Games" by Alex Fury, December 11 2008, showstudio.com
Jun 10, 2013
Mustache Monday at the NYPL
I would like to draw your attention to a long-running tumblr project over at the New York Public Library....Mustache Monday.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Jun 9, 2013
Deluxe Play with Hair
An Ellen Gallagher (b.1965) show recently opened at Tate Modern. Running through September 1, 2013, Ellen Gallagher: AxME is the artist's first major solo exhibition in the UK. Of Irish and African American heritage, Gallagher appropriates source
materials from science
fiction, the vaudeville tradition of black minstrels, and advertising targeted to African Americans.
Of note is DeLuxe (2004-5), sixty individually-framed prints that hang in a rectangular grid arrangement. Each print is a re-working of a magazine advertisement from a publication such as Ebony, Our World or Sepia dating from the 1920s to the 1970s. The ads, aimed at African American consumers, "promote a range of beauty products for women and men, especially goods relating to hair including wigs and pomades."1 Gallagher has appropriated these images and modified them using a variety of techniques -- in particular, collage. To the prints she has added materials such as glitter, gold leaf, coconut oil, toy eyeballs, and molded plasticine in the shape of wigs.
Gallagher's interventions to these beauty ads parody the idea of "improvement" through a process of erasure and alteration and "underscore in particular the role of hair as a signifier of difference."2 While her work is often characterized as political art, as it investigates of social and racial identities, it also has a playful approach that “confronts issues of race...with clever, even antic, satire."3
This idea of playfulness resonates both in format (she "plays" with the traditional print) and in content (poking fun at hairstyles and appearance). In Gallagher's hands, looks that are intended to help us "conform" to an ideal become fantastical masks, jazzy helmets, or fanciful hats from outer space. "When viewed together, these prints offer a history lesson about modernism, fashion, mass media, and race in mid-century America."4
One of Gallagher's tropes is the grid. Not only is Deluxe installed in a grid formation, the wig ads themselves are laid out in rows and columns of wigged heads. "Gallagher was drawn to the wig advertisements because of their grid-like structure...[having been] influenced by the sublime aesthetics of Agnes Martin’s paintings, as well the subtle shifts and repetitions of Gertrude Stein’s writing."6
These grids reminded me of another work by another artist: Tom Sach's James Brown’s Hair Products (2009). I saw this work when it was on view at the Sperone-Westwater Gallery in 2011. While the Sachs work has little in common with Deluxe in regards to motivation and interpretation, the works do align themselves formally. Confronted by a grid of hair products, each a specimen of physical conceit and tool of identity construction, we might ask ourselves to look at how we fetishize our hair rituals.
1-2. Tate Museum object catalogue record
3. "In Black and White" by Mark Stevens. Feb 21, 2005 issue of New York magazine
4. Walker Art Museum object catalogue record.
5. Exhibition description
6. PBS series Art21 from the episode "play"
Of note is DeLuxe (2004-5), sixty individually-framed prints that hang in a rectangular grid arrangement. Each print is a re-working of a magazine advertisement from a publication such as Ebony, Our World or Sepia dating from the 1920s to the 1970s. The ads, aimed at African American consumers, "promote a range of beauty products for women and men, especially goods relating to hair including wigs and pomades."1 Gallagher has appropriated these images and modified them using a variety of techniques -- in particular, collage. To the prints she has added materials such as glitter, gold leaf, coconut oil, toy eyeballs, and molded plasticine in the shape of wigs.
Gallagher's interventions to these beauty ads parody the idea of "improvement" through a process of erasure and alteration and "underscore in particular the role of hair as a signifier of difference."2 While her work is often characterized as political art, as it investigates of social and racial identities, it also has a playful approach that “confronts issues of race...with clever, even antic, satire."3
This idea of playfulness resonates both in format (she "plays" with the traditional print) and in content (poking fun at hairstyles and appearance). In Gallagher's hands, looks that are intended to help us "conform" to an ideal become fantastical masks, jazzy helmets, or fanciful hats from outer space. "When viewed together, these prints offer a history lesson about modernism, fashion, mass media, and race in mid-century America."4
‘The wig ladies are fugitives, conscripts from another time
and place, liberated from the “race” magazines of the past. But again, I
have transformed them, here on the pages that once held them captive.’ 5
One of Gallagher's tropes is the grid. Not only is Deluxe installed in a grid formation, the wig ads themselves are laid out in rows and columns of wigged heads. "Gallagher was drawn to the wig advertisements because of their grid-like structure...[having been] influenced by the sublime aesthetics of Agnes Martin’s paintings, as well the subtle shifts and repetitions of Gertrude Stein’s writing."6
These grids reminded me of another work by another artist: Tom Sach's James Brown’s Hair Products (2009). I saw this work when it was on view at the Sperone-Westwater Gallery in 2011. While the Sachs work has little in common with Deluxe in regards to motivation and interpretation, the works do align themselves formally. Confronted by a grid of hair products, each a specimen of physical conceit and tool of identity construction, we might ask ourselves to look at how we fetishize our hair rituals.
1-2. Tate Museum object catalogue record
3. "In Black and White" by Mark Stevens. Feb 21, 2005 issue of New York magazine
4. Walker Art Museum object catalogue record.
5. Exhibition description
6. PBS series Art21 from the episode "play"
May 22, 2013
Long May it Wave
WORLD’S FAIR, N.Y., OCT. -10-1940: Dedicated to the undying memory of Christopher Columbus, this fetching coiffeur with a model of the Great Discoverer’s flagship was created yesterday by Madame Marguerite Peerboem, of Palmors and Son, Limited, Montreal, and exhibited on the head of Judith Wister, before delegates to the International Master Ladies Hairdressers’ Association convention, meeting this week in the New York World’s Fair Assembly Hall.
This ensemble of wavy locks and sailing frigate might just as well be called the “Britannia Rules the Waves” coiffeur, but the Association decided to rename it in honor of Christopher Columbus and Columbus Day which falls on October 12, Saturday. – 21489
| NEW YORK WORLD’S FAIR | PHOTO GRATIS | FROM: HAMILTON WRIGHT, JR. DIRECTOR OF PUBLICITY |
May 4, 2013
Chained Accumulus Necklace
Artist Sergey Jivetin works in multiple arenas, jewelry being one of them. Chained Accumulus Necklace, a delicately rendered cloud form, is a piece composed of hair and jewelry chain from his "Accumulus" series. Jivetin's diverse body of work is created from unconventional materials and explores themes of the body, science, and time.
Drawing from studies in engineering, fashion jewelry, illustration, and product design, this SUNY New Paltz and New Parsons School of Design graduate has created innovative items fashioned from watch hands, human hair, fishing hooks, egg shells, wish bones, jewelry saw blades, hypodermic tubing, and syringe needles.
Sergey Jivetin is currently exhibiting in two NYC shows.
Hydrologic ~ April 20-May 20, 2013
NYU Langone Medical Center.
MSB Gallery 550 First Ave. New York City
Out of this world. Jewelry in the Space Age ~ March 17-September 7, 2013
Forbes Magazine Galleries.
60 Fifth Ave. New York City
1. Splendor: A Celebration of Jewelry Designers, February 12, 2010
2. Marthe Le Van, 1000 Rings: Inspiring Adornments for the Hand. Lark Books, New York/ London, 2004: 220
Chained Accumulus Necklace 2009 Hair, Jewelry Chain.
"I strive to create representations of paradoxical concepts like the sometimes sterile, cold interactions between humans in office environments," he explains to one blogger. "By choosing jewelry's small scale and proximity to the body, I want the wearer to experience a concept in tangible, three-dimensional forms"1
"I am interested in opening new ways of obtaining levels of interaction between beauty, physicality, and knowledge."2
"I am interested in opening new ways of obtaining levels of interaction between beauty, physicality, and knowledge."2
Drawing from studies in engineering, fashion jewelry, illustration, and product design, this SUNY New Paltz and New Parsons School of Design graduate has created innovative items fashioned from watch hands, human hair, fishing hooks, egg shells, wish bones, jewelry saw blades, hypodermic tubing, and syringe needles.
Opti Accumulus Necklace 2009 Glasses frames, False eyelashes.
Sergey Jivetin is currently exhibiting in two NYC shows.
Hydrologic ~ April 20-May 20, 2013
NYU Langone Medical Center.
MSB Gallery 550 First Ave. New York City
Out of this world. Jewelry in the Space Age ~ March 17-September 7, 2013
Forbes Magazine Galleries.
60 Fifth Ave. New York City
1. Splendor: A Celebration of Jewelry Designers, February 12, 2010
2. Marthe Le Van, 1000 Rings: Inspiring Adornments for the Hand. Lark Books, New York/ London, 2004: 220
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