2008, "Art Vs. Fashion," Cornell Fine Arts Museum

Lecture given March 27, 2008 / Now at Fashion Vs. Art

What can we say about art and fashion? Philosopher Alain Badiou described that we have three general approaches to creative work:
1) the Platonic, focusing on the idea
2) the Classical, focusing on the formal properties
3) the Romantic, focusing on a work as dialogue with infinite truth.
Being that I am quite a romantic, I am going to look today at how the work of art, and also fashion, are finite expressions of the infinite value of beauty.

Art and fashion exist in separate constructed categories. Art, on the one hand, typically involves something valued as a lasting object. Fashion, on the other hand is ephemeral with an accelerated turnover of style. Art is normally aligned with meaningful intention and thus meaningful engagement; fashion is generally regarded as momentary and meaningless. Immanuel Kant described that "Fashion belongs under the title of vanity, because in its intention there is no inner value." I would like to challenge Kant in this discussion with an opposing point of view. We should be ever conscious of what Dick Hebdige called the "deceptive innocence of appearances," because the gesture of fashion can have meaningful intention.

The truth is that art may at times resemble fashion and fashion may look like art. So rather than emphasize the constructed categories or superficial differences, I will concentrate on the intersection between them, attempting to bring to light shared values. I will begin the discussion with the art of Vanessa Beecroft, currently on exhibit here at the museum. Beecroft's work can be discussed from a number of perspectives but I will only address two aspects, global values and fashion values. Then I will discuss the relationship between Beecroft's art work and fashion photography.

I begin with Beecroft's own description of the work we see on the screen. Beecroft explained, "Her hair, make-up and accessories, in all other respects identical, would be a different color for each season, white in the winter, pink in the spring, beige in the summer, brunette in the fall…" This description could easily be of a fashion editorial. It was however Beecroft's description of photos she had take of her sister through the seasons in various color schemes. In this work there is a dialogue with the natural cycle of beauty. The formal properties compare to Manets' Olympia, or even Monet's Haystacks or equally, a pin-up calendar or advertisement. This particular work is unique for Beecroft however because it features one woman many times. Normally, Beecroft works with groups of women in different locations.

Beecroft has been staging performances for over 15 years. She personally casts and choreographs groups of models and directs their aesthetic presentation. The models remain standing or sitting for several hours while they are photographed and filmed. It is something like a beauty pageant on demand. Each performance is only identified by the artist's initials VB 1, VB 2 etc. The serial numbers are the only information we get. The works are like dreams out of context.

These anonymous group portraits may recall Rembrant's group portraits but to the contemporary viewer, they look like runways or fashion photos. The performances also resemble contemporary ceremonies - walking the red carpet at an award's show, or concert, wherever the value of the occasion is in relationship to poised aesthetic presentation. Beecroft's work has a pretense and a purpose of looking good. This work communicates beauty as justification and gives us an ideal starting point for considering the contemporary dialogue between art and fashion.

I. Global Values
In an era in which we are pre-occupied with sustainability of everything, beauty sustains itself. What then is the responsible role of aesthetics in a global community? We consistently take on beauty as the subject of debate, what it should look like, who should have it. The reality is everyone everywhere has some form of it. In Beecroft we get beauty in many styles, through a great number of global identities. I will primarily be using the term global and would like to acknowledge the writing of Jean Baudrillard who explained that when we speak of global we mean the market, the international exchange and political climate, not the essence of humankind. The essence of humankind is the universal. Beecroft's art is global, it is something representing national identities and is a product bought and sold in the market, but the work is also universal, representing what she explains herself as "not a particular woman but women in general."

Beecroft is originally from Genoa, Italy and cites Italian art history as a prime inspiration for her work. The artist's nationality however is not the motivation for the people she represents in her work. Seen on the screen is a group of Korean women. Beecroft has also worked with American white males and females, European, and African identities. She is creating unprecedented global portraiture. While Gaugin represented Tahitian women, Beecroft represents almost every continent. The fair representation in her work is a primary reason why it has gained prominence. She has created over 60 performances, commissioned by the world's top museums. Beecroft described, "I consider my performances to be one body of work stored in different parts of the world.

Whenever Beecroft creates a performance she researches the location, often making cultural difference part of her aesthetic arrangement. For VB 55, currently on exhibit here at the museum, Beecroft worked with red, yellow, and black hair, intentionally representing the colors of Germany's flag. VB 50 on the screen was created for the Sau Paulo Biennial in Brazil. Beecroft chose women of color with a variety of tone to represent Brazil's various ethnic influences. I served as curator of VB 54, which was created for John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. This presentation included over 30 African American models. Beecroft explained her inspiration for this work was related to her airport experience of being held at customs by handcuffs until the contents of her bag were investigated. For VB 54 the African American women were chained together at the ankles. The African American presentation carries social-historical signifiers that evoke the history of slavery.

Representing women of color is a consistent interest for Beecroft who uses full body paint seen here in detail of both VB 48 and VB 54. Even when the women are united by one ethnic color palette the variation of the human body is evident. In VB 54 a pregnant woman is present. Responsibly representing the global community means not only involving people of all nationalities but also of all stages of life. In VB 51 Beecroft invited women from a local community in Germany, varying over 40 years in age. Using finite examples, Beecroft's work gives us an impression of the full expression of infinite beauty.

The question to ask in terms of global responsibility is if representation alone is enough? Beecroft clearly documents a substantial variety of identities. But by only giving the works numbered titles, she is doing little more than making an index or catalog of her selections around the world. Her exact point of view of the combined cultural significance is unknown. This of course is the conventional limit with portraiture, fascinating in its original moment for the detailed expression of beauty but only valued in the long term for historical memory and aesthetics. This is what I see surviving with Beecroft's work, not the particular contemporary relevance but a more general appreciation of varied expressions of beauty.

II. Fashion Values
As we just saw, Beecroft represents a wide range of identities but she frequently concentrates on the young, white female model. A good portion of her models are fashion industry standard weight. This brings forward the rather predictable question of body politics and the connection to fashion aesthetics. Beecroft insists, "I don't follow fashion," and that the fashion elements in her work only "underline" the human form.

It is important to note that the contemporary use of fashion models actually goes back to the figure model used by artists. In today's society, we openly voice regular complaints about model weight however models of ideal slender form have been sought out for centuries because bone and muscle structure is optimal for drafting and now for photography. The expectation of course is that models of good form will be of good health which is unfortunately not always the case. Beecroft has openly admitted a preference for the lean model form and has discussed her own experience with bulimia. For VB 52 seen on the screen Beecroft photographed women with food. She invited models to dine on a several course meal arranged by the color of the foods.

While it is helpful to know that Beecroft is conscious of body issues, any debate of media representations is not resolved by her work, rather it is affirmed. As expressed earlier, Beecroft gives us no explanation except for a numbered title, VB 52. She is thus simply representing models and reinforcing the culture industry. Some critics find the resemblance to fashion problematic because art is expected to have consciousness and not be immersed in the dream of the spectacle. This becomes more obvious if we consider another artist's conscious opposition to representation of women.

On the screen is Janine Antoni's Gnaw (1992). Antoni, who was Beecroft's 1990's contemporary, gnawed at blocks of chocolate and fat and then left the blocks to be displayed. In the resulting minimalist work we see no female bodies, only the forbidden thing - food itself. With this contrast we can see that, Beecroft's work adds the existing aesthetic of images of women, Antoni's work add's a new image - that of revolt.

Part of the critique of Beecroft is that the work looks like fashion and fashion is without ideas. Even fashion however can assert values and ideas with a stronger point of view than we are getting from Beecroft. Victor and Rolf's Fall 2008 collection was simply based on opposing the fashion system with the word "no." Here models are presented inside the fashion world expressing opposition. The designers released this statement, "We love fashion, but it's going so fast. We wanted to say 'No' this season." While the rather empty "no" is a somewhat superficial revolt, it still operates as counter-current within the system of images.

By contrast Beecroft's work is a "yes" to fashion values and images. In the work on the screen VB 35, Beecroft chose to work with Gucci for the wardrobe. The result is something we have already seen in mass media a thousand times before, simply in different colors, different scenes. For the online magazine Art Net, Ben Davis summarized: "Vanessa Beecroft's practice of staging fetishistic tableaux of naked women in high heels is the rock that high-flown art theory runs aground on. While critics persist in looking for a political kernel in her work such as a 'post-feminist critique of the catwalk' - we must accept Beecroft is clearly not attempting to resist the values of fashion. She is replicating them in the space of the art world."

OK - so Beecroft is giving us fashion in the art world. It could still be argued that it is entirely valid to acknowledge the fashion model aesthetic as part of our cultural history. Like any era we have an artist making a record of our time, however Beecroft does not ever state she is making any such record of fashion. The artist's motivation is entirely unexpressed. Normally, in the fashion world, designers give models particular instructions before going out on the runway. Here we see a very conventional, general cue card, "You are special. You are beautiful. You are simply the best." For Micheal Kors, each season is the creation of a fantasy, a mental world associated with the clothing, seen in detail on the screen. Kors is activating the presentation of fashion with particular vision.

For Beecroft, there is no vision expressed. When I worked with Beecroft on the more political women in cuffs she gave the same instructions she always gives her models, "don't act," "don't talk." This is not to suggest that Beecroft does not have an idea but that she does not express it. The models are then left without any motivation other than standing and displaying the particular clothing.

"I wanted the women to be slightly hypnotised," Beecroft explains "so they appear removed and detached from the audience.," she continues, "It's not a concept that can be easily explained." When the models were asked what they felt by participating, one stated, "The problem is that nobody told us how to look. I didn't find it very structured. And it was cold." This suggests that Beecroft is intentionally doing nothing. Perhaps the artist is alluding to our own un-informed hypnotism by cultural images but again, the artist herself has never stated an attack on the culture industry. In fact the artist is actually deeply engaged with the culture industry. She has openly admitted to a teenage obsession with Italian Vogue, and has created special photographs for Vogue Homme and the French fashion magazine Self Service. She has also hired fashion photographers to help with performances. She has more recently also been directly involved in fashion presentations. In 2006, Beecroft was commissioned by Louis Vuitton to create a large scale installation to launch the flagship store on Champs-Elyses.

If we can see that Beecroft is giving us global portraits, then she is also giving us fashion portraits. We have seen fashion portraits before. Anthony Van Dyck was a 17th Century Flemish painter to the English court. It was his mastery of painting fabrics and fashion that resulted in his fame as the exemplary painter of aristocracy. Beecroft is a Van Dyck of our era.

III. Art Vs. Fashion
In what is considered the first fashion magazine, La Dernière Mode from 1874, we find a manifesto for fashion: "To teach beauty in everyday things is our concern, or a part of it, but even more a putting-to-use in the cause of delicate enjoyment of artists' visions." Seen on the screen is a recent fashion photo inspired by artist Francisco de Goya. Photographer Mario Sorrenti chose to arrange photographs based on Goya. There was a direct art inspiration source named in the editorial. Fashion involves this type of specific inspiration naming. Beecroft by contrast is typically quiet about the inspiration for her work however when she created VB 47 for the Guggenheim in Venice she openly stated Italian surrealist painter de Chirico as her inspiration. She covered faces with fencing masks to create a more mysterious look. Beecroft also described the influence of fashion photographer Helmut Newton. It is not hard to uncover a dialogue between Beecroft and fashion photography. Chris Von Wangenheim was a photographer for Christain Dior, seen here. His work is similar to a project by Beecroft 25 years later for Vogue Hommes. French photographer Guy Bourdin was known for his stylized photographs compared to VB 45 on the right. I also discovered a recent series of advertisements that were likely inspired by Beecroft. Photographer Peter Lindbergh gathered groups of women for Moschino.

This process of inspiration or imitation is part of both art and fashion and the recurrence of infinite beauty. On the screen are two images by British photographer Nick Knight. Knight began as an artist, with a conceptual art photography project "Skinheads" in 1982. He quickly transited to fashion photography, openly stating the better economics of the fashion industry. But his original art celebration of rebellious skinheads brings to light something essential to fashion, which is imitation within subculture. Fashion even when expressed in a rebellious form, is about assimilation among a group. That same assimilated groupings is the basis of Beecroft.

Kant described fashion as the open game of imitation:

It is a natural inclination of man to compare his behavior to that of a more important person … in order to imitate the other person's ways. A law of such imitation, which aims at not appearing less important than others, especially when no regard is paid to gaining any profit from it, is called fashion. Fashion …belongs under the title of folly, because in fashion there is a compulsion to subject oneself slavishly to the mere example which society projects to us. …. All fashion are, by their very concept, mutable ways of living. Whenever the play of imitating becomes fixed, imitation becomes usage…

Kant describes fashion as a mutable game of imitation related to self importance. We imitate whatever we admire and want to associate with. Whenever we dress alike, we are affirming like values. However, Kant warns, following fashion is folly because most of what we imitate is the example from society. In more contemporary terms we imitate a mediated version of self instead of our true individual singularity. Fashion magazines create widespread imitation that is decreasing the national differences in beauty expression. This means that global values of beauty are less about difference and more about shared values.

We have been looking at doubles from contemporary fashion advertisements. There is in imitation an affirmation of the other, a love of the other, a love of the neighbor and a denial of the self and singularity. The larger idea of imitation, assimilation, subcultural formation, these are obviously connected to Beecroft's work. There is something about fashion as uniform of unification, of team building and allegiance. In Beecroft's group portraits, the individual submits to group values, personal style is sacrificed for group style. While the artist may at times include a variation to the group, one girl with different shoes or hair color, similarity is the prime message and this is the basis of fashion as a social construction.

We are at a point of excess with imitation. Everything can be duplicated and imitated. Whatever it is that we have culturally considered with virtual reality, the simulacra, the mirror image, the other, has been made even more apparent by reality tv where we watch reflections of ourselves. What we imitate is not so much one another, or even the culture industry but we are imitating indeterminate images and those images are an imitation of real life itself - that is the rupture to imitation.

IV. Fashion Photography
Whenever we encounter a fashion photograph we collide with a particular moment in time, a fantasy but also a trace of reality. This imitation we make in a fashion photograph is the imitation of life. We just saw a set of very controlled photographs by Steven Meisel and Craig McDean. On the screen is Photographer Inez van Lamsweerde, often partnered with her husband Vinoodh. Here Inez appears in the shot with the model, the photo taken by her husband. And here is a second example of Inez's shot. The photographers are known for interacting with the model and capturing a moment of reality. This is a larger trend in fashion photography, like other mediums, to show less fantasy and more of the natural beauty in this world. Inez recently completed a Before/After series commissioned by V magazine. The series invited models to arrive at the studio without make up to be photographed. This is deconstruction of the fashion industry, tearing down the constructions of beauty and showing us nothing but reality is necessary. The amazing aspect of these photos is that the natural shots are in almost all instances more powerful and compete with the contrived photo and win our attention.

New York photographer Jason Fosco shot a different beautiful girl on the street every day for a year. The result was the full spectrum of beauty in various ethnicities and styles without any plan or orchestrated theme. This work shares Beecroft's representation but takes it further, representing individuals not groups and allowing the genuine context of the reality moment to be represented instead of contrived scenery.

Juergen Teller is a well known fashion photographer who takes reality shots of exceptional subjects, celebrities and models in ordinary clothes and environments. He uses natural lighting and a point and shoot camera, no set. In this instance he shot a young eastern European girl waiting to be discovered for modeling.In fashion photography it is hard not to find resemblance to art of the human form. Here Juergen's shot compares to Manet's Olympia, the reclining sexually available prostitute. The shot also compares to Beecroft's sister. Teller, Manet, and Beecroft are each presenting the female form in a reclined and passive position. This raises the question of what is art and what is fashion, and what is considered acceptable imagery. If they are bought and sold in the art market they are art. If they are printed in magazines they are fashion. This idea however is the poison of economics, that something is of more value when it is exchanged as a unique object. This is the caseeven though art history reveals in the tiny cave at Lascaux, that the only thing something needs in order to be art is to endure and contribute to the history of images.

Perhaps, one could argue that the negotiation of beauty between art versus fashion is one for control of history, or more so infinity. Now fashion and the culture industry produce more images than art. Fashion photography is making our visual history in the way that art has done for centuries. Despite the new interest in reality shooting, the fashion photograph can command a large investment, something that in many ways compares to the large scale studio painting of the Renaissance. Seen on the screen is a fashion photograph by filmmaker Sebastien Faena in Buenos Aires. What is the resulting image - a photograph, an art photograph, a fashion photograph, a film photograph, or simply a finite expression of infinite beauty?

There are also examples of fashion commanding the museum space. Obviously the Met has been a long time supporter of fashion exhibitions and recently the Chanel show offered the Met its highest record attendance. We are now esteeming fashion on a pedestal. Seen on the screen is the Fall 2007 exhibition of over 30 years of clothing by designer Valentino. The exhibition was fashion as art, in the museum. His couture designs were dressed on mannequins and installed on tiered pedestals. Most aesthetic enthusiasts do not see a hierarchy between art and fashion and would say clothing this masterfully made is an art to be exhibited. But what is most interesting is our desire to present these materials. Art had a function of presenting visual information, to educate and edify. These clothes demonstrate craft and skill but the arrangement of the presentation allowed none of them to be seen in detail, they were instead simply admired. It is if we are going to the museum simply to bask in beauty. The honoring of beauty is also important because this exhibition was an inaugural event for the restoration of a Roman pagan temple. We have effectively brought back to life a Roman temple of cultural worship, and we are using it in our era to worship, or as we say today, "celebrate" beauty.

***

What do we desire, so desperately from the object of art or fashion? What are we seeking to resolve in the beautiful image? Is it the ideal? the formal? the sexual? For Theodore Adonro he believed we are spellbound by beauty. He wrote about the "primeval history of luxury, that has migrated into all art." He explains that gemstones like emeralds and diamonds were once considered full of power, capable of putting people under a spell. Eventually this was deemed only an illusion and emeralds and diamonds were nothing but objects. "But the magic has survived" writes Adorno, "as the power of radiant things over men….as radiant things give up their magic claims…they become transformed into images of gentleness, promises of happiness…this is the primeval history of luxury, that has migrated into the meaning of all art. In the magic of whatever reveals itself in absolute powerlessness of beauty, at once perfection and nothingness, the illusion of omnipotence is mirrored negatively as hope." When beauty appears in either art or fashion it seems to offer with it some type of expectation or hope.

Despite the fact they capture our attention, particular finite expressions of beauty are themselves powerless, as Adorno describes. There is no final resolution in a beautiful photograph because there is no final stopping point for beauty.