Simulating/Rubbing Off Modernity/Art

1. Bruce Nauman Raw Material - Brrr, 1990
2. Bruce Nauman Flesh To White To Black To Flesh, 1968
3. Ed Atkins Warm, Warm, Warm Spring Mouths, 2013
4. Bruce Nauman Studies For Hologram, 1970

An exhibition of beauty that seeks international comparison. Juxtaposing the old master with the young master. Video experiments with the self (Nauman) and a 3D-modelled self (Atkins). 1968-2013. Poetic, disgusting, sentimental.
/HORST

Ed Atkins | Bruce Nauman, July 7 – October 26 2014, Kunsthalle Mainz, Germany

A Short History Of The Plastic Raincoat In Popular Culture VI

1. Miu Miu Fall/Winter 2014
2. Thomas Bayrle Produzione Bayrle Coats, 1967-68
3. Prada Fall/Winter 2002
4. Miu Miu Fall/Winter 2014

Never too late, never gone. The coloured plastic raincoat takes us back to 1949, 1967 and 2002. It is true that the future will always look old-fashioned. And the present will always feel like the past.
/HORST

Portraits Of An Artist V

1. Yves Klein Gelsenkirchen Opera, 1959
2. Andy Warhol The Velvet Years, 1965
3. K.P. Brehmer Berlin studio, 1974
4. Marina Abramović Rhythm 10, 1973
5. Joan Mitchell Paris studio, 1957
6. Yayoi Kusama Infinity Nets, 1961
7. Yayoi Kusama Infinity Nets, 1961

While portraits of male artists often show the subject dirty and proud, either right before completion or while revealing the final result, female artists seem to be captured in the sensual act of creation itself - in an almost meditative manner, pausing, thinking.
/HORST

A Short History Of The Comic Strip In Popular Culture VI

1. Jörg Immendorff Self-Portrait in the Studio, 1974
2. Jörg Immendorff I Wanted To Become An Artist, 1972
3. Jörg Immendorff Für Wen?, 1973
4. Pink Floyd Tonite Let's All Make Love In London, 1968
5. Peter Whitehead Tonite Let's All Make Love In London, 1967
6. David Hockney Still from Tonite Let's All Make Love In London, 1967
7. David Hockney Self-Portrait with Charlie, 2005
8. David Hockney Self-Portrait, 1984

The self-reflective, self-reflexive moment of the Shakespearian theatre in comic art. The absurd logic of cartoons naturally screams for a holistic 'address-the-audience-then-turn-around' attitude. In this respect, Jörg 'BAAM' Immendorff and David 'ZOOM' Hockney recall Ouroboros in a Manneristic manner: eating their own tail, painting themselves paining.
/HORST

A Short History Of The Comic Strip In Popular Culture

1. Imi Knoebel Canapé, 1987 - 1991
2. Roy Lichtenstein Whaam!, 1963
3. Joe Brainard I Remember, 1970
4. Raf Simons Spring/Summer 2009
5. Miu Miu Spring/Summer 2011
6. Tom Ford Fall/Winter 2013

The onomatopoetic 'explosion' star. We encouter it in isolated form (in sculpture), as contextual placement (in painting and poetry), as well as random object (in fashion) - which, in turn, would lead us to a loss of meaning through its recycling in fashion and therefore speak for a reduced cultural value of the latter. But we will have to investigate further.
/HORST

Post Paris XXVI

A 'False Encyclopaedia' double feature with Rudy Katoch, discussing:
Dior Fall/Winter 2013

“There is no political power without control of the archive, or without memory.”
Raf Simons fully understands the gravity of Derrida’s footnote. He plays with this idea lightly as he closes the show with three black silk memory dresses.

Look at the black leather Opéra Bouffe 1949 dress by Simons. It is a pastiche of the 'Pisanelle' cocktail ensemble Fall/Winter 1949–50. Dior was inspired by Renaissance artist Antonio Pisanello for his refined attention to clothing materials. Simons deflates the look, yet still foregrounds Dior’s fascination. He reduces the garment to its component parts. Warhol did this, with the same elegance, throughout his 1984 portfolio: 'Details of renaissance paintings'.

Silk velvets were reserved for eveningwear, not the cocktail hour in 1949. Leather replaces silk in 2013. Pop the New Look.

/RUDY

The re-evaluation of Dior has progressed. Raf Sander has found himself married to the ghosts of Dior and Schiaparelli, and to a certain degree, recovered from a traumatic change. Finding piece with his own past and the heritage of youth culture, altered towards surrealism. It's all about the (reversed) shoe, and Mr. Simons is running.
/HORST








1. Dior Fall/Winter 2013
2. Nat Finkelstein Andy Warhol and Silver Clouds, 1966
3. Christian Dior Fall/Winter 1949
4. Andy Warhol Venus, 1984
5. Raf Simons Spring/Summer 1999
6. Elsa Schiaparelli Fall/Winter 1937
7. Christian Dior Fall/Winter 1974
8. Dior Fall/Winter 2013

More about Rudy Katoch

Post Paris XXV

25th anniversary double feature with John-Michael O'Sullivan, discussing:
Balenciaga Fall/Winter 2013

"It's about America. It's not about couture." Those were the words Helmut Lang used to explain why he turned down Balenciaga in 1996, and instead packed up his label for a new life in New York. Couture was the past, then; and no-one could have dreamed then that the past would come to so utterly dominate the future.

There have been four designers at Balenciaga - or rather, at the brand set up by a company who purchased the name from Balenciaga's family long after he'd died, and even longer after he'd abruptly closed his business. Michel Goma, the old-school couturier; Josephus Thimister, the tortured dreamer; Nicolas Ghesquiére, the temp who managed against all expectations to escape the archives and translate Balenciaga into the 21st century; and Alexander Wang, the American picked because the label's owners decided they wanted it to be 'approachable'.

But instead of a brand new start, the cracked black-and-white marble floor on Wang's runway felt funereal, like the marble in Slimane's intensely divisive remaining of Saint Laurent. Chill, cold, unyielding: less a new start than a requiem mass. Chill, ice-white bark textures, cold colours, unyielding shapes: and yet the 'approachable' , marketable, profitable energy of a young American designer kept breaking through the cracks.

/JOHN-MICHAEL

The premier appoggiatura of 'Wangciaga' confronts us with a backwards-minded collection that puts the hard-edged feminity of Nicolas Ghesquière into question. Its anti-tools: the nostalgic, ladylike elegance of Cristóbal Balenciaga combined with the retro-fiction of Kenneth Price and cyber-organic wood-carvings of H.R. Giger.
/HORST








1. Balenciaga Fall/Winter 2013
2. Balenciaga Vogue Paris, July 1948
3. Balenciaga Henry Clarke, 1951
4. Saint Laurent Boutique, 2012
5. Balenciaga Evening ensemble, 1967
6. Kenneth Price Mountainside Sculpture, 2009
7. H.R. Giger New York City X, 1981
8. Balenciaga Fall/Winter 2013

More reviews by John-Michael O'Sullivan 1972 Projects