Paths Towards Modernity V

1. Versace Fall/Winter 2014
2. Richard Prince Untitled (Man's Hand On Pocket With Watch), 1980
3. Richard Prince Cowboys & Girlfriends, 1992
4. Versace Fall/Winter 2014
5. Versace Fall/Winter 2014
6. Richard Prince Untitled (Cowboy), 2001
7. Richard Prince Untitled (Original), 2009
8. Richard Prince Untitled, 2008
9. Versace 1980s
10. Versace Fall/Winter 2014
11. Versace Fall/Winter 2014
12. Richard Prince Nurse With Wings (Detail), 2003
13. Versace Fall/Winter 2013
14. Versace Fall/Winter 1994
15. Richard Prince Untitled, 2007

Richard Prince created the art practice of 'appropriation'. Regarded as one of the main players/actors of The Picture Generation he took pictures of pictures and declared them artworks of their own. With motorbike cowboys and vinyl nurses as subject, Prince plays with stereotypes and superstages them as cult of popular mainstream culture. And when cliché and sexism collide, Gianni and Donatella are not afar.
/HORST

Anew, A New Male

1. Comme des Garçons Spring/Summer 2014
2. Meadham Kirchhoff Spring/Summer 2014
3. J.W. Anderson Spring/Summer 2014
4. Martine Rose Fall/Winter 2013
5. Dimitri Arvanitis Graduate Collection 2013

I'd like to introduce 'Anew' as a new term for a new movement, a new school. After 'Antwerp 6' we have 'Anew 4+'. Constituting itself of Martine Rose, Meadham Kirchhoff, Dimitri Arvanitis and J.W. Anderson. Under kind custody of über-mother Rei Kawakubo, they are establishing what has been introduced as 'gender-bending', the 'metrosexual' or 'trans' and 'fear-male'.

Martine Rose delivers the core theme: 'Expect Perfection'. With lurex tops, cropped denim jackets and fabric-floating skrousers that recall Brenda Walsh, stilt and street walkers. Anderson, for his part, proposes blousy neckholder tops in decorative scarf/curtain prints - the after-effect of architectural experimentation. Kitchen, apron and housewife kitsch, rubber coats and sweat-wet hairdos are the identifying marks of Meadham Kirchhoff's fetishized male housewife. While Dimitri Arvanitis tarts up a clique of pony riding society gayls for their highly anticipated night out of the closet. So what and who is the Anew Male? A female pastiche? A reworked cliché? We see party girls, nurses, millionaire's devotees, call girls and ladyboys - starring in The Real Husbands of London, Paris and Antwerp. My question to you is: Are you one of them?
/HORST