Style section: splatter pics

In the now seamless mash up between fashion and the visual arts, no one does it with more flair than the American artist Sterling Ruby. His hand-bleached splattered jackets and hoodies have already walked the runway as part of a Raf Simons’s show and Simons (a close friend) wants to do more with Ruby’s one-off-mass lines. But for Ruby it’s more than pushing out a look into the public; he and his team make the clothes he and many of his studio assistants wear ever day, ‘I’ve almost reached a point where I only wear what I make,’ he said recently about this production of studio uniforms. You can see and read more about Sterling Ruby’s collaborations with Raf Simons here and his approach to what gets worn in the studio here.

Images: left, Ruby studio wear and right with Raf Simons

Skin in the game

There aren’t many major companies that don’t call on an artist from time to time to give their brands an upward spin. Nike has just called on Martino Gamper, a regular exhibitor in NZ with Francis Upritchard, and he's answered the call. Gamper used one of Nike's new high-tech knit materials to fit out some drum kits with Nike skins. Who knows what they sound like?(well Nike probably do) but they look sharp and Gamper has added his own touches to the drum sides. You can see more here.

Other art brand combos from OTN
Jeff Koons and Dom Pérignon
Ralph Hotere and Westpac
Damien Hirst and Alexander McQueen
Gilbert and George and Comme des Garçons
Cindy Sherman and MAC
Salvador Dali and Chupa Chups
Jenny Holtzer and Keds

Catching a wave

You can’t keep a good image down especially if it's as intense as The Great Wave off Kanagawa, the ukiyo-e woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai from his set Thirty six views of Mount Fuji. If you want to see a copy of the original you only need to go as far as the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. While it's thought around 5,000 copies were printed time is bound to have slashed that number back a fair bit. One was certainly lost in 2012 with the grounding and partial sinking of the ocean liner Costa Concordia. A set of the Thirty six views was hanging in the CC's wellness spa.

But don't give up. It's still possible to have your own copy. An original print of The Great Wave off Kanagawa was auctioned for $36,000 in 2003 while a full set of the thirty six views (for some reason there are 42 prints in the series) went for $2mil the year before at Sotheby’s.

Images: top, The wave as used by the advertising industry, the design world, the ink fiends and bottom, a mural in Dresden of all places by C.Muench

When art walks the runway

As we've always been interested in art crossovers (with movies, fashion, animal artists etc) we were starters for the Dries van Noten exhibition in Paris. It was more than just impressive and the way it had been put together offers many valuable insights on concept development, curation, focus and display. Plus the attraction of fabulous clothes.

Unlike most single artist surveys van Noten has made a large exhibition (alongside the curator Pamela Golbin) focused on his influences. These are  something many artists like to keep in the cupboard for as long as they can but for van Noten, “Fashion is so rich…because we can draw on so many sources of inspiration.”

Van Noten's inspirations turn out to be very diverse but one surprising one to us turned out to be Jane Campion’s 1993 feature The piano. It got a large room to itself with clips from the movie and a range of black on black outfits that echoed its well-known aesthetic and period detail. We were also intrigued by the other 20th and 21 century artists van Noten rates as his inspirations and the value he places on them. And they are not just mentioned on a wall text but represented by significant or idiosyncratic works. Francis Bacon was included of course via four or five torn pages from magazine and paint splattered photographs taken off the famous studio floor, carefully conserved and now on permanent display in Dublin. Marcel Broodthaers was there with mussels and Christopher Wool with words and Elizabeth Peyton with a couple of dashing portraits. One painting spoke of another constellation of influences we are very familiar with. The 1966 painting Tauri by Victor Vasarely could be taken in technique and style for a complex Gordon Walters. Walters often mentioned Vasarely as important to him, but to see this one right in front of you, wow.

Image: the section given over to the influence of Jane Campion's film The piano on Dries van Noten

Homage to Picasso's Guernica

The inside and the outside stories.
Images: top, random tattoo site, bottom The Satorialist

A word on fashion

Short of Anselm Kiefer breaking out a line of wedding dresses or catching an advert for the the Milan Mrkusich range of boxer shorts, it’s hard to imagine anything more surprising than Lawrence Weiner teaming up with UNIQLO to pump out a t-shirt collection in association with MoMA.

The signs were there of course. Weiner was the guy after all who said, “Art and fashion are the last two bastions where the product itself is what attracts attention; it really doesn’t much matter who made it.” He’s also been known to stand up for the workhorses of the fashion industry. "I have a great appreciation for runway models. Why would they do it? It’s exhausting, terrible, psychological work to do and you don’t have any control over yourself.” Maybe it was this empathy that prompted him to make a runway piece titled (1) FOR THE MONEY, (2) FOR THE SHOW, (3) TO GET READY and (4)

This is not a catwalk

Opening Ceremony the New York fashion house have taken to channeling Magritte as their latest collaboration. You can see more of their Magritte fashion statements here on psfk.

Room service

Imagine for a moment that John Key has to pop down to Dunedin for a couple of days. He’s taking his wife and they'll stay in the best hotel the city can offer. So what’s front-of-mind for the staffers organising the trip South? We know. Arranging for some great works of art to hang in their hotel room. Quick!  Call the Minister of Culture and Heritage (on second thoughts don’t bother, he’ll fill the place with Piera McCarthur #cheapshot #butwelldeserved). Hang on a moment. It was all a dream. An impossible dream.

But not impossible in Dallas back in November 1963 as you'd see if you visited the Amon Carter Museum. For the exhibition Hotel Texas the Museum has reassembled the works selected for the Kennedy’s suite 850 in Hotel Texas, Fort Worth. It was there they stayed the night before President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas . The President's room featured the more masculine oriented works by Thomas Eakins, Marsden Hartley and Charles M. Russell but ironically the couple didn’t get the ‘theming.’ The President slept in what was intended to be his wife’s room with Van Gogh's Road with Peasant Shouldering a Spade.
 
Images: Top, Hotel Texas November 1963. Bottom left the 'President's room' showing Thomas Eakins' famous painting Swimming and Charles M. Russell's Lost in a Snowstorm and bottom right the suite's living room featuring Lyonel Feininger's Manhattan II, Franz Kline's Study for Accent Grave and Spirit bird by Morris Graves. (source: Guardian)

Talking shop

As the boundaries between design and the visual arts continue to collapse, we’re seeing a lot more art product out there. The segue from gallery to shop was started by museums with a blockbuster agenda and art museums got into the act fast. Gift shops became as essential as cafes with books relegated to a support role. Most of the artists were dead so no harm no foul.
 
But as art products became an essential part of marketing any large-scale exhibition the artists involved often became active partners. Didn’t take too long for some of them to figure out that institutions clipping the ticket was just annoying and so the rise and rise of Hirst, Shrigley and in New Zealand Frizzell and Poppelwell. Now there’s a new art product experience online courtesy of Ruben Paterson. Here's where you can get your Silk and glitter dust flower brooches and headbands, Reuben Paterson for World Badge and Ts.

Scarfies

You can’t stop a good art entrepreneur and when it comes to Damien Hirst collaborating with Alexander McQueen, and looking at this video clip, why would you want to. We've already posted on the forays of many artists into the world of fashion (in NZ Martin Poppelwell and Dick Frizzell are hard at it) but here's Hirst celebrating McQueen’s famous skull scarf ten years on. Be warned, there are major price hikes this time round with $600 for the silk twill and $1,400 for the cashmere. The video and photographs are by London based Norwegian photographer Sølve Sundsbø who also designed the creepy cover for Coldplay’s A Rush of Blood to the Head. You can see samples of Hirst's scarf designs here at Designboom.
 
Other art and fashion stories from OTN
In store
Jenny Holzer
Yves Klein
Mark Rothko
Piet Mondrian
Keith Haring
Richard Serra
Gilbert and George

Coat tales

How prescient was et al. when they donned a lab coat to be photographed for Art NZ back in 2001 and to accept the Walters prize in 2004? Now you can't move in the art world without coming across a lab-coated artist or artist’s operative. Our most recent sighting was at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art when we spotted a group of lab-coated assistants off to help people into James Turrell’s light chamber. The owner of the art lab-coat is of course Marina Abramovic with her bevy of LC’d assistants.

Images: top left, et al at work, top right, the closing moments of Marina Abramovic's The Artist Is Present at MoMA. Second row, Brazilian artist Luciana Brito. Third row left, Yiorgos Zafiriou at Sydney’s Artspace and right, performance artists Near Future. Bottom, off to the Turrell at LACMA.

Saturday style section

If you’re a regular follower of OTN you will know we keep a sharp eye out for those artist-based gifts that keep on giving. This range of bags comes from artist Olaf Breuning who did a stint in New Zealand back in 2002 including a show at the Hamish McKay Gallery. A couple of years ago he teamed up with Bally a luxury leather goods manufacturer in Switzerland to create the Bally Love #2 Capsule Collection. You can watch Olaf touting a couple of the bags here.

Images: top Breuning's original tape and paper prototypes and below the Bally leather versions

Style section

Because we want you to look good either carrying your laptop or giving the gift. Warhol case here for $US59.99

Runway Boogie Woogie

It isn’t fashion week if there isn’t another version of YSL’s riff on Mondrian’s painting. Has to be the most copied composition of all times. 
Images: Top to bottom, left to right. Grace Kelly wearing the original YSL dress, Costume National, Sarah Scofield swimwear, Diane von Furstenberg, Francesso Maria Bandini, Virtual Heela, BC BG Max Azria, the original YSL version, Anns Klein Ladakh, Morgan, a DIY from supplied pattern, Etsy, Paul Smith and Opening Ceremony

Spotted

Yayoi Kusama for Louis Vuitton in Sydney's George Street

Toot Suite

Ans Westra’s images hit the road in Wellington thanks to a bold branding effort by Suite Gallery who have a stand alone Westra Gallery on Oriental Parade.

Winging it

One of the great things an artist can do is to gift us our secret desires. Who hasn’t looked out a aeroplane window and wondered about walking along the wing? (OK, so we’re alone here -  no matter - we’ll push on). 

The Slovakian artist Roman Ondák played an intriguing part in Massey University’s One Day Sculpture programme back in 2009 with his idea of queues waiting patiently for nothing, nowhere in particular. In his solo show at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin Ondák  installed the sawn-off wing of a passenger plane and encouraged people to use it as a bridge to the next part of his exhibition. Ondák was inspired by the words often written on wings: “do not walk outside this area.” Ondák told the curator that when the wing turned up it was smaller than he thought it would be.

That reminded us of something we heard in Los Angeles when we were touring around with Michael Webb an architectural writer. We were visiting a new firm of architects and were very impressed by their huge working tables made from the wings of large aircraft. We were told, rather shamefacedly, that some B52 wings had been ordered up from the famous aircraft graveyard in Arizona but when they arrived they turned out to be 56.4 metres long (just over half the length of a football field). They wouldn’t even fit in the building. So back they went  ‘smaller’ horizontal stabilisers off the tailpiece were sent instead. 

Image: a visitor steps out at Roman Ondák’s exhibition Do not walk outside this area in Berlin 

A Saturday footnote

OTN has always been pretty scatter-gun with its fashion advice but today we are talking direct to those of you who specialise in Robert Ryman-style white abstract paintings. Boy, do we have the shoes for you. 

 Image: Maison Martin Margiela Line 22/ Replica sneaker. Get yours here.

Converts

Fashion loves a pattern. But before the popular dot patterns of Damien Hirst and Yayoi Kusama there was Keith Haring. A quick trip to Google was enough to get an idea of the range available as more hay is made converting into brand.

Images: Footwear by Hilfiger, House of Field jewellery, jacket by Jeremy Scott and a Pletex plate

Gate series

Since graffiti was invented in Wellington the doorway entrance to Peter McLeavey’s Gallery has been a prime location. As it was never cleaned up the site just kept on encrusting. Sometimes it was brilliant, most times it was ... like a graffitied doorway. Now a strangely suburban iron gate has been installed to stop the street artists from applying their trade. Will it work? Watch that space.