Presidential Summer Pants

Lyndon Johnson ordering custom-made Joe Haggar Jr. pants (because they provide more room in "the crotch, down where your nuts hang") from the White House in 1964 (right before going to a funeral):

Two Images in the New Yorker

This is the layout of last week's pages 38-39 of the New Yorker. The article is about sports, marketing, stardom and money. The New Yorker's illustration for the article is a photograph of a Banksy street art piece; it reveals the writing's main thesis. In an uncanny echo, page 39 presents a wonderful Gillette ad which, with similar cues (fence, black man, physical activity involving height, etc) let's you know what's up: just buy deodorant.

Purposefully or not, I think this is great.

"Ilha das Flores": A Tomato, Thumbs and Pigs for a Short Explanation of Capitalism

Isle of Flowers (or Ilha das Flores in Portuguese) is a 1989 Brazilian short film by Jorge Furtado. Following a tomato from garden to dump, it delivers dry narration, witty editing and eclectic visuals for an unexpectingly cruel message.

What in the World is Art: An Example from the Field

A few days before the 2012 Whitney Biennial opened, a web page with the museum's logo, template, language and a similar url (www.whitney2012.com instead of www.whitney.com) announced the institution's decision to give up on certain "generous corporate donations" by terminating its partnership with the Deutsche Bank and Sotheby's. According to this release by resigning from such benefits the Whitney was acknowledging and, especially displaying its role in upholding "a system that benefits collectors, trustees, and corporations at the expense of art workers" (I would add art lovers). The Whitney was taking a stance against the Deutsche Bank's corporate conduct (the bank just settled a legal dispute of $202 million for reselling knowingly shaky mortgages between 2007 and 2009) and deploring Sotheby's recent internal policies (the lock-out of its art handlers while making record profits and increasing its director's revenue from $2.4million in 2009 to $10.3 million in cash and benefits in 2011).

The world of art is a weird one that exists through the belief that certain "things" have magical-like forces over us. Often these magical qualities are explained by using intellectual concepts, discussing production prowess or expressing notions of aesthetics, while actually most of these "things with agencies" gain their aura through the tricky powers of financial markets. So for a museum to use its own existence to reveal the inner-workings of this weird cosmology - for instance museums may use artists because their sponsors need to sell things that may gain value if the museum uses this artist's work - was impressive, almost as impressive as good art. That excitement, however, lasted only until I learned the website was a hoax and experienced the Whitney biennial's overall blandness.

If that fake virtual press release was the most creative project to come out of the Biennial, I'm also excited to say that their hoax is part of a series of fake press releases and that their latest has just denounced the Whitney’s recent actual request for donations from blue-chip artists of work valued over $500,000.

Meat

This is a literal (hence difficult) short documentary called Le Sang des Bêtes by Georges Franju about animal slaughter and meat production. Although filmed in the late 1940s in two slaughterhouses and meat markets near Paris, this should be footage to think how we (whether in France, Canada or Italy) today (or in the 1940s) consider animal-slaughter (whether that of a horse, calf or lamb) and the ethics/responsibilities and labour behind it. 

Do we inflict more 'pain' today than yesterday on the animals we eat (how can this be assessed)? Are we more alienated from the meat we eat? Where do the butchers killing these animals come from today? What are the contemporary methods used to kill these animals? What implications do these questions have on today's food production and consumption?

Things and Happiness

Boris Vian et sa La complainte du progrès (1956) (The lament against progress). Le frigidaire, l'évier en fer, le tabouret à glace, l'armoire à cuillère, un four en verre, la tourniquette pour faire la vinaigrette, le canon à patate, les draps qui chauffent, ou l'arrache poulet et le bonheur sera à vous?

What's That Made Of?

Here is a fascinating designer from Holland called Christien Meindertsma. Her work focuses on cycles of production. To do so she follows materials from their origins to their consumable form. With her project pig 05049 she went to the source - the specific 05049 pig - and collected all the products resulting from him/her. The original question behind this project was if all the parts of the animal were used. The answer is yes. 05049's remains were used up entirely: finding their way into candy, paint, shine, glue, soap, breaks, tiramisu, beer, collagen and American bullets (among others). All these were photographed in a book.

She's also explored lambs and wool, flax and string, plants and paper.

It's inspiring!

Two Mediums, One Story: Damien Hirst Does the Art World One Spot at a Time

Damien Hirst's International art world invasion continued on January 12th 2012 with 331 of his spot paintings on display-and-sell missions in every Gagosian gallery world-wide (that's 11 - three in New York, two in London, and one each in Paris, Geneva, Rome, Athens, Hong Kong, and Beverly Hills).

Two fantastic art critics similarly discuss this cruelly banal cultural phenomenon through two different mediums  - Peter Schjeldahl covered it in this week's New Yorker with his article Spot On and Hennesy Youngman propagated his thoughts via YouTube.

(Hennesy the younger art critic will be talking at Concordia U. in Montreal next week thursday 26th. for an event called What Does It Mean, And What Can You Do About It? )

Consumer Data?

Renouvellement Technologique

En début de semaine je suis allée au Apple Store pour mettre en place mon nouvellement acquis ipad. Entre technologie trop grosse pour être sortie banalement (tel le téléphone portable) et accessoire trop gadget pour me servir sérieusement (tel l'ordi), je reste perplexe à son utilité. L'Apple Store n'a pas était une expérience particulièrement déterminante sur le sujet non plus puisque, tel mon 'génie' me l'a démontré mon ipad n'est finalement qu'une extension secondaire de Violette (mon ordinateur), un statut et une fonction inférieurs qui ne l'empêche pas d'en devenir la cause du crash redouté - tel que l'apparition de l'icône des documents avec le terrifiant '?' sur mon écran au retour du Store me l'a montrée. 

À cela la difficulté de copier/coller/importer des images (pour documents ou pour des posts de blog), le besoin de manipulations innombrables et répétées pour coordonner les contacts gmail à outlook et la batterie qui se décharge à vitesse éclair, c'est frustrant. Et pourtant depuis la venue de cet écran-planche je m'en sert tout le temps. Google Maps à gogo, visionnement de films et de videos rapide et longue durée, échange d'email facile me font oublier la pollution en Chine causé par les milliards d'ipad produit presto pour répondre à un besoin non-existant et le fait que dans 6 mois un ipad plus indépendant et sans phobie d'images remplacera le mien. 

Finalement comme cette vidéo (trouvé sur uvmann) le montre, tels la disquette et le palm pilot, dans 10 mois l'ipad sera une frivolité symbolique de notre consommation de nouveautés renouvelables à l'infini mieux:

Noël, Noël

Porselli Ballerinas: Authentic, Timeless and Decay, How to Insure the Consumer Will Consume Again

These ballerinas are the result of a collaboration between Collection Privée and Porselli, the equivalent of Italy's France's Repetto. The Italians are a little late on the whole ballerina come-back collaboration thing - an on-going trend spearheaded by Repetto owner (and ex-Reebok VP) Jean-Marc Gaucher. Gaucher is smart and banked right into a now common branding strategy: he stressed Repetto's authenticity (we have been making dance shoes since the 1930s) and gave it edge with exclusive collaborations. In 1999, when Gaucher bought Repetto, the company was near bankruptcy but his séries limitées and exclusive deals with Comme des Garçons, Vanessa Beecroft, Colette, Opening Ceremony or Rodarte have led the company to record 27 million euros in profit in 2008. Not bad in a decade when the rest of the European industry survived by offshoring.

Needless to say not offshoring is in many ways a very good thing. I am also a victim of Gaucher's and Bardot's charm and believe ballerinas (and Mary Janes) to be the next best thing to come out of the 50s for women after de Beauvoir. But the reason for Repetto's survival is part of a current within contemporary consumption patterns that isn't as charming. 

Today's consumers reward products linked to notions of authenticity ("the piece has a history"), quality ("this is a lasting") and timelessness ("the is a classic piece") or at least products with the image of being such. Paradoxically however today's fashion makers find money and fashion buyers find meaning from trends that are as short-lived as possible. The shorter the better - apparently more trends means more sales and more outfits means more identity. While I'm suspect of such logic it's obvious that if Repetto stops producing new collaborations to increase sales and stay hip, the consumer will in all likelihood forget about the timeless qualities of the Repetto and rapidly adorn its feet with Porselli such as these:  a pair that is (illustration) totally banking on its 'timeless' credentials by literally accelerating the time process (aka decaying) the shoes.

Buying new decayed shoes means that if they haven't been replaced by another collaboration resulting in an other authentic timeless and quality pair, the consumer will have no other option but to replace the pair because of its uselessness (read - unwalkable). Brands are so scared (as if they should) that their marketing and trend producing devices wouldn't sellout their next season that they preemptively ruin their creations so that consumers to HAVE to buy new. And shoes aren't the only pieces affected by this trend - the torn tights, the ragged jeans, the bobby-pinned jackets, the see-thru cotton aged t-shirts, and the list goes on.

In present day fashion, time, its value and its look, seem to be a very convoluted dialectic - the look of decay is in because it rings authentic, although authenticity is only a manufactured concept originating in our present, and repairs might be the most timeless activity there is in costume yet it is overrated because our time is directed by an endless appetite for consumption from fear of our future's lack (of money, of identity). 

Time for a new model (and I'm not talking about ending anorexia)?
Brigitte Bardot, originally a dancer, allegedly asked Rose Repetto in 1956 to conceive shoes as light and comfortable as her chausson de dance but sexier. Rose added the heel and voilà the Cendrillon was born:

Could Gucci be Going Metaphysical? Attending a Gucci Marketing Brainstorming Session

I was reading October British Vogue (dedicated to stars, stardust, stardom, astrology and sparks it ironically took ten long pages to describe their cover girl Emma Watson as a laid-back easy-going not-bitchy celebrity normal 20 year old) last night when I discovered this.

This is the Gucci Cruise 2011 Ad Campaign.

As one can see there is a subtle Gucci self-reference: you are looking at a Gucci ad in which another Gucci ad is placed. Both ads have the same two models  (Raquel Zimmermann and Nikola Jovanovic), the same GUCCI white font, the same blue sky, the same weird stares and the (subjective  judgement) poorly acted out 'act as a model' stances.

So is Gucci being witty, critical, ironic? Clearly the slightly clunky Baudrillardian hyper-reality argument whereby reproductions of the real are more real than reality, is well illustrated here. However I'm pretty sure this overwhelmingness of tackiness in a frame was simply the result of big egos, lack of imagination and yet again a simple rehashing of old ideologies and aesthetics. Like the Althussar argument that the capitalist state apparatus ideology hails us into desiring things - the Gucci team must have figured that if they had two 'hailing apparatuses' they could double the chances of doubling their profits. And John Berger's insight that all these advertising images promote better ways of living suggests that the Gucci Cruise 2011 Brainstorming session went something like this:

- Nic: so guys what are we going to do this time? key words - empowerment,  urban vibe, ultraglamorous, military uniforms
- Jennifer: oh my God Raquel is still so empowered, urban and ultraglamorous, we totally need to use her again. But where?
(silent contemplation at Gucci's old ads archived under empowerment, urban vibe, ultraglamorous and military uniforms)
- Jasper: well like John Berger said advertising images create desire like real reality can't. Real reality can't compare to the ads we've been creating for Gucci in other words. So using our own amazing past work as backgrounds would actually be more efficient at convincing people to buy a Gucci bag than real reality...
- Alison: ... oh my god so let's use our own amazing billboards as backgrounds with Raquel so urban and so ultraglam in front!
- Nic: wow, that's totally genius. We're totally amazing guys.

PS note the use was the "Château Marmont" sign at the bottom right corner.

Ways of Seeing by John Berger (1972) - Authenticity, Images, Advertising, Reproductions and Happiness

I just discovered these 1972 television treasures by John Berger.

Till now I only knew of the end result - the wonderful book "Ways of Seeing." A semi-cult read in cultural/visual studies, in it he rethinks what seeing is - what advertising does, what art means, how reproductions affect the act of seeing and the way which visibility is a subjective process. The originality is that he does this by using images, reproductions and collages as much as words and text. Similarly in the televised version of "Ways of Seeing" he uses editing techniques (as if switching channels) and particular frames (filming the film crew filming him) as much as his voice-over to get his questions across.

Here is a wonderful articulation of the absurd adoration western culture has for authenticity:

In this particular extract Berger looks at (pun intended) ideas of hyperreality and consumption in the world of advertising. At times a little simplistic (forty years have gone giving the issue a bunch of new ways to think about it) but his questions are still just as relevant today as they were 40 years ago:

Post ArtFair Thoughts: The Difference between Priceless Art and the Commodification of Art into a Buyable Brand

Commodification 101: Haring Chocolat at Le Bon Marché

I was working at Toronto Art, an art fair, last week and was reminded - yet again - the uneasiness that emerges whenever art and monetary worth start mingling. As if the price of artistic objects was either intrinsically random or totally unable to capture its 'auratic' value.

But while the worth of art is an uneasy business for some art fair visitors, mass consumption culture has very good at making sure art's aura would be made (more) accessible and (very much) acceptably buyable.

In an article entitled "Consuming Caravaggio" (2006) Kent Drummond traces the migration of Caravaggio’s art from a small elite's secret to mass market knowledge. In order to develop how the public-at-large has come to know Caravaggio and experience the Caravaggio brand he divides the process into three ‘portals:’ the ‘appropriation’ of the artistic work by a limited group (like the Damien Hirst sale); the ‘commercialization’ of the oeuvre in which promotion and distribution activities broaden the scale of the audience and “lower its symbolic capital” (think the Basquiat movie or blockbuster MoMA exhibitions) and finally the ‘commodification’ portal which, with greater advertising, graphics and fashion engenders Jean Baudrillard’s notion of simulacra and idea that the 'image is all'.

Indeed in his book Simulations (1983) Baudrillard sums up the idea of commodification as “the creation and consumption of a system of objects by which the consumer can define him/herself at a profoundly superficial level. Here one doesn’t buy a t-shirt; one lives the lifestyle.” The process is the epiphany of “hyper-reality:” when ‘real’ identities are fully based on referents that have been totally dissolved in the mechanisms of capitalism.

Recently Montreal's Ogilvy's windows displayed Otto Dix reproductions with its fall mannequins. Slightly awkward this example of commodification is simultaneously an attempt to promote a slightly obscure artist's show in a museum that needs coolness and a fancy commercial department store trying to align its own products with those coined art. Dix's ideas are diluted, as his work is used for its aura - or lifestyle it is associated to (cultured wealthy bourgeois) - more than anything else. 

Commodification 102: Otto Dix is Fall Fashion at Montreal's Ogilvy's

I think the uneasiness of having an event dedicated to the pricing of art lies in that art supposedly implies the viewer/consumer questions the objects' value, aesthetic, discourse, aura, whereas brands and stores will never invite one to ask questions - either buy or don't, either own or don't, either identify or don't. With art there is a precarious midway: art invites to stand, look, wait, ponder, judge, attempt to understand.  And this flux state engendered by a supposedly priceless object (an art object) can only have a socially acceptable price tag when it has been transformed/commodified, or in Baudrillard's terms liquidated of meaning, when it takes the form of a chocolate box or background for mannequins wearing Fall's styles. 

Quotes: Smith, Terry. “Production.” Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff ed. Critical Terms for Art History, Second Edition. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2003. 376

Nike Air Max 90 Ad: An analysis of the Shoe Collector's Core Values

After "Write the Future," Wieden and Kennedy launched a new commercial for the Nike Air Max 90 shoe in the UK. Entitled "I am the Rules" this is a one minute film of clean, concise, energized and assured images. If the symmetrical geometry of each frame and beat-based music are powerful factors to this effect, the colours are just as important: the six colours of the exclusively designed for Footlocker shoe are used throughout the ad, with black, grey and white as base, and colza, red and violet as decorative highlights.

If at first the whole thing feels like a mish-mash of rule-breaking attitude, it's unsurprisingly filled with stereotypical ideas (that sell) about tradition, innovation and respect. How are these materialized?

During the first few seconds of the clip we are introduced to the very majestic notion of time and history - somewhat of sports, but also in general with the a shadow clocking away, the iconography of kingdoms lost and of traditions forgotten (aka the projection of the colosseum). Then, skipping through a few centuries, we are facing present-time sport brands' favorite athletes - the consuming shoe collector - commanding the video with his remote control. From then on things get a little crazy, when intercutting slow motion and rapid shots of various activities paralleled with statements about defying tradition (by dancing hip hop or being a girl boxer), expectations (screaming at microphones/media) and stereotypes (wear Nike instead of suits) are presented. The guys who created hip-hip might be 60 by now and blowing up in front of media not so revolutionary (or appreciated by brands like Nike see Tiger Woods or Les Bleus), but these ideas look great. The weirdest thing is when the ad turns to illustrating how to defy prejudice via Nike shoes. They come up with two Brian Jungenian masks, a DIY time machine from Japan with flags waving and lighting fire crackers over an athlete in front of the projection of the amphitheater. 

Really defying your idea of prejudice, right?

"I AM THE RULES"