To what effect artists use clothing in their works?
Paula Rego
Dame Maria Paula Figueiroa Rego (born 26 January 1935) is a Portuguese-born visual artist who is particularly known for her paintings and prints based on storybooks. Rego’s style has evolved from abstract towards representational, and she has favoured pastels over oils for much of her career. Her work often reflects feminism, coloured by folk-themes from her native Portugal. (TATE, online At: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/paula-rego-1823 (Accessed 01.05.2021)
Artist creates the reality, and then transform it into a 2D surface. Paula Rego uses ready clothes, masks, mannequins and other materials, I think, to get inspiration and as drafts or sketches for her paintings. Through the physical objects, the artist can feel the shape and quality of materials. This will allow her to represent it better on a flat surface.
Pawel Althamer
Pawel Althamer, Self-Portrait as a Businessman, 2002, with additions 2004 At https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/althamer-self-portrait-as-a-businessman-t11913 (Accessed 23.03.2021)
The artist considers the pile of clothing and objects to be a sculpture that represents an aspect of himself. As his body is entirely absent, the corporate persona of Pawel Althamer may be read as being a costume which he assumes, or a role that he plays, and from which he may also dissociate himself. (TATE, online At: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/althamer-self-portrait-as-a-businessman-t11913 (Accessed 01.05.2021)
This work is a direct and bold representation of garments which suppose to be on a man. Calling it a self-portrait and at the same time being absent creates additional connotations of artist’s attitude on being an artist, businessmen, performer and so on. Clothing refers to a particular style, place of work and represent the act of leaving these things behind.
Lisa Milroy
Lisa Milroy, Recent Shoes, 2014 oil on canvas, 163 x 200 cm. At: http://www.lisamilroy.net/c/1000003/clothing-and-shoes (Accessed 01.05.2021)
The artist paints shoes just like an addiction, in my opinion. So, in her own words, “She doesn’t know, why she painted shoes on her first works”. Artist keeps repeating it as a pure “pleasure” of oil painting. When we talk about the viewer then he can find as many interpretations, as he can. If you like it or not it is a personal question. For instance, I like something completely different, and style of shoes, colour and the way how it is depicted is not vivid for me. It is boring for me but impressive how someone can have so much passion to repeat the same, and the same. I could not do this. And will never do something like this, but someone should.
Christian Boltanski
Christian Boltanski had an exhibition in Völklinger Hütte in Germany, a UNESCO Heritage steel factory in which, during the industrialisation time died a lot of people. He created an installation with dresses of people and sound. It was magnificent and breathe taking. He used old, dark jackets of people as a stack, and he positioned it in one of the changing rooms. It worked also due to the place. The whole atmosphere was scary and sad. But it worked.
Jannis Kounellis
“A visual corridor with fourteen huge easel-shaped structures support metal hooks from which hang heavy, dark overcoats joined together with rough stitching. They advance in a silent, sober procession and, like wisps carried by the wind, they rise and carry upwards these uninhabited figures, pitiless beings of an unfolding drama.” (artmap At: https://artmap.com/giorgiopersano/exhibition/jannis-kounellis-2012?print=do (Accessed 03.05.2021)
Jannis Kounellis, Untitled, 2012., artmap.com, Giorgio Persano At: https://artmap.com/giorgiopersano/exhibition/jannis-kounellis-2012?print=do (Accessed 03.05.2021)
For an artist, objects are just materials. He uses them for his own purposes, to form an image of feeling.
Jannis Kounellis rethinks the status of the finished item. What happens to an object removed from reality, for Marcel Duchamp, for example, is the discovery of new meanings in art. Warhol, for example, replaces the real Brillo's box with its copy, because the object belonging to art does not belong to reality. And for Kounellis, these objects of everyday life become an addition to reality, not to art. It's a matter of ethics.
Joseph Beuys
“Beuys commonly wore clothing made from felt throughout his career and in an interview conducted in the year that this work was made he stated that it was ‘tailored after my own suit’ (Beuys in Schnellman and Klüsser 1980, unpaginated). … Nonetheless, in producing this work that could serve as a functional object, Beuys may have been questioning the traditional separation between fine art and domestic items. … he hoped that viewers might ‘realize that everyone is an artist, because, many people will ask themselves: “Why don’t I make something like that, something similar.” The sentence “Everybody is an artist” simply means to point out that the human being is a creative being, that he is a creator,…” (TATE At: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/beuys-felt-suit-t07441 (Accessed 03.05.2021)
Joseph Beuys, Felt Suit, 1970, TATE At: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/beuys-felt-suit-t07441 (Accessed 03.05.2021)
Overall, I like Beuys' way of saying things. His bold approach to breaking down the boundaries of "normal". Now, living in Germany, it seems to me in general that Beuys taught German artists (unfortunately not everyone, in their essence they are very enslaved people) to think outside the box and question things.
In general, the felt will be associated with the Beuys' personal (not clear if true) story of the artist's service in the German troops and the crash of his plane in Crimea. The artist said that he was rescued by local people and rubbed with fat and wrapped in felt to warm the frozen body of the future artist.
Therefore, the choice of material here is most likely personal, and the industrial production of a copy of a suit is a conceptual idea aimed at attracting attention.
Doris Salcedo
All of the artist's work is mourning for the incessant warriors in her native country of Colombia. The objects used in Doris Salcedo's artwork are real garment or personal belongings of people affected by terror.
These shoes are what remains of dead women brutally mutilated and raped in Colombia. Under the thin skin, as if a haze of memory, are the remains of human life.
Doris Salcedo, Atrabiliarios, 1993, Atrabilious, 1993. Object, 9 x 54 x 53 cm At https://www.macba.cat/en/art-artists/artists/salcedo-doris/atrabiliarios-1 (Accessed 03.05.2021)
If we continue this sheet with my work ... and what does it show? There is no personal tragedy, no global solution to the problem, it’s just beautiful loveliness, the joy of attractiveness. Maybe it's such a mixture of primitivism, pop culture and kitsch? But for this role, the shoes do not hold out with their vulgarity. Papiermaché can represent something temporary. So to say something that only pretends to be, but never will.
Bibliography and references
1. Lecture by Irina Kulik "Yannis Kounellis - Doris Salcedo", 2018, GARAGE Museum Moscow, At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpkVz94KZ1U&ab_channel=GARAGEMCA (Accessed 03.05.2021)
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