Trigger Warning:
The recent suicide of famed fashion designer Alexander McQueen has spurred plenty of speculation about the artist's intent in his most controversial works, which included depictions of raped and murdered models. Were these images the designs of a maladjusted misogynist? Or were they a critique of violence against women?
Liz Jones of the Daily Mail provides a great round-up of McQueen's most bizarre fashion shows, which include one in which models were trapped in a giant jar of moths, another in which models were spray-painted by robots, a third in which a disabled model walked on intricate wood prosthetics, and a fourth called "Highland Rape" in which models walked with their nipples exposed and their faces covered. Jones concedes that McQueen was not the "most woman-friendly designer we have ever produced," even as she lauds the designer who had the potential to "change the way we see women, beauty, disability, age."
Joan Smith at The Independent is less sympathetic, writing that "McQueen was a showman and fashion editors emerged from his collections stunned by the extravaganza; when you're basically there to write about clothes, what are you to make of models tottering along the catwalk in ripped dresses, looking like blood-stained rape victims? It's not cool to break ranks and ask what's behind such supposedly 'ludic' misogyny. Even when commentators talked last week about McQueen's fascination with death, religion and violence, they did it in a disturbing way, as though such themes were simply expressions of his theatricality."
Jezebel comes to McQueen's defense, saying that "McQueen's shows were unusually hard to parse, for fashion. They were intended to make people uncomfortable, and to raise questions that are ordinarily far beyond fashion's remit: about our machine-age codependency...our obsession with plastic surgery (models with grotesque red oversized lips), our disposable celebrity culture (models with trash can lid hats walking around a pile of refuse)."
So what do you think? At The Lady Finger, we've critiqued images of weapons in fashion, commenting on the normalization of violence through couture. But we've also propped up fashion as separate than society, a medium that deserves the same reverence as high art. Should McQueen be considered a brave provocateur, someone who shined a mirror on society's most disturbing ills? Or was he another purveyor of violent images, using battered and bloodied female bodies to shock? -TLF
4 comments:
It seems he was both... at the same time at times. I personally do not think he did it as an insult to women, sometimes I think he may have been commenting on women... he was certainly selling to them as well. When do the consumers become responsible for their own purchase?
He was an artist, and that is a for sure thing. Alexander Mc Queen's work was never sex for sex's sake (or it was, but only for the sake of pointing out that it was sex for sex's sake).
He always had a message and was exploring with his works. He also was a very devoted and ambitious tailor and designer. You can look at it any way you want, but the man always showed his clothing (art) in his shows or in his advertising, yep,with pictures of models in clothes... clothes that he created. They were clothed...... See More
I would challenge one to look at the highland rape collection and see what he was trying to say.... Next flip thru a Vouge magazine and see what they are saying.
Sex, Class, Consumerism? Fashion magazines comment on society more than I care to think about.
I have seen photo shoots in magazines where you can not even see the clothes... where people are crawling on top of each other in shadows and the clothing is just in a pile on the floor. I recall one particular photo of a woman who appeared to be masturbating under a $10,000 silk dress. (I don't care how sexy you feel, take it off first... thats a 10,000 dress!). Often magazines just take nudes of celebritys and splash their image all over the place. So... advertising or fashion? Fantasy? Its so open, so many people get involved in the process. I for one am amazed (and happy) that Alexander McQueen was able to share his visions with us so clearly!
Trish.
Although it’s tempting after an artist dies to conjecture about the intentions behind his work (it’s easier now than it was when he was alive, since he can’t defend himself), I think it’s more constructive and more interesting to discuss plausible interpretations of the work itself and its impact on the community. Some of the articles I’ve read recently about McQueen’s death seem to imply that we should mourn him less because he was supposedly a misogynist, as evidenced by one interpretation of some of his runway shows. I find this disrespectful and ignorant-- given the fact that his work is obviously open to multiple interpretations, and given the lack (as far as I can tell) of any blatantly misogynist statements on his part, I think we should steer clear of making assumptions about his beliefs that may be untrue and damaging to his legacy.
So what about the work? Much of it is disturbing, certainly, but this is true of much great art that seeks to comment on society. McQueen’s designs, and especially his runway shows, were indeed great art. I think this is a crucial difference between his runway shows and other instances in fashion in which violence and women’s bodies come together. In a recent post, I criticized a flirty Betsey Johnson dress with handguns printed on it. The reason I have more of a problem with the dress than with McQueen’s runway shows has to do with the lack of thought I think the dress provokes in a typical person. While Johnson’s dress normalizes violence by contributing to the everyday acceptability of violent imagery (a reasonable person, upon seeing it, would be more likely to think “Cute dress.” or “Cute girl.” rather than “Huh. Handguns on a dress? What does that mean?”), I think McQueen’s work, with its high-shock-value, actually provokes thought about violence against women and the society that allows so much of it. I have a hard time believing that the people walking away from his one of his shows are so superficial and simple-minded that they can only appreciate its aesthetic value.
Context is important, however. The people attending one of his shows, or bothering to read about it afterwards on the internet, are intentionally consuming the spectacle and have a context in which to interpret it. I would contrast, for example, those repeated photo shoots on America’s Next Top Model in which they pose the models as corpses (the link doesn’t show the pictures, but links to them if you’re interested. Highly disturbing and triggering.). Similarly, if the photographs of male models in t-shirts that depict women bound and gagged (Sara’s post here) were on a wall at a gallery, they would have a completely different impact than if you saw a guy walking down the street wearing one.
I am always inclined to be very forgiving of artists. For some of the reasons that Adrienne articulates, I think it's unfair to presume that one's art is an extension of oneself, or that even an easily interpreted "message" offers an indication of the artist's world view, if only for the simple reason that opinions are complex, multi-layered, and changeable.
Adrienne, you make an important point about context. The shows in which these clothes were worn were performances with a definite theatricality. But one of the complicating things about fashion is that it clothing is also a practical necessity. Perhaps what differentiates McQueen's work from the Australian t-shirts or the gun printed dress is not a clear line between usefulness and artfulness, but performance. I struggle, though, with the argument that McQueen's audiences would have been savvy enough to contextualize his work, but the person on the street is not. My inclination is to assume that we can all, to some degree, filter the cultural artifacts surrounding us all the time, even if fashion is one of those fuzzy in-between realms.
Sara, I hope I didn't come across as saying that the people who attended McQueen's shows are more capable of interpreting fashion than a random person on the street. I was responding to some of the posts I've seen since his death that imply that everyone in the fashion industry is vapid and incapable of serious thought.
While I agree with you that we can all "filter the cultural artifacts surrounding us all the time" (I like your phrasing), I know that I usually need to be prompted to do so. If something is presented as "art," I know that there might be a deeper meaning or multiple interpretations, so I search for them. I will take more time considering an image or an artifact in a museum, a gallery, on a mural, or on the t-shirt of a trusted friend. But since so much imagery is meaningless (I would argue), or just meant to attract attention, I don't walk around interpreting all of it.
I can think of countless examples of being put off by a person because of a tattoo, or a t-shirt, or a button, that in my mind is misogynist or heterosexist or racist, and several examples where the person has had a chance to explain that that's not what they "meant" by it. And my response is always, "Well, unless everyone knows you well enough to know that you're commenting on misogyny and not being misogynist, you're going to keep getting negative responses."
I think your point about functionality (or lack thereof) of fashion supports the claim that McQueen's shows were meant to be consumed as spectacle or as art and not as clothing. So many people say, "But no one would actually wear that!" (Lady Gaga aside?) and I think yes, exactly. The designs I've seen by McQueen that people (Michelle Obama, for one) do actually wear are a whole different thing.
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