The energy is infectious in a small classroom of the Sharp Building on a Thursday morning as students bounce about ideas for an upcoming exhibition entitled White Haute. The class is “Defining 20th Century Dress,” an art history course team-taught by Gillion Skellenger Carrara, director of the school’s Fashion Resource Center, and art dealer Monique Meloche of Chicago’s moniquemeloche gallery.
Today particularly buzzes, Carrara mentions, as the time has come for the students to jury the submissions for the show. To my right, the wall is adorned with an array of drawings, photographs, text, and sculptures. A cluster of dress forms perch nearby, displaying garments crafted by the students. The topic at hand is hype. The object chosen to embody said concept is the white tank top. According to the exhibition press release, “Culling the classic A-shirt — that white ribbed men’s undershirt more commonly known as the ‘wife-beater’ — as its thematic source, White Haute entices patrons to buy into the hype of a universally recognized symbolic garment while critically reexamining that hype through an exhibition of work exploring this garment in unconventional ways.”
Even though it’s only in its third semester, the course has generated its own hype as evidenced by its large size and diverse range of graduate and undergraduate student backgrounds. Departmental backgrounds of enrolled students include fashion, art history, visual and critical studies, sculpture, performance, and sound (to name a few). This creates a dynamic balance of strategies and resources on all ends of the curatorial spectrum. I must admit, having participated in the mayhem that is curatorial teamwork myself, when I heard about the sheer size of the class — 30 students in all; the image I conjured was not pretty. Visions of flying dress forms and wife-beaters stained by student blood and tears immediately came to mind. I am pleased to report that I uncovered nothing of the sort. Instead, I found a thoughtful and dynamic group generating a strong dialogue around the issues of art, fashion, and commerce in contemporary culture.
Today’s class begins with a lecture by Meloche on the much-debated topic of fashion, art, and the publication. Issues discussed by the class included the increased blurring of fashion and art as represented by the advertisements and images in publications such as ArtForum and Frieze. Various issues of ArtForum float around the room. Takashi Murakami’s name is uttered disdainfully in response to the September cover featuring one of Venice’s many purse vendors.
I
overhear two students attempting to discern who benefits more:
Louis Vuitton, Murakami, or Fred Wilson.
As the discourse continues, a particularly heated discussion arises in response to Stephen Meisel’s sold-out Versace images at London’s White Cube Gallery (2001) as well as Steven Klein’s images of Madonna featured simultaneously in W magazine and Deitch Projects (2003). Questions generated include: Does this qualify as high art? If so, what does this say about contemporary culture? What distinguishes it as fashion photography? Does the obvious link to commerce and sales prevent the images from becoming high art? Why do they sell out? Who do they sell to? What, if any, institutions are buying these images? How does this benefit/damage the contemporary art scene? Is the art scene about seeing or being seen?
Classes like this one continue to keep in motion a necessary dialogue that hopefully will aid in dispelling the myth that fashion is exclusive from art in exhibition form. Their exhibition concerns more than slick advertisements or the latest trends. It distinguishes itself by tackling some of the difficult issues of looking, social status, celebrity, and hype that influences all sectors of the contemporary art scene. The image of the white tank fits right into the discussion as a piece of hyped-up clothing pervasive at all class levels. Even celebrities like Madonna and Homer Simpson, to the everyday busboy at your neighborhood diner wear the “beater.” Chanel makes them and Calvin Klein made them famous on Kate Moss. And, of course, the original Hanes white tank isn’t so bad at highlighting those chiseled biceps or last night’s beer stains.
“The students this year have really challenged themselves and the notion of what an exhibit exploring art and fashion can be,” says Meloche. In the past two “Defining 20th Century Dress” exhibitions, curatorial concepts formed around the selection of garments created by SAIC’s upper level fashion students. This fall’s class distinguished itself by abandoning that methodology completely and instead focusing on the concept of hype as embodied by a single object — the “beater.” The tainted words “theme show” continue to weigh a bit heavily upon the class as they hope to steer clear of such curatorial clichés. They still have a couple of weeks to tackle this one, though. I feel pretty confident they’ll generate their own hype.
The class will present the exhibition White Haute from December 12-13, 2003, at Schopf Gallery on Lake located at 942 W. Lake Street, Chicago. The opening reception on December 12 from 5-9 pm will feature music by John Simmons, a.k.a. DJ John BreakItDown. Gallery hours are 11 am - 5 pm, Saturday. Admission is free. The exhibit is supported by SAIC’s Department of Fashion, the Department of Modern Art History, Theory and Criticism, and Exhibition Studies. For more information, please call 312.899.1215 or contact Nancy Hu at nhu@artic.edu. Information about Schopf Gallery on Lake is available online at schopfgalleryonlake.com.
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