Week 3- Hussein Chalayan and Post-Modern Fashion
Hussein Chalayan
Chalayan is an artist and designer, working in film, dress and installation art. Research Chalayan’s work, and then consider these questions in some thoughtful reflective writing.
1. Chalayan’s works in clothing, like Afterwords (2000) and Burka (1996) , are often challenging to both the viewer and the wearer. What are your personal responses to these works? Are Afterwords and Burka fashion, or are they art? What is the difference?
In my opinion, both "Afterwords" and "Burka" can be seen as an artistic design, and a design based for fashion purposes. Both are clearly wearable, but not to an extent where people would wear them out on a regular occasion. I think however that these two pieces are more so art, because they aren't made in a particular manner to be appropriate for daily use, they aren't very appealing in a fashion sense. I see these works more as art because Chalayan is taking one concept of design, and using it in a different way to create and reflect ideas from the work. Although fashion is considerably an Art, it has guidelines to stay in that catagory, once you use the concept of fashion to produce Art, I see it as more than fashion. There is more meaning behind it than a simple clothing outfit. The term fashion, is generally "for a popular style or practice, especially in clothing, footwear, accessories, makeup, or furniture" I guess the only thing that seperates Fashion & Art with these pieces, is the fact that with Fashion your creating something for a group of people purely because you want to design clothes, but with Art your taking that idea of clothing, and expanding the capabilities of your materials and ideas. But then again, Artists can really call art anything, why cant a Fashion Designer call anything Fashion?
Hussein Chalayan, Burka (1996) (99
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Hussein Chalayan, Afterwords, 2000
2. Chalayan has strong links to industry. Pieces like The Level Tunnel (2006) and Repose (2006) are made in collaboration with, and paid for by, commercial business; in these cases, a vodka company and a crystal manufacturer. How does this impact on the nature of Chalayan’s work? Does the meaning of art change when it is used to sell products? Is it still art?
Using Art to sell product's is done not only by Chalayan, but by many artist's all around the world. Sarah Findlay, for example, worked with Becks, a type of beer company, to produce artworks on the beer bottles, but still incorporated the Becks logo on the bottle. Using art as a way of attracting attention to products is a very good way of selling products, aswell as gain the status of the Artist. The actual meaning to the works will not change for the Artist, depending on why it was made in the first place. If the Artist planned on creating a piece, and then was confronted by a company asking for the artwork to help sell their products, the product would have to reflect on the Artwork for it to make sense to the Artist. But if an Artist is asked to create an Artwork, purely for a product sale, then the Artworks meaning is probably already in the product. So it really depends on the Artist in the end. Even if you can see that the meaning has been taken away, you would have to speak with the Artist to clarify whether it is there or not.
Using Art to sell product's is done not only by Chalayan, but by many artist's all around the world. Sarah Findlay, for example, worked with Becks, a type of beer company, to produce artworks on the beer bottles, but still incorporated the Becks logo on the bottle. Using art as a way of attracting attention to products is a very good way of selling products, aswell as gain the status of the Artist. The actual meaning to the works will not change for the Artist, depending on why it was made in the first place. If the Artist planned on creating a piece, and then was confronted by a company asking for the artwork to help sell their products, the product would have to reflect on the Artwork for it to make sense to the Artist. But if an Artist is asked to create an Artwork, purely for a product sale, then the Artworks meaning is probably already in the product. So it really depends on the Artist in the end. Even if you can see that the meaning has been taken away, you would have to speak with the Artist to clarify whether it is there or not.
3. Chalayan’s film Absent Presence screened at the 2005 Venice Biennale. It features the process of caring for worn clothes, and retrieving and analysing the traces of the wearer, in the form of DNA. This work has been influenced by many different art movements; can you think of some, and in what ways they might have inspired Chalayan’s approach?
It's quite hard to distinguish some art movements in this piece "Absent Presence" but one movement that is clear and easy to see is Post Modernism. The reason for me thinking this, is because Chalayan's film show's a Biologist helping to examine the DNA, which shows an interest in modern technology, post modern ideas in social change can be also seen in this work.
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Hussein Chalayan, still from Absent Presence, 2005 (motion picture)
4. Many of Chalayan’s pieces are physically designed and constructed by someone else; for example, sculptor Lone Sigurdsson made some works from Chalayan’s Echoform (1999) and Before Minus Now(2000) fashion ranges. In fashion design this is standard practice, but in art it remains unexpected. Work by artists such as Jackson Pollock hold their value in the fact that he personally made the painting. Contrastingly, Andy Warhol’s pop art was largely produced in a New York collective called The Factory, and many of his silk-screened works were produced by assistants. Contemporarily, Damien Hirst doesn’t personally build his vitrines or preserve the sharks himself. So when and why is it important that the artist personally made the piece?
In my opinion i think that an Artwork holds alot more value when it is done only by the Artist him/herself, rather than having a group of workers helping to produce it. I feel this way because when your creating a piece of art, you have a vivid image in your head that you can only portait as an exact idea. So when you go to tell others to make this image in your head, they will have different interpretations of it, as well as different skill levels. Personally i would never have others helping me make my Art, but I think that if it were to be important to have people help yo at any time, it would be at a time where you are making a mass-production of the same work, for instance a t-shirt print.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fashion
http://definefashion.tumblr.com/
http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/hussein-chalayan-beyond-limitations
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0768786/
http://www.galerist.com.tr/artist/huseyin-caglayan/biography/
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