194. “The I is hateful” & appropriating all the time
November 4th, 2009 § 6 Comments
Collage by Adolf Wölfli from here
Watercolor of an Aswang, a Filipino baby-snatcher who swoops into houses at night and drinks your baby’s blood with her entrails flap flap flapping behind her(!) Lynda Barry is always writing about Aswangs, so they must be the shit. This watercolor was painted by the astounding Hellen Jo, available for purchase here!
Claude Levi-Strauss passed away a few days ago, and in light of some of the things crisscrossing the blurry patterns of my days and weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about questions of primitivism and sophistication–the beyond messed-up ways those terms have been constructed and applied. I’ve been thinking about the different forms of rage and insanity (Artaud’s raging and his insanity, at best, amuses me, but when I was a union organizer +/when I was a homeless organizer in San Francisco, the rage I encountered always broke my heart (to the dismay of my friends who probably thought I was a complete downer),) the idea of outsider art and how it privileges the outsider individual and excludes more meaningful notions of outsider-ness. Reading amazing blogs like Mimi & Minh-ha’s Threadbared always awakens the part of me that wishes my undergraduate days didn’t nauseate me from pursuing further academic study (ps, hi my MFA program, you aren’t a place of academic study, and you’re located in a freezing place,) so that I could better articulate myself on things that matter to me. Reading about the passing of Claude Levi-Strauss, especially this thoughtful obituary and this not-so-good whatever obituary, makes me yearn a little bit for academic institutions, or maybe just the 1% of the people who make academic institutions inspiring.
It also reminds me that a good amount of my fashion inspiration comes through contact with other cultures, other art forms, other ideas and images that are not necessarily generated from the terrain of fashion. Hopefully my inspiration does not come in the form of icky appropriation–Madonna, DIE, Gwen Stefani, your awful bindi and actually using Japanese girls as props for you, please die at least a little?
I’ve been watching Cantonese opera at my school library and online. Will you just look at these costumes?
Screencaps from this youtube clip
My Chinese isn’t good enough to tell you the name of this opera, and I don’t understand a lick of what’s going on, but how chill are those ladies standing stiff as trees with the amazing yellow tassels and the blue silk floor-length robes? Look at the shape of those lines created by the yellow against the blue, the intricate embroidery, the amazing flags behind the main gal’s head. I’d really like to go around wearing trembling flags behind my head and also I’d love to own some dresses in that shade of blue. I’m really into the idea of wearing something as insanely frilly and extravagant as the gowns these three are wearing and also holding a sword upright against your shoulder. Maybe because it reminds me a little of Qiu Jin, the Chinese feminist and revolutionary:
Or maybe it reminds me of my grandparents’ wedding photo:
They got married I think somewhere up in Heilongjiang, the coldest province in China (how many layers of clothing do you think they are wearing in that photo?) My grandfather is dressed up in his soldier’s uniform here, and my grandmother is also wearing pretty standard garb for women. She was active in the national feminist movement, and I like to think of her wielding a DAGGER like Qiu Jin.
I somehow have it in my head that there was a collection by Dolce & Gabbana many years ago (maybe in the late 90′s) that was very similar to the costumes worn by Chinese opera singers. This brocade coat that Claire Danes is wearing here (with the impish Leo!) at the premiere of Romeo and Juliet might be from the collection I’m thinking of:
from Life.com
Can anyone ID this coat or have any idea what I’m talking about? Of course, there’s so much to explore when it comes to Western designers appropriating ideas from the rest of the world. It distresses me that Western designers can have as many influences as possible and still be original, but fashion from the rest of the world is always ‘borrowing’ or ‘imitating’ or ‘deeply influenced by’ or ‘learning from’ American and European fashion.
I’m way too clumsy to lay out my thoughts on that topic, but this blog post by Mimi is a super good treatment of the issue of ‘influence’ and ‘inspiration’ when it comes to fashion. I especially like this statement:
Whatever the “controversial” garment or pattern in question –harem pants, kimonos, Indonesian batik– it circulates throughout political, social and cultural discourses that precedes the designer, that the designer does not author and is not their point of origin.
That statement shares a beautiful cosmic kinship to Strauss and his proclamation: “The ‘I’ is hateful.”
Does anyone remember the Pocahontas Collection by Dior in 1998? I think it was generally poorly received and taunted. This collection makes me want to turn into a punch factory so that all of my working arms and limbs can lay down the smack. Galliano! What the rotten egg splat is wrong with you!
From www.thefashionspot.com, more here
On a more positive note, I’m loving maximalist tendencies and florals upon florals. Maybe I’m suffering from some sort of horror vacui…
Another drawing by Adolf Wölfli from here
I visited Istanbul two summers ago, and I was really struck by all of the florals and blue tile mosaics in many of historic buildings. I wish I had some good photos to show you, but all of my photos came out terrible as usual. Here are some from flickr:
Blue tile mosaic in the Topkapi Palace harem in Istanbul, Turkey from geo boy‘s flickr
More blue tiles from Chris Alsup‘s flickr
And I’ve been feeling inspired by violent, vengeful (aka awesome) female spirits like these ones from Hellen Jo’s Asian ghost watercolors series:
The Kwishin spirits who sit on your chest while you sleep and paralyze you when you wake!
The man-eating Kumiho inspired me to write a poem making fun of Western male mystics
The white robes of the Kwishin are very much in line with my desire to wear white all the time. And um, foxtails on naked female spirits feasting on the guts of a man? Pretty neat.
Love, Jenny
Jenny! You are so so so so awesome! Thanks for the eye/brain candy. I am drinking a Mtn. Dew and by the way, we still need to decide on a challenge.
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super cool!
thanks!
I think you’d be surprised at how little people think about things like this. Just another arena in which Western “geniuses” are applauded and congratulated for appropriating culture from less wealthy parts of the world. Breaks my heart.
Andrea: I know. It’s rampant, and it’s awful!