July 14, 2005
Introducing the House of Not for Sale: THREE FLAGS
Photograph by Catherine King. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce in any form.
by Catherine King
Dedicated to Jasper Johns
Once upon a time, long ago --it was the summer of 2001-- I got this hefty Alexander McQueen T-shirt. It weighs about two pounds and was Made In Italy of 62% polyester, 33% rayon and 5% elastic.
The back of the T-shirt is richly embroidered with platinum thread. In the style of a sports team jersey it has two varsity zeros at the small of the back. Centered above the zeros is a symmetrically-mirrored vertical crescent motif with one white-gold star embraced between the moons and a three-starred arc below them.
Radiating from the center star, above this celestial display, the capital letters: MQUEEN, (with a little c in the middle of the Q).
The garment is impressive and classic, even if the quintessential American icon --the T-shirt-- is interpreted by a Brit. We were all living together in a relatively peaceful, tolerant, multi-culti world then, in the summer of 2001. Americans back then just tried to spread their culture and ways all over the globe, as we all knew, because that was what all the misunderstood nonAmericans kept whining, and they must be right. We probably were pushy and maybe Europeans actually made better quality designer T-shirts than Americans. Anyway, I was pissed off because I had just learned that the U.S. Army was buying its black berets from China and "Made In America" didn't mean much to me anymore (little foot stamp).
The world has groaned, grown and lurched forward since then, but also proudly and bravely marched into the face of Evil. And I have learned a lot about the world situation, and a little bit about Haute Couture.
Alexander McQueen's T-shirt was lacking, in spite of his standing as a world-class couturier. He put everything on the back and left the front open and vulnerable. The back was gorgeous, to be sure, but the front was nothing more than a clinging expanse of tight white blankness. When I wore this uber-classy garment I just felt like the front of my torso was nothing more than an approximately 14 1/2"" x 9 1/2" trapezoidal screen for projection.
So this valuable designer garment was a fashion problem for me. I self-consciously wore it a few times during our last, blindly unconscious Summer of Love. June, July, August of 2001. . .
I woke up way too early on Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001. Like I always do. First thing, I turned on the news, like I always do. Watching the international news gives me a feeling of being connected and aware. I try to step back and take a look at the big global picture, which I have been surveying for many years, ever since I did news graphics in the 70's.
After all this time, I really have a tangible sense of the groaning and lurching impetus of our world. . .
I'd already watched an hour or so of the usual trivia that morning when broadcasts were interrupted with the news of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. I saw the second plane hit the second tower live time. And all multi-culti moral relativity came crashing down to Ground Zero as next I saw in a blinding flash that America is truly the greatest nation in the history of the planet and the only hyper-power because so many smart and brave Americans have earned US that status.
Some readers who witnessed the 9/11 Islamist terrorist attacks as they happened will also remember the sudden, sickening realization when the second plane hit that this was no accident but the first attack of an orchestrated, but undeclared war. It had been the most stunningly beautiful blue morning and we had believed we were all living together in a relatively peaceful, tolerant, multi-culti world! What was the true reality, could we regain our balance, and where were these events leading?
I hurried to wake up Jerome and we, like you, began a new kind of life in an unforseen and unprecedented era.
It was 9/11, but inside of me it was also Friday, November 22, 1963 and I was in the eighth grade. . .
We kids had already been practicing our duck-and-covers under our school desks for years. We had all seen our share of terrifying newsreels about the Halocaust, concentration camps, frozen German soldiers, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the vaporization of Bikini Island and atomic tests in Nevada. Speaking for myself, I was prepared to shift into catstrophe mode at any moment.
The world changed forever early on that Friday morning, but not quite so early as it did on Tuesday, September the 11th, 2000 and one. We had been in our homeroom class for a while when the Art teacher came in to make the grave announcement that President Kennedy was already dead.
What was there to do? It was too late, the bullets couldn't be unshot. Who was the enemy? We didn't know, but I for one feared that the Russians would instantly spring to take advantage of our instability (I thought) and that the United States of America would become part of the United Soviet Socialists Republic by the time I went to sleep that night! I was so worried that I was going to be made a reluctant Russian by bedtime.
I was terrified alright, but kept it to myself and was relieved enough when my friend decided not to cancel her big dance party that night. The cloak of darkness actually made things feel better, because there we were, under the twinkling Paradise Valley sky, in the good old U.S.A., dancing to the classic rock and roll from that Fall. I felt I could relax somewhat because clearly there was going to be continuity in Life and Our Nation. Still, I couldn't help noticing how heavily our parent chaperones were drinking on the night of Friday, November 22, 1963.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Jerome and I sat in front of the TV for hours, as you did, witnessing and trying to wrap our minds around all the horror wrought by the Islamist devils, of whom we had been blissfully unaware just the night before. After a long time, I felt I needed to be doing something with my hands to help me bear my anguish.
Then, in the midst of all that horror --a beautiful sight, one of my favorite images of all time. And I saw it happen live time, too, and now it's captured for eternity and posterity. When the American mensches lowered that giant flag in front of the Pentagon. Remember how it looked when it unfurled? I can't remember ever before seeing a giant flag lowered vertically. It was so dramatic as the great weight of that roll of cloth fell down and open at the same time.
The gesture was both comforting and defiant. "If I sewed an American flag right now, it would help a lot," I felt, "and I know right where to put it." I ducked away from the TV for a few moments to grab my sewing basket and the Alexander McQueen T-shirt.
It was important for me to make the flag out of what was on hand. That was the American Way. Also, this was no time to be running out to Joanne's or S.A.S. Rummaging through my scraps and notions, I found everything I needed-- crimson and indigo satin shadow-striped ribbon, lustrous pearlized white embroidery floss (Made In America) and even white fabric paint for the stars.
As I sat beside Jerome, listening, watching, crying, cutting, and pinning, I tried to set the world in order again with every stitch. But the accumulation of all my intent amounted to nothing before the determined violence of the Islamist terrorist devils. The bullets could not be unshot. The planes could not be unflown.
I let my flag become a target. To comfort myself I paradoxically put a big bull's eye on my chest. I was giving the Islamist terrorist devils the old Robert Irwin one-two. (See coda.) My flag was tattered and looking worse for the wear on purpose. Defiantly-- (my eighth grade Home Economics teacher must be rolling in her grave) I left the knots on the outside of the fabric. The rich satin ribbon and pearly thread looked noble no matter how rustic their scars and traces.
I measured and appliqued the crimson stripes and indigo blue canton. I resisted the urge to embroider fifty tiny stars out of fine gauge thread-- that would be nuts. Instead I economically decided to custom-cut a five inch stencil with six miniature pentagrams and then repeatedly stamp it in seven horizontal rows.
The first incarnation of my American flag T-shirt was realized. But it was not really satisfactory. In spite of its uniqueness, my T-shirt looked cliched. It was clearly handmade and one of a kind, but something was still lacking.
Nationally and collectively, we struggled to get past That Day. A lot of f*cked up Americans got so bored with it, so ready to move on. Jerome and I vowed that we never would forget. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.
And so after a while I got the idea of pearls. Pearls to accent the lustrous Made In America thread. Pearls on the front of the T-shirt to put a hard shell layer between me and world when I wore it. Pearls of protection built up of layers of refusal. So I sewed 163 pearl beads spaced out along the broad white stripes of my flag. (Besides, the pearls remind me of the orbs of the ghosts of American spirits).
Still, somehow it was lacking. One day, after a couple of years into the War Against Islam, I suddenly saw it --Three Flags-- one was not enough. And so I sewed a flag in back of my flag and another flag behind it. Telescoping out into the world like the old Robert Irwin one-two. Yes, that was what I wanted to say: "F*ck You" to anyone who would be offended by my flag.
Emotionally my T-shirt was finally there, but aesthetically, not quite. As I surveyed the front of my T-shirt with satisfaction, I could see that one more detail was required --the John Hancocks, sampler-like, embroidered along the bottom. And so I began with Johns 1958 at the lower right, and finished with my own signature, lower-left, KING 2005.
And so with THREE FLAGS I present to you The House of Not For Sale, featuring Outsider Haute Couture by Catherine King. My fashion design is not for sale and neither is my fashion art photography. But the writing and the images are yours for free.
Coming next from The House of Not For Sale: In the Beginning there Was Lots of Lace.
[Update 11/28/05: Here's Catherine wearing the shirt.]
CODA:
My favorite Robert Irwin story, on pp. 94+95 of Lawrence Weschler's book Seeing Is Forgetting The Name Of The Thing One Sees, is about ignorant arrogance:
. . . Irwin drifted into an anecdote about a confrontation that occurred the night the Museum of Modern Art’s 1965 touring exhibition, ‘The Responsive Eye,’ opened at the Pasadena Art Museum. (His dots were included in an appendage to the show, flanking a group of Reinhardts.)
“It was a big show, so before the opening there was a fancy dinner in celebration, and all the big patrons were there, and they invited some of the artists. People were just put at tables -- you know how they do it: mix groups -- and I was at this table with several Pasadena types, including this lady who had just given the museum a million dollars. The dinner was very, you know . . . you get six strangers sitting at a table, so it’s one of those stilted situations. Plus there’s a terrific imbalance in terms of what people are doing there.
“But anyway, at the museum, later that evening, this lady all of a sudden just came up to me and told me, literally told me that I was not to do this kind of art anymore, that I was no longer to perform in this way. I mean, for some reason she got the idea that she could tell me that: she just insisted the whole thing was absolutely un-Christian, anti-American, whatever. And what struck me the funniest was how she told me that I was not to do this any longer. I was to cease and desist: that was it.
“Well, in the direct confrontation, I didn’t react at first. I just sort of listened to her and thought, ‘How weird.’ Eventually I turned around and started to walk away. When I got halfway across the room, this big crowded room, she started shouting, ‘Don’t you walk away from me like that!’
“So I spun around and yelled, ‘Fuck you, lady!’”
Bob was now laughing heartily, savoring the memory, the middle finger on his extended left hand upthrust in sweet recapitulation.
“And then I got really mad, and I shouted, ‘Fuck you, you dumb son of a bitch!’”
More laughter, the middle fingers of both hands proferred defiantly.
“And she just fainted.” Calming down. “They literally had to carry her out of the place.”
Ah, the Robert Irwin Double Salute. It always warms the cockles of my heart.
Posted by Jerome at July 14, 2005 03:30 PM | TrackBack