by Jerome du Bois
Recent postings, and the Portraits of Catherine, and the rabid reactions to both, prompt further musings. They may wander a little, but the points will be clear.
In a civilized world, clothes count. Even in a world at war --especially in this war, of individualism against collectivist Islamofascism-- we need to respect ourselves, to rise above ourselves, to refine ourselves, to distinguish ourselves from others.
Clothes --what you choose to drape your form with-- are psychological tells, semiotic codes defining degrees of agreement or divergence with a panoply of accepted looks, among many other things. (I once wore a religious habit, everywhere, for almost two years.) Clothes do make the public persona, and the pomo person of today has no discernible public style. It's a t-shirt herd, a khaki krowd of kitsch, a status-war babel of labels, dotted throughout the malls in a blendipeligo of blandness, indistinguishable from the mannequins, who seem to have more gravitas than those who behold them.
We don't look like that. We dress formally. You don't have to be rich to dress well --just smart. (Why pay retail?) It's a matter of choice. And when I posted a picture of Catherine in her newest beautiful dress, her own creation from the first stitch to the last, some local people couldn't let it go by. The envy got vicious. They began a peckin' party, a creep carnival, which just stopped last night, blog willing.
These people really are creeps, with their runny snuffling noses pressed up against the glass trying to come up with the most twisted, demeaning insult, their eyes like dirty fingers digging for details. Or barking at each other like hyenas about what happened to my finger, or what about the scar on my wrist?
All so very beside the point. Here's the lowdown, creeps: you can't handle our glamour. You have the style and lifestyle of naked mole rats, all looking like each other and feeding each other the same old manure. Every succeeding picture in my continuing series of Portraits of Catherine burns your eyes, as it should. No wonder some troll tried to twist the first one, and no surprise that it backfired on a lot of people.
Some of you can't handle the sight of such beauty, confidence, defiance, strength, mystery, glamour, and power --psychological power over every one of your weak wills-- not to mention such a masterly grasp of art and fashion history.
"Fashion and art are in love today," Catherine says. "In this series, we work at the crossroads where these two meet."
We're not the only ones: Yinka Shonibare, Isaac Julien, and Matthew Barney, for three quick examples, all pay close attention to the smallest details of fashion. McDermott and McGough take it about as far as you can, as living portable time machines. We don't go to such extremes --these bland days, we only appear eccentric --and besides, we're all about the future.
The digital net future. Which reminds me to remind viewers that we just point, focus, and click the camera; no jigging around, no Photoshopping, no special lights, no elaborate props. Why would we do that? You're looking at a blooming, ongoing life in natural light. (We are literally Outsider Artists.) We have better things to do than make some geek shutterbug more comfortable. We have lives to live, and we know the limitations of computer resolution. (And we've also seen what passes for so-called art photography --Nan Goldin, Wolfgang Tillmanns, Fischl & Weiss . . .) Plus, we're doing more, here --really using the medium.
Portraits of Catherine is an ongoing digital artwork, extended in space and time for an indefinite period, and includes the postings which collect and will collect around it. As far as we know, nobody else is doing this kind of thing. Except Catherine. Almost two years ago, for several months, she ran a blog called Tin Flame™ --dedicated to unreeling her first-person narratives of the ghostly and the uncanny; narratives featuring embedded photos, pop-ups, and slideshows as one went along. Almost nobody noticed. (Too busy with da comix, maybe.)
When we first conceived the idea of a set of photos of Catherine in her ensembles, we were just going to gang them up in a giant grid and call it Surviving With A Vengeance. Portraits of Catherine extends the idea into four dimensions instead of two; a distinct, and 21st Century, development. Future art now.
(It's easy to reconceive this piece itself, when it's done, back onto a two-dimensional surface, as a large, touch-activated screen, showing all the photos, glowing from behind, and buttons near the ones with narratives, which could be popped-up, read, and then collapsed again.)
We're nobody special. But not long after we met, we developed a reminder to each other:
We should be dead by now.
The lives we had behind us . . . especially Catherine.
There is a long, long list of local people --in Phoenix, in the Valley-- who have, in one way or another, and up until very recently, tried to destroy Catherine King. You know who you are. Look, you sonsofbitches, you bitchesofbitches: IT DIDN'T WORK! Catherine King, now stronger than ever, survives with a vengeance, and keeps growing and developing her body of work, her glamour, and her multiple talents. (At this moment she is hand-sewing "Glowing Embers," a very very long orange (which she dyed herself) silk chiffon scarf, covered on both sides with black lace, and long black fringe on both ends.)
One reason I champion her, and even post the vulnerable photographs, is because, as I have said before, her behavior is worth emulating. This woman is a survivor --but how many survivors land on their feet with a flourish and flute of champagne in their hand? As a human, as a woman, as an American, as an American woman --people in all those categories could learn a lot from the lifelong example of Catherine King, who is stand-up woman all the way. And people will learn if they keep up with the series. (The rest know where their familiar spider holes await.)
We should be dead by now.
But we overcame much. So now, as we live and breathe and work, we will do it all with deep style.
And we won't bend to bullying mediocrity. This thing about my stick in the Phoenix Art Museum was about social control and insurance lawyers. To hell with them both. Those cowboy artists should collaborate on a big bovine bronze longhorn called Cash Cow. Dedicated to Jim Ballinger.
When we went to the Brad Kahlhamer show at SMoCA, and Catherine tried to take a digital snapshot, one of the curlycords stepped in and said it was forbidden; against museum policy. Of course, it's absurd, and absurd to tick off the obvious reasons why. It's about channeling museum visitors into quiet docility --for insurance purposes. They're welcome to that chilly environment.
And by the way, aren't the SMoCA officials worried that Bruce Nauseating's sadistically repetitive Violent Incident might provoke a violent incident? I guess not. Richard Nilsen doesn't worry about it, either. Just step around the blood.
* * * * *
Back to fashion. Often when we go out in the world, complete strangers believe that it's socially permissible to ask us, "Why are you so dressed up? Where are you going? Where have you been?"
They don't reflect that we do not intrude on them with, "Why are you dressed for volleyball in a place of business?"
Or, "Why do you dress like Carrot Top's unstylish brother?"
Or, "I can see you know Dress Barn by heart."
Or, "Why does a grown man wear big baggy shorts?"
We don't ask. We don't have to ask, because we know that they want to hide in perpetual adolescence, among the crowd.
Not us grown-ups. We stand out from the crowd, and we're proud of it. We love to style. We've earned it. And that bugs the daylights out of the clones and drones.
Posted by Jerome at November 13, 2005 03:00 PM | TrackBack