WEEK 3 - Hussein Chalayan and Post-Modern Fashion

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 Afterwordsand Burka fashion, or are they art? What is the difference?

Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion? (Research some definitions  for these terms.)

For me personally, I believe that Hussein’s work closely resembles more in terms of the genre of post modern design. Similar to the arts previewed from the last blog, one of the artworks (called Burka-1996) shows this idea as it helps gives the viewer a shocking idea in terms of what we normally see, challenging the viewers ideas in the world’s popular perspective of its culture (for that being of Muslim tradition for woman, who would cover their entire body, particularly the face to avoid being seem from strangers) as well as the plural idea that came along with it, not truly making sense in a way and therefore mixing the contrast between the culture and its time difference as well as breaking from its original tradition to from this new hybrid form of high and low class. This is also seen in its other work, called the Afterwords, which also shows the idea of post modern based on texture and time, where the “metal skirt” gives a more ancient and traditional look in contrast to the rest of the contemporary modern look, creating a big contrast related to post modernism.

In terms of separating art from fashion, I found it quite difficult in some way of separating the two works, believing them both to be considered as art and fashion, as the fact that fashion is mostly considered being part of art. But in the end, I choose them to be more of art.  the difference that can be found in both the dictionaries as well as from my personal perspective, Art (being mainly focused in terms of visual arts that focus more on drawing, painting and sculpturing) is any class of subject and/or thing that focus mainly on the anesthetic features, and used to express either an emotion or ideas, while fashion, most commonly known for the style of any clothing worn is either a once conventional usage, or in the current status in society, is also related to a phase “the make or form of anything”. So this is why I consider them difficult to contrast.

I guess that for fashion to be fashion in terms of contemporary society, I believe that they are the ones that can obviously be worn, but worn in a way that is more in terms of style, where it is more related to its use, better than the look and idea behind it.  

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?

As explained in the first question, while art is mainly consider a visual representation, that are commonly associated with drawing, painting and sculpture, It is accurately if not quite recently considered ‘Anything’ that is used to express or convey a form of idea and/or emotional state. It is limitless and could be anything whether they are symbolic, ritual, behavior, and of the kinds of media they used such as music, poetry, etc. I believe that Chalayan’s work is still art. But how I believe these commercial businesses

 Impact on the nature of his work is how the audience now receives them to be. Due to his strong connection to the industry, instead of the companies using his work, Chalayan is instead using them to show his work. He uses the companies as a form of visual communication used to help gain a mass media attention to his work, making them famous and popular. Even though they would be more associated with the product then the artist, Chalayan would have still achieve his goal of showing his ideas to the world, as he once said during a interview “My work is about ideas. If I had to define my philosophy in just a few words, it would be about an exploration, a journey, and storytelling”. So therefore, it is why I believe they are still considered art.

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?

For the Film Absent Presence, the several different art movements which could have influences and inspired the movie by Chalayan, were the ideas of humanism, shown through the uses of processing the worn clothes by using DNA, as well as the story being based on “identity, geography, genetics, biology and anthropology” (“Hussein Chalayan,” 2011). But the main art movements which could have mainly influence the idea of the film were the Enlightenment, and the industrialization, both due  to the use of science and technology that make up the concept of the story, as well as how it could remind us of how our clothes were being made through the use of machine, as well as its concept that despite what me make would not last very long, we still leave a bit of ourselves in them (in this case, our DNA), which could have been how and why he as so inspired with this approach. 

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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) andBefore 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?

I don’t think that it is very important of whether or not the artist personally made the piece, although having them make it would both have them work being understood more by the artist and that it help audience to sometimes identify the work due to the approach in style, the most important thing I believe show be shown is the idea. Having someone physically design a particular or complete aspect of the work is like using a tool, you are using their ability or what they good at to create your idea so it is instantly their property and that is why they would get all or most of the credit. In fact, most of ideas uses other people to help make it into reality, rather they be thoughts who mass produces them or ones that design them personally as much as the artist. So even if someone makes most of the hard work without their ideas and their direction that shape the work to where it is, most works would have never existed.

http://art100.wikispaces.com/Hussein+Chalayan

http://arttattler.com/designhusseinchalayan.html

http://designmuseum.org/design/hussein-chalayan
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fashion?s=t
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/art

http://dilsahdesigndiary.blogspot.co.nz/2010/10/review-on-hussein-chalayan.html 

http://www.husseinchalayan.com/#/home/
http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/chalayan.html