MONTAGE BLOG

Disney is selling an Unknown Pleasures-inspired t-shirt. Taken from Joy Division’s iconic 1979 album cover, the image has been altered to form the shape of another icon, Mickey Mouse. Whilst those at Pitchfork.com seem to be shocked by Disney’s re-appropriation of the graphic, a little research shows that the British graphic designer Peter Saville, who is accredited with the design of the Unknown Pleasures cover, in fact took the image from an edition of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy. Joy Division’s hardcore fans will know that the image presents a series successive pulses from the first pulsar discovered, PSR B1919+21. The inside of the album cover, a strange photograph of a hand reaching for a door handle, was also taken from elsewhere - a well-known shot by American photographer Ralph Gibson (although Saville was unaware of this at the time of designing the album. The image had been passed on to him by the band’s drummer, Stephen Morris.) So it seems that the issue of re-appropriation which first originated in the cover’s genesis, continues through to today with Disney and Mickey Mouse. How very postmodern, no? 

I’ve heard a great deal through the grapevine about the V&A’s forthcoming Hollywood Costume exhibition, thanks to my various sources over the past twelve months. In October 2012, after five lengthy years of research and planning, the museum will open an exhibition which concentrates exclusively on costume design in the realm of the silver screen.  According to Jess Cartner Morley in yesterday’s Guardian, the V&A “anticipates that Hollywood Costume could be one of its most popular exhibitions, with the combined lure of film and fashion giving it huge box office appeal.” I do not dispute this. I am certain that film-fanatical and fashion-frentic visitors will flock from all around the world to see the various exhibits - rumoured to be including the gingham pinafore worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars Darth Vader’s flowing black cape for the science fiction fans and perhaps a famous frock or two from a historic American epic? (I don’t think it wise to write much more.)  Whilst these rumours are proving fairly tantalizing for most of the broadsheets in the UK (especially the Guardian’s fashion desk), I just can’t help feeling a little suspicious of this frenzy. The last time the popular press went into overdrive on such an exhibition was probably when the V&A opened the similarly costume-led show on The Supremes and prior to that, the 2007 Kylie Minogue retrospective. The V&A was accused of “dumbing down” then and in my opinion, the opening of Hollywood Costume might instigate the same critique. It is sad that the majority of the V&A’s blockbuster shows are those which ultimately appear primarily focused on celebrity or glamour or fame. Design often seems like an afterthought in these shows. Sir Christopher Frayling has already tried to refute these claims by stating that the exhibition will not be a celebration of the silver screen’s style moments, “a rather camp form of glamour” in his words. But I wonder if the exhibition will feature any real contextual stories about the making of these costumes, any insight into the process of designing clothes made for fictional characters, any interesting biographies of the featured costume designers rather than of the already-famous/infamous Hollywood actors who donned their designs?  It’s hard to know for certain when the exhibition does not even open for another eight months but I really do hope that Hollywood Costume will not just be another vacant-but-pretty, populist blockbuster for the V&A. A great institution with a great collection and some great staff, as it is, can do so much in regards to educating its visitors about design and really offer a constructive experience of the design-centric museum, as exemplified by last year’s wonderful Power of Making exhibition.  

I spent my childhood summers in Los Angeles. The memories I have of the city are mostly composed of nothing but cloudless blue skies and the certain metallic gleam of expensive cars - the stuff of Ed Ruscha, I guess. So when I heard that work by the celebrated LA-based artist Paul McCarthy was being shown at Hauser & Wirth London, I was intrigued to see the creepier output of another artistic resident of the city. A lot of people that I’ve spoken to about the show have expressed their utmost disgust at McCarthy’s work. It’s shocking, yes, and therefore a little cliche of most banal contemporary art. But beyond that initial moment of “what the hell?”, there is something to be admired of McCarthy in a piece like ‘Train, Mechanical’. After acknowledging the fact that those were indeed two grotesque figures in the form of George “Dubya” Bush humping two wincing pigs who were in turn humped by two additional pigs - I became somewhat mesmerised by the total mechanics of the piece. All those wires and bulky grey metal boxes filled with computer chips and humming processors powering the large 360-degree spinning heads and multifarious rhythmic motions of the grotesque act. And then that fascination broke as soon as Bush’s creepy animatronic eyes burnt into mine, seemingly declaring, “And what?! Yeah, I’m fucking a pig!” My experience of the piece was simultaneously two-fold: repulsion and seduction. I burst into laughter a few times just because of the whole surreal nature of the piece. The gallery invigilator didn’t seem to get it or perhaps had become accustomed to the many varied reactions of visitors.  Around the corner, the show continued with the monumental ‘Pig Island’. A friend who had accompanied me remarked that this was more of her thing. An expansive space filled with what very much looked like the contents of a backstage area of a movie set or the area behind the stage of a high school auditorium - broken props, half used tins of paint, dusty musical instruments, the odd celebrity poster (Angelina Jolie), discarded buckets of KFC and in a thoughtful nod to Cali - a box bearing the origin of Knott’s Berry Farm.  I walked around the installation a few times, absorbing all the details and climbing up the viewing platform ladders. I liked how apocalyptic the room felt, wild and untamed, detritus in all of its unabashed glory. I said to R. that I should like to get married in a scene like this, perhaps in the larger environment of a desert storm somewhere. R. looked at me and laughed and we then we proceeded to come up with appropriate outfit choices for said wedding. (R. chose fishermen’s waders. I chose a burnt out bridal gown by Rick Owens.) As I battled through the rush hour journey home, I wondered if Charlie Brooker had gathered some inspiration from McCarthy for his excellent The National Anthem from the Black Mirror series? The King, The Island, The Train, The House, The Ship runs until 14th January 2012 at Hauser & Wirth, London, Savile Row and Piccadilly.