1998

ISSEY MIYAKE "ART OF MAKING THINGS"

The theme of the relationship between art and fashion, although well known and often discussed, remains highly relevant. Reflecting contemporary trends of multimedia, interdisciplinarity, and total stylistic and linguistic diversity, we are increasingly witnessing hybrid creative phenomena and productions that emerge from the intersection of different creative fields. The tendency to blend genres and disciplines certainly expands the possibilities for creative expression. However, it also encourages the development of new institutional contexts and innovative forms of promotion, as exemplified by contemporary art and fashion.
The union of these two traditionally opposing worlds has so far resulted in remarkable events such as Celant's Biennale of Fashion and Art in Florence a few years ago, new promotional strategies like Benetton's campaigns, or simply new exhibition spaces such as the Cartier and Prada foundations. Conversely, we are increasingly witnessing forms of collaboration between artists and fashion designers: Vanessa Beecroft and Tom Ford at the Guggenheim Museum, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vivienne Westwood, Sylvie Fleury, Angela Buloch again with Vivienne Westwood, etc.
The examples cited highlight forms of convergence and connection between the worlds of art and fashion through individual projects by authors who primarily operate within their own sector. The process of ‘breaking boundaries’ is mostly superficial, as on the one hand, the artist's work conceptually problematises the phenomenon of fashion and its influence on the mechanisms of ‘constructing and re-inventing’ the body and identity. On the other hand, the fashion designers ‘do their job’ developing a certain trend or collection, regardless of how extravagant, alternative, or ‘artistic’ it may be.

The work of one designer, Issey Miyake, is distinctive in that it can be positioned on the border between art and fashion, not fully definable by either of these traditional categories. Yet, it simultaneously contains characteristics of both: innovation, originality, positivity, experimentation, research into materials, and conceptual coherence. It is no coincidence that Miyake holds a special position and reputation not only in the fashion world but also within artistic circles, as he was the first (and only) designer to be featured in a dedicated section of Artforum magazine by Germano Celant and Ingrid Sischy in 1983, amidst the postmodernist debates on the New York art scene, which explored the blurring of boundaries between high and popular culture and the collision of Western and Eastern cultural traditions.
The fashion created by this Japanese designer represents the perfect combination of Eastern and Western traditions, industry and craftsmanship, art and fashion. 
His latest exhibition at the Cartier Foundation, consisting of five different environments/installations, clearly demonstrates this. 
The exhibition space of the Cartier Foundation, an imposing glass structure designed by Jean Nouvel, functions as a showcase, or rather as two huge transparent boxes, in which two different collections are displayed, visible from the street. 
On one side, a series of ‘clothing sculptures’ created between 1989 and 1996, known as “Jumping”, is installed in the space. This collection, inspired by movement, modifies forms and ‘comes to life’ following the movement of the body. At first glance, these clothing items in bright colours and unusual geometric and organic shapes are floating statically in space, until, as if by magic, they begin to animate, each moving in its own rhythm, compressing and stretching, twisting and loosening, jumping and playing. The scene changes, and we suddenly find ourselves in the middle of a surreal ballet of spirits. After a few moments, everything freezes again. 
Another environment, in which the ‘Guest Artist Series’ (1994-98) evokes associations with the stained glass windows of Gothic cathedrals: a tall glass wall is filled with diverse fragments in the form of long and short sleeves, dresses, and trousers, reminiscent of an unfinished jigsaw puzzle with a landscape in the background. A glance at the opposite wall, with its contemporary ‘cross’, confirms the impression that we are in a temple of the cult of the ‘female body’. 
‘Guest Artist Series’ is a collaborative project between Miyake and artists and photographers, in which Yasumasa Morimura, Nobuyoshi Araki, Tim Hawkinson and Cai Guo-Qiang have participated so far. The collections are made from Miyaki's signature material, ‘Plates Please’, a finely pleated silk that has become his trademark, with interventions by the artists in accordance with their work. 
Morimura's collection features computer-generated images of naked female figures, composed from one of Ingres' ‘Odalisques’ and a photo of a woman in the Renaissance prayer position of the Virgin Mary covered with a red net. 
Of particular interest is the collection of dresses and T-shirts featuring prints by Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, renowned for his series of (sometimes autobiographical) photographs taken in the ‘kingdom of the senses’, through which he expresses an exceptionally refined and twisted vision of Eastern eroticism. This collection playfully explores transforming T-shirts with inscriptions and images—symbols of the most banal aspects of clothing, characteristic of a mythomaniac mass society—into high elegance. Accordingly, on refined silk cocktail dresses, one finds images of women's faces, distorted perhaps by sexual satisfaction or violent death, self-portraits of Araki with Godzilla (his trademark) in his arms, or naked young gay men in erotic poses. 
Araki's enormous photograph, placed on the opposite wall, functions as an altarpiece of the end of an era, on which, instead of the exhausted, dying male body, symbol of Western civilisation, there is a picture of a beautiful young Japanese woman, bound with sadomasochistic instruments, which emits an erotic charge and the mystery of the Orient. 
The 1998/99 collection heralds the dawn of a new era. It is presented through three installations / three directions of Miyake's research and experimental work in the field of materials and form, as well as his understanding of the future relationship between the creator and those for whom his designs are intended. 
His idea is that the designer provides only the input through form and material, thus allowing each individual to create an authentic look. 
The collections titled ‘A-POC (A Piece of Cloth)’ and ‘Just Before’, made from elastic materials woven using the latest technological methods, can be described as ‘endless dresses’ because where one ends, another begins, and so on infinitely. Anyone can, by cutting along the marked lines, create a design of their choice, from an evening dress to a mini skirt or underwear.
The ‘never-ending dress’ embodies the very essence of fashion: it is like a genie's bottle (the basic material), linked with an endless industrial production line, and also with the cyclical rhythm of fashion, in its seasonal renewal based on minimal variations in form.
The latest collection, titled ‘Starburst’, transports us directly into the 21st century. 
The setting is a blend of Warhol's Factory atmosphere and Kubrick's ‘Odyssey’: it is entirely covered with gold, silver, and copper foil, in which the outlines of bodies and garments are imprinted. Indeed, models appear to be ‘pulled’ from these metallic foils; simply pull one end and trousers, shirts, hoods, caps, gloves, and ultra-luxurious, elegant suits made of cotton, silk, felt, with embossed gold, silver, and copper leaf emerge, ready and ‘packaged’ for the new millennium.


Published in Serbian, in the weekly magazine Vreme, Belgrade.