What is vulgar? from exhibition of "The Vulgar"
There is always a question about what vulgar means in any context, in part because we describe as vulgar what whey are taken to be doing something out of context, behaving inappropriately, being ostentatious, or gauche. They are showing off when they really should be embraced, and start behaving themselves. And "we" also feel for them - those of us whom vulgarity is not an option - because they have exposed themselves as lacking something. The right bubbling, the right instincts, taste, class. The vulgar are flaunting what they don't or can't, really have. People are described as vulgar, that is to say, when they are not doing the righting, when they have misunderstood the rules (are the naked bodies of womwm supposed to be in photographs in magazines? And if so, what should they look like?)
The vulgar, by definition, are pretentious. In their ignorance, or their naivety, or their willfulness, they just don't know what they are doing.
Vulgarity should be amusing or abolished ; the vulgar should be ashamed of themselves. Indeed, to use the word is to be able to reassure oneself of one's own good taste, and that it protects us. Wee may not know quite what we are protected from, but we know that bad taste is very dangerous. The idea of art, of the "artistic", the "it" can be many things that art claims to legitimize.
The oxford English Dictionary defines "vulgarize" as, "to make common or popular... to debase". To describe something or someone as vulgar is to do something to them : to class and categories them; to reprimand them ; to class and categories them; to place them in a certain way - to place them as being, or doing something, somehow out of place; improper or inauthentic. Freeman is surely right to suggest that, in this context, the word vulgar could be evasive.
16thcentury "vulgar" from the Latin vulgar, the common language of a country... in common or general use, customary, ordinary...Commonly current or prevalent in respect of the use or understanding of language, words, or ideas.
17th and 18th century, flagging up a significant cultural shift, the word "vulgar" began to mean what we now take it to mean, A person nor reckoned as belonging to good society... of an ordinary unartificial type, not refined or advanced beyond the common.. Having a common and offensively mean character ; coarsely commonplace ; lacking in refinement or good taste; So a vulgarity ; a word we no longer use, was "a well-to-do or rich person of vulgar manners". Vulgarizing is the process of rendering familiar or popular... The action of process of rendering coarse or unrefined. The vulgar-the common people-had become the degenerate. The ordinary, the customary, the common, the unartificial become, for a multiplicity of complicated reasons that hard history and economic might provide, those lacking in refinement and good taste". It is worth nothing that "artifice" here, smacks of improvement. There is something crude that can be refined, and art and fashion are somehow bound up with this project of refinement. Most people, it seems are born vulgar (common), and they make themselves more vulgar by the ways in which they try to conceal it. The vulgar have failed to really master good taste; or it is just beyond them. There are debased and those who debase, often by popularizing what once belonged to the elite. There is something now called "good society". It is an exclusive club.
Vulgar is either what the vast majority of us are; or the vulgar are those who-again, like the majority of us-pretend to be something we would like to be. As Raymond William notes in Keywords. "It is extremely difficult from the 16th century onwards to distinguish relatively neutral uses of common"...from more conscious yet vaguer uses to mean vulgar, unrefined, and eventually low-class (the cleat derogatory use, he adds. "seems to increase from 19th century") If something is common it cuts both ways; In the best sense it is at once something shared, held in common, popular; and in the pejorative sense, it is undistinguished, rude, even morally disreputable. (For the enemies of the vulgar, to popularize is to spoil. The vulgar are "mean" and the only the rare is valuable-democracy cheapens, specialness is apparently confident distinctions being made. There is the new and old idolatry of new kinds of hierarchy-the wealthy gradually displacing the aristocratic-in which notions of taste and manners.
The question becomes who has access to which pleasures and which pleasures make people distinguished, that is, from ordinary people? The aristocracy done"t want to be seen as bourgeois, and no one wants to be seen to be "common". With the growth of mercantile capitalism, pleasures had to be concealed(no one wants to be put off when they are enjoying themselves.) The right pleasures have to be in the right place, enjoyed by the right people. The vulgar are now among the growing number of people who don"t want to be left out.
When vulgar is what we are by nature, or can all too easily be if we have the wrong parents, or exist in the wrong group, or have the wrong expectations for ourselves; education being the official cure for vulgarity (no one teaches people how to be vulgar). The vulgar are hose who have, too glaringly, failed to redeem who are beyond redemption, making themselves even more vulgar they try to improve themselves. They have not distinguished themselves in the proper way-the way endorsed by the owners of taste. This sense of distinction, Bourdieu writes,
is an acquired disposition which functions with the obscure necessity of instinct, is affirmed not so much in the manifestos and positive manifestations of self-confidence as in the innumerable stylistic or thematic choices which, being based on the concern to underline difference, exclude all the forms of...activity regarded at a given moment as inferior-vulgar objects, unworthy references...native problems...trial questions.
Vulgar is what "we"don't want to be; we actively and determinedly dissociate ourselves from what we fear we might be, or fear we might want to be as vulgarity. like corruption, might be a temptation. So we may be horrified that we could be vulgar, even unwittingly - that we might not have a clear enough sense of what vulgarity is, or of how to draw the line between vulgarity and good taste. Indeed, the anxiety, the fear of vulgarity, means that vulgar is always under - or over-defined, its meaning taken for granted or carefully elaborated. Vulgar, that is to say, is a word used by the confident and the desperate.
what we call the vulgar-that we don't see it as a form of intelligence. We don't think of the vulgar as experimentation, or as a commentary and critique of supposed good taste, or an art of exaggeration(as perhaps we should). The vulgar, in other words, is useful as a way of supposedly justifying our own taste; of allowing us to be sadistic in our aesthetic preferences, and of showing ourselves and other people the quality of our discrimination(and of ourselves; keeping our doubts and our doubles at bay). As a way, in other words, of thinking about, and not thinking about our pleasures. It is underrated, however, as a way of exhibitions - of showing and thinking about-the relationship between enjoyment and standard of taste, or as an engagement with the cruelties in play in our aesthetic standards. And, perhaps above all, the vulgar is useful as a way of seeing both the nuances of imitation and the desperate absurdities of ambition that capitalist societies sponsor.
When it comes to taste, at least, we should not be quiet so keen to know the difference between right and wrong, between the right and wrong versions of ourselves, and the objects we desire. If Ambrosia don't want the photographers to be vulgar, then what does she want them to do the propel who look at them? Will they as it were, use the photographers differently if they are not vulgar? For some pole vulgarity is the precondition for sexual excitement and the face that so-called vulgarity can make sex possible, or pleasurable, makes it count, could count in its favor or at least make us wonder what vulgarity can do for desire. If the vulgar wasn't there to be avoided but was seen to be encoding something of real interest (If vulgar was the word we used for temptations and curiosities and uncertainties that we don't want to consider and don't know what to make of), and if the idolatry of art was not the only saving grace (If art wasn't the word we used to redeem things don't need to be redeemed), then we would be able to add to the stock of available reality. And we might be able to imagine forms of taste that were forms or paranoia. If taste wasn't paranoid(all about exclusion and purification, all about embattled specialness), what else could it be? The idea of the vulgar is the way we do and don't think about this.
Vulgarity, at least from the spectators point of the view, always art of imitation and excess, or pretending to be something they are not, of performing themselves as different, as more like something they would want to be. Those who judge enjoy their amused ridicule, self-assurance on matters of taste and propriety, their performing of themselves as they know themselves to be. In this all-too-familiar double act, both express themselves. The vulgar pretending to be somebody else, their judges pretending to be themselves. There can only impostors when there are pole to impersonate. Through performance, through styling, through caricature through fashion. Vulgarity is a way of thinking about the idea of the real thing. If there is something supposedly unreal about the vulgar-If vulgarity is a kind of presence-then it is possible to be real.
Nothing is more of fashion than good taste, and fashion, like art, changes things by copying them. If something can be copied then it turns into something else, and can be turned into something else. It can be improvised and interfered with. It can be circulated. It can be redescribed, It can be thought about and talked about from the point of view of anyone. Its value and its values can change.. Vulgarity is the remarkable and revealing art of copying badly and being seen to do that, whether we believe it or not.
Vulgarity can arouse desire, and it can be radically counter-erotic. It can mock and be mocked. It can amuse and appall us, and it can amuse us by appalling. It makes us think of being ashamed of ourselves, and of being freer to to performance ourselves. It implicates us and it reassures us. But we never write know where we are with it. We may be vulgar ourselves without realizing. We may not have understood the rules against it. When it comes to the vulgar, we don't know what we think when we need to know most what we think. We never really know theater we are dressing or dressing up. Or whether there is a difference.
1. Translating the Vulgar
In the renaissance rediscovery and recycling of Classic myths and motifs, the Christian West approached Pagan cultures, and found new standards of taste in ancient civilisations. When words and things and imagines float free of their origins they circulate in unpredictable ways. Migration makes new forms and feeling available and accessible. The vulgar is therefore a sign of mobility; of the clash and cooperation of classes and cultures.
The vulgar, like fashion, is always a copy. It invites us to imagine the original and exposes what has been lost in translation. In this way, the vulgar restores our confidence in the purity of the source. So the only thing that interests us about the vulgar is what's wrong with it. because it is pretending to be something that it is not. Vulgarity is wanting something that you can't be or can't have.
Nymphs
A classic dress is one that resists fashion's cyclical change. It is aligned with a category of beauty that is not to be questioned. In caricatures of beauty that is not to be questioned. In caricatures of its whimsicality and promiscuity, fashion is always placed in contract with the drapery of classical stature. So this is the last place that one might look for evidence of the vulgar. But an item of fashion is not unique, it is not inherited from Greece or Imperial Rome, nor carved from stone, but is, instead, just like any other fashion-limited by the face that it is multiplied and commercially available. The collection of dresses were are themselves a commentary on translation: the imitation of classical culture re-imagined in a vernacular tongue-that of fashionable dress, What are they pretending to be? And what, therefore, are the mannequins that support them pretending to be?
The Fortunate Fall
Vivienne Westwood continues the theme of translation: wearing nudity in the form of a skin coloured body stocking, she drawn attention to what should be hidden. Her corset depicts Longus'Greek erotic tale, Daphnis and Chloe, reproduced bare directly from Francois Boucber's 1743 canvas, which itself refers to a long line of borrowing.; both paintings and sculptures based on the classical pastoral romance. It is an easily recognisable quotation from Westwood's favourite museum, the Wallace Collection in London, and it is as much about its setting-a painting already adapted for a frame(rounded corners show that it bad been originally intended for an over-door) recut to fit the pattern pieces of the corset. The experiment is about both subject and context.
The vulgar is often associated with explicit sexuality, and being open to suggestion, which is only possible after a fortunate fall. The phrase "Fortunate Fall" refers to the possibility that there may have been ways in which Adam and Eve benefited from the so-called Fall of Man; It was kind of life-the life we have now. Like Adam and Eve, Daphnis and Chloe were essentially experimenting with new pleasures.
Classic copies
Designers have made a virtue of the copy, incorporating it into their idiom, celebrating the transmission of ideas through technological advances. Copies parody the workings of the fashion system that is so dependent on the new. The high-street store H&M have been a translator of high and fashion that was out of reach to most people, by communicating affordable versions of catwalk dresses. So it is appropriate that Martin Marcela should twice translate his evening dress, from sequinned gown to viscose copy.
Once and for all
In 1983, Yves Saint Laurent was the first living designer to have a major exhibition dedicated to his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Perhaps the most iconic pieces in that exhibition was his Mandrian dress made almost twenty years earlier, which, due to its translation of the original Mondrian canvas, fuelled the debate around the place of fashion in the museum, and came to embody the cries against it. The exhibition, as all exhibitions of fashion , was seen to be 'advertising' a commercial concern. The dress, with its own legacy of copies, still prompts a debate about fashion's originality and value, both inside the museum and outside of it.
2. Showing off
For a very small but growing number of people in Western Europe, the 18th century was an age of luxury. Due to unprecedented technological advances, colonisation and international trading sounded on slavery, there were more luxury, which Samuel Johnson defined in his Dictionary as being 'enslaved to pleasure', had always been a sign of privilege. Things, and people, were valued according to their rarity, their exclusiveness. Fashion was for the fashionable, the people of 'good society'. But as more people acquired more money, they had to work harder to distinguish themselves. Tastes had to become extremes, and good taste had to over-protected. Fashion had to become extravagant and over-refine. What were pleasures worth, and what kinds of pleasures were actually pleasurable, if they were common? The other terror, in the century of the French Revolution, was the terror of vulgarity.
Once something can be copied, it can be made available and become popular; and the available and the popular can be stigmatised as vulgar. The word condemns and accuses and dissociates 'us' from 'them'. As though vulgarity is the art of making good taste into bad taste; as though vulgarity is theft, the stealing of private property. If vulgarity is the aping of privilege then it is both a treat and a promise. If vulgarity is imitation born of envy a and intimidation then it is dangerous.
Vulgarity tends to be something you buy. The vulgar reassures us that the one thing money cannot buy is class. And so it reminds us of our strange fear of being nothing special.
The New Exhibitionism
Fashion extends the body's reach-its daring-and manages the distance between the viewer and the viewed. 'In-your-face' is an accusation about making something too explicit, too much and still visible from afar-something that won't go quietly. The ensembles in this section all play with explicit ideas of scale(too big), value(too much), and historical quotation (showing off). Against the warning of etiquette books, they draw attention to the body, whilst concealing it* and aspiration concealing a truth. In 1998, Richard Martin coined the phrase 'the Ceaseless Century' for his exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He was referring to 300 years of 18th century fashion, its influences and its revivals, both in terms of dress and of its presentation-it is the period that has been perhaps the most popular amongst curators of fashion exhibitions. His exhibition is hypothetically extended here, his original selection added to with John Galliano's passionate historicism for Dior, as well as unexpected recent pieces from the Gucci Menswear Spring/Summer 2016 collection and Pam Hogg's ensemble fit for Versailles.
Too much
'Well-bred people do not often dress in what is called the "weight of fashion", as that is generally left to dandies and pretenders...[] By dressing well, we do not mean dressing extravagantly. You might have the most costly attire, you might appear in satin and lace, feathers, and jewels, and yet be far from well dressed.'
From 'Etiquette for Ladies' in The Lady's Book of Manners.(c.1880s)
Puritan
Vulgarity is always more of something. never less; it exaggerates; it never understates: it performs: it never retreats. It is committed to enjoyment. It has all the bravo that shyness and shame demands. It always reminds us of what is missing; it drawn attention to what it lacks. It has no other worldly desires. It is a self-cure for the fear of impoverishment. It acts out the scandal of entitlement, the pleasures it represents and the envy it creates. It is the theatre of ambition and kitsch is its celebration. It both fears and courts ridicule. Puritanism is its foil and its target.
Puritan dress, with its denial of colour and decoration, and its assumed denial of pleasures, forgets the pleasures of denial. The black dress is so often represented it 17th century Flemusb painting as blending into the background, absorbing all light, disallowing all reflection or distinction. In contrast the white collar, confident in representing purity, performs itself both in scale and intricate. It is allowed to stick out. The vulgarity is in the purity. The collars shown here follow in this tradition, collected by museums as exquisite samples of lace. The essential black and white palette is represented here by one of fashion's most hedonistic designers: John Galliano for Dior
4. Extreme bodies
The vulgar is something we make. Nothing is naturally, or essentially, or in itself, vulgar. Vulgarity. like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. It is an emblem of artificiality. We don't think of animals as vulgar. No baby, could, or tree is vulgar by nature. The sexual body is vulgarised by clothes, or their absence.
Vulgarity is most often associated with sex, when is not associated with wealth. We only vulgarise our pleasures. and so where there is pleasure there is always the temptation of vulgarity. There is something about sex that the idea of vulgarity is regulating. So what is done to sex to make it vulgar? And what is about sexuality that might make us want to vulgarise it, or that makes vulgarity the precondition for excitement? Because the vulgar always make us wonder about their pleasure. The vulgar always make us wonder whether they are having more pleasure than we are. The vulgar are showing off when they should be showing some respect. Perhaps we think of pleasure as vulgar. There are not vulgar fears.
Bodies are transformed into the vulgar through description and adornment: clothing, jewellery and cosmetics. And because it is an art of over-emphasis-playing with scale and proportion and ostentation-the vulgar requires a different kind of attention to detail. We mustn't get the wrong idea because it is not clear what the right idea is. Vulgarization is a radical art because it distractions that make the attention possible.
Sometimes we fear that vulgar pleasures are the real pleasures-the ones we need to disdain and distance ourselves from, as through the vulgar is a version of the forbidden. To admire the vulgar is ti be superior to it.
Negotiating how much of the body to show is always associated with the vulgar. Here the black and white palette of Puritan dress is renegotiated on the body: the lace becomes the very structure of the dress, its transparent qualities become the point, not the problem. The fabric of underwear is translated for evening wear: at Louis Vuitton, it is coupled with the performative gestures of the catwalk show, and, in the pieces by Pam Hogg, it is associated with the hedonism of the club.
The 1960s are a turning point in Fashion's history, allowing, with the miniskirt of the 'youthquake', the knee to become exposed as a new erogenous zone. The even more daring topless bathing costume from 1964-shown for the first time in Fashion: An Anthology by Cecil Beaton at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1971-was, we read in the museum notes, displayed pinned to an exhibition board, thereby denying it a body.
How might clothes exaggerate a body? By making it fake and transposing the chosen body part onto the dress, what happens to it? Why might reminders of the body by vulgar? What does exaggeration make available?Different methods are adopted: Vivienne Westwood's painted exposed breasts have the shock of Punk defiance, her faux-cil for Louis Vuitton's 1996 anniversary celebrations suggests that devotion to the logo might have replaced sex; Walter van Beirendonck's phallus dressed up as an elephant's trunk, the animal which never forgets; and Anna Piaggi's "blow up" lips moved onto the top of her head by Stephen Jones for Dior, connecting the word blow the word head.
5.Too Popular
Like 'too fashionable', 'too popular' means 'too available'. We are suspicious of people and things that are 'too popular', as though 'too popular' means 'too eager to please', 'too opportunistic', 'too servile', 'too hidden', 'too cheap'. 'Too available' as a sexual definition is always a term of abuse. Anybody or anything that, like money, passes through too many hands, is vulgar. We want to dissociate ourselves from it. It is degraded and degrading, as through there are too many bodies involved, and bodies are contagious. As though we could lose ourselves in the crowd. and not find anything else we might want. 'We' wouldn't know who 'we' are without the vulgar.
Pop Art showed us that inspiration could come from the popular and not the unique or the esoteric. A certain recognisability was essential to getting the joke. Catwalk fashion worked out ways for the conceptual to be as rarefied as the crafted, the disposable to be as desirable as the heirloom.
The unlikely pairing of Disney with Charles James, or Givenchy, shows us that luxury fashion night look to popular taste for its cues: that Charles James, working in the 1930s, might spot a new kind of screen siren in Snow White, and that Givenchy in 2016, might play instead with questioning Bambi's innocence for a grown up silhouette. Moschino's wit and use of slogans was legendary and Jeremy Scott has revived that humour, with the fast consumption of food coupled with productions of 'fake' designer fashion. 'The available' and 'The accessible' need not become merely 'the taken for granted'.
6. Common
In its earliest uses, 'common' was distinguished from 'aristocratic'. It was used to describe the shared, the ordinary and the vulgar. It described the communal within a class system, a contradiction in terms. So it has been all too commonly used as a derogatory term. Vulgarity exploits the difference between the common and what we have in common. It turns the tables. It turns fashion into uniform.
By using denim, the most common material, we are alerted to what is special about these garments despite their uniformity. What can uniformity be used for? Whilst Nicolas Ghesquiere for Louis Vuitton uses jewels to create precious contemporary workwear, the youthful label Miu Miu, in both 2013 and 2016, used the material as a canvas with which to build a mini history of 20th century fashion: from an Edwardian suit to the sophisticated silhouettes of the 1950s(lined in duchesse satin), moments that were never associated with youth culture were re-imagined or subverted by the use of denim, to evoke an alternative to workwear.
7.The Vulgar Tongue
The vulgar tongue is the common language, the native language, the language 'we' speak. It is local and indigenous, like national or traditional dress. So, why would we be suspicious of, or amused by, a language that everyone could speak, and what would we be suspicious of ? Vulgarity amuses us because it makes us uneasy. And it makes us suspicious because it is too close to home; it reveals an embarrassment we are trying to avoid. The vulgar are mean, gross, brash, gauche, tasteless, kitsch, coarse, pretentious, camp, rough, rude, common and so on and that is how they speak. It is only ever other people who are vulgar.
Everyone has a tongue but not everyone has, or has to have, a vulgar tongue. Or everyone has, or begins with, a vulgar tongue that needs to be refined. The vulgar haven't found their style, their voice. The vernacular from the Latin vernavulus-verna; a home born slave-needs to be transformed. We need to be released from the vulgar tongue. We have education to set limits to vulgarity. The vulgar are trying not to be original. Vulgarity succeeds by failing. We see it by seeing through it. Using the word 'vulgar' allows us the triumphalism of contempt.
Christian Lacroix famously declared an important source of his inspiration to be the traditional costume from his birthplace of Arles in the South of France. His couture collections drew on the costume that celebrated its proximity to Spain, and the drama of Roman amphitheatres that staged bull fights. These pieces are juxtaposed here with the original 18th century local costume from the Museum Arlaten, which displayed the garments their traditions. A recent emphasis on craft within the fashion industry has seen the revival of local techniques-acknowledging the fear of loss of skills, as well as taking inspiration from they extreme decorative designs.
8. Impossible Ambition
When the word 'vulgar' is not used to describe 'the mob', 'the masses', the 'common people', It is used to describe people who are trying to be something that they are not. And because they aspire to something that they feel excluded from, they represent for us the impostor, the con man, the spy, the actor. The person we must not believe in ; the person, unlike ourselves, that we cannot afford to trust.
The arrivistes, the nouveau riche, the immigrants, the upwardly mobile: all those who aspire to participate, to succeed, to adapt could be accused of vulgarity. The vulgarity are the people who do not believe that they are playing a game. Because they don't have the right history, the vulgar are people who lack the appropriate resources. But in their attempt to fake a history, vulgarity creates new ways of being.
Vulgarity is the ambition that makes a mockery of ambition. It is the aspiration that overexposed what it aspires to.
Classification is considered essential to museum collections and their project of accumulating knowledge. The pieces collected here question classification, in terms of time, place and order. The designs allude to former, more glorious historic codes of dress and to social classes above those of the wearer(a commoner wearing a crown for example, or wearing insignia that they are not decipher). The dresses suggest through their precious gold patine a value beyond the commercial. They also, by virtue of being held in museum collections, aspire to a different kind of cultural status. Fashion is still an aspiring category within the museum.
9. Oes and spangles
If we always know the vulgar when we see it, how do we know it? There are few things we seem so certain about, as though the vulgar might give us a clue about the workings of prejudice, of dogmatism, of fanaticism; or about the uses of certainty. The vulgar is as convincing as a phobia. When we think we understand it we still don't like it. Or if we really enjoy it, we don't understand quite what we are enjoying.
And, like a phobia, the vulgar stops is looking: we recognise it before we can see it. We are amused by it, or appalled by it, or enjoy it without giving it a second thought. As though we fear something might happen if we allow ourselves to be interested or curious: as though the vulgar had some dangerous allure. By being too insistently visible we forget that the vulgar has histories and purposes; by being so immediately recognisable we can miss its puzzling messages. By being so easily enjoyable, we are free not to think about our pleasure. The vulgar is like a blindspot-it has found a way to stop us thinking about it. Just as we don't really know what it is about a joke that amuses us, we don't really know what is vulgar about vulgarity.
The central bodice that accompanied the open robes of the 18th century mantua are called 'stomachers'. They have become the wonderful fragments from the extreme historical silhouettes that most commonly survive in collections of dress. They are exhibited to show off the wealth of textiles in the absence of the huge lengths fabric which was so often adapted for later fashions and therefore worn our by use. The stomachers accentuated the feminine form, tapering towards the waist and creating a platform for the breasts that could bulge above them. The visibility of the figure accented and accentuated by the intricate embroidery overlaid with res and spangles(sequins and flat ornaments).
Can the vulgar exist in pieces, or only as a whole? How is decoration shown off? When isolated the stomachers become the inspiration for contemporary accessories: Prada's collars, forests and aprons are new essential to her layered idiom, which is itself so ambivalent about knowing what goes with what.
10. The new baroque
As the scapegoat of good taste, the vulgar does a lot of work for us. And like all scapegoats, it must not inspire us. It encodes and carries our disowned pleasures and fears. It represents whatever it is about beauty that we can't bare. It is the exception we use to prove the rules, the failure we need to insure our success. The vulgar is there to be punished.
But if vulgarity is always improvisation, if the vulgar is always reactive to ruling standards of taste and manners, if vulgarity is a symptom of inappropriate ambition, then what happen to vulgarity when there is no consensus about standards, to taste, or style, or aspiration? What happens to the vulgar when the desire for excess in the norm, when the desire for excess has become excessive?
The vulgar amuses us, or appalls us; or it amuses by appalling us. It is leading is nowhere. But the vulgar are pragmatists of taste; they use it without quiet knowing where it will get them. Nor do they pretend to know what it is.
Vulgarity guarantees nothing. The vulgar as an uncompleted action, as an experiment, as a testing of the audience, may be more promising than its many alternatives.
These Pieces are not outlandish garments. Instead they are signature pieces from recent catwalk shoe, which assume that a desire for excess is the norm. They improvise with the leftovers of other styles: they are testing new ground, without the compromise of established taste. When asked what 'The New Baroque' might be, Christian Lacroix said 'lines that go out, not in' ; Manolo Blank cited seeing 'Men wearing dresses, and yet remaining masculine'. The vulgar and the Baroque have always been inextricable.
11. Ruling in and ruling out
The Vulgar was the Latin version of the Bible, translated by Saint Jerome, and in common use by the Catholic Church; a book that, by definition, most people were unable to read for themselves and so only accessible to an educated elite. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Bible was translated-vulgarised-into English and other vernacular languages, and could then be understood and spoken about freely. Literate people could read it for themselves. There could be as many understandings of the Bible-could free unregulated. Right-thinking, appropriate-feeling, good taste could free up for grabs. To make available and accessible and newly sharable-to vulgarise-can destroy consensus. It makes us reconsider what we have in common and what we want to have in common. It reveals the violence of taste.
In Renaissance Sumtuary Laws, in etiquette books, in dress codes, in fashion magazines, in gossip, vulgar is a term used by the guardians of taste. And the vulgar becomes fashionable when the guardians of taste are disarray. What, then, are we protecting with so much legislation and regulation that the vulgar incites? What is the catastrophe we fear? If vulgarity makes us suspicious, perhaps it is the project of good taste to defuse suspicion. So much mockery and contempt, so many written and unwritten rules for avoiding the vulgar, suggests a certain amount of desperation.
Vulgarity is then taste out of order. The honesty of the vulgar is that it always exposes what it is trying to conceal. It exposes the cover-up of good taste, and the cunning of bad taste.
The vulgar makes us speak the language of prejudice.
You are 'either Vogue or Not Vogue' We are told: not fashionable enough, or too fashionable; you are within the legal boundaries of the dress associated with your social standing, or you are not. With the violence if these IN or OUT categories, words re-classify society according to dress. By juxtaposing documents over the centuries, from an Elizabethan Sumptuary Law, to a double-page spread in Vogue Italia, the words contradict and cancel each other out.
From Gaston-Louis Vuitton's prescient monograms, tasted on metal plaques, to the extreme practice enacted within Mario Tesino's ad for Gucci in Vogue in 2003, the 'logos' in this section are a short step from the historical documents: they are ambitious attempts to describe prestige and status.
References
Labyrinth Daido Moriyama 779 MOR
Nobuyoshi Araki 779 ARA
The vulgar
Think about what is vulgar for me? I started looking for the icon of vulgar.
First, there are lots of information about what is vulgar on the exhibition. I felt very weird. They just put extra meaning to vulgar and tried to make something new. But some point they run off the main meaning of vulgar. What is vulgar for me? First thing I came out is Donald John Trump. Everyone makes fun of him on SNS. Everyone make funny joke of him and laugh at him. That is literally vulgar.
Second, I found interesting sentence from the book of vulgar.
" the vulgar is useful as a way of seeing both the nuances of imitation and the desperate absurdities of ambition that capitalist societies sponsor. "
I couldn't understand of the meaning of "desperate absurdities of ambition". If I understand this sentence, perhaps, I could see some result of "what is vulgar". So I decided to analyst.
I divide each word and started thinking about what is desperate. what is absurdities. what is ambition.
Found nice film for references.
The film Helter skelter. The main character Ririco want to get perfect looking as a model. She repeats doing cosmetic surgery for her ambition. But some point she passes the line which is her goal, destination. She passed over and go to the illusion line and toward to desperate life. I think Tokyo and her surrounding make her like crazy. As a model, have to be always perfect and she was required of it all the time, If she is not only one moment, she will kick off from that world which is absurdity. and at the end of the film, she will kick off the society she was in and become the queen of the underground society. She is definitely my icon of vulgar. The thing is her ambition is very desperate. Because cosmetic surgery is not natural thing and not stay forever. This her ambition make her desperate and ruin herself.
On the right, I wrote the illusion line. In the film, there is some scene which she has a psychedelic experience. and she sees butterfly everywhere in that scene. When I watched this film I remind me back one of the article of Kusama Yayoi.
‘One day I was looking at the red flower patterns of the tablecloth on a table, and when I looked up I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and the absoluteness of space, and be reduced to nothingness. As I realized it was actually happening and not just in my imagination, I was frightened. I knew I had to run away lest I should be deprived of my life by the spell of the red flowers. I ran desperately up the stairs. The steps below me began to fall apart and I fell down the stairs straining my ankle.’ – Yayoi Kusama. link from here
For Kusama Yayoi. Dots was her illusion.
Third, my another icon of vulgar is animal live in north country. When I was live in Denmark, I heard lot of this kinds of story from Danish people. Denmark is very ecological country and everyone really care about how global warming effect to the animal. IPCC report states with 95 percent confidence that humans are the main cause of the current global warming. Human's ambition and desire lead to the global warming and the animal which are in desperate absurdity situation cannot do and flight anything. Only the thing they can do is spend the time which they don't know when it ends. I made a story about this.
- Essay about vulgar -
Listen to Koori (Koori means Ice in Japanese)
Once upon a time in the very cold north, in a place where ice was alive, there lived a little bird named Koori who was made of ice. She would not survive in other climate conditions, little Koori needs a wintery climate. She has no family or friends to help protect her from warm weather so Koori uses magic. Magic makes Koori happy because she can use it to make other creatures. Koori made lots of friends.
Evil humans arrived in the cold north, and brought bad things and global warming with them. Koori could not survive under the influence of global warming, so she used her magic on the humans and they all froze. The only way her spells can be broken is if the rest of the humans on earth act on climate change.
Unfortunately Koori will die soon because she can't survive in the warmer weather, but she has helped human with her magic warning sign.
Street photography
Nobuyoshi Araki
Nobuyoshi Araki is synonymous with Kinbaku – the artful form of Japanese bondage to which he dedicated many photographic projects. Stark black and white scenes of intricately bound women suspended in mid-air come to mind, as do vivid images of models in contorted positions, evoking a sense of beauty and violence simultaneously.
link here
Now he is the one of the famous photography in Japan but in this case, I want to focus on seeing the photography he took his wife. In 1970s to 1980s in Japan, It was popular to take picture blur and picture is supposed to lost outline. also photography was supposed to have meaning of political issue, art, coverage...However he kept taking his wife who is the most familiar existence since they've met each other. It was very simple but the way go thinking a picture was completely opposite of the trend. He just focus on what is real? Keep taking a picture of her mans he tried to get to the core of real photography. He said he literally took photo of her all the time no matter what she was doing. He said as a photographer, I have to start taking photo from the thing I love which was his wife. If I kept taking pictures, some point, the photography shows inside of myself, my mind. Photography always tell what photographer was thinking at the moment.
What is the most fun point to see street photography is fashion, model's attitude. They act natural but now we cannot do same posing as natural.
I really like he made a series of photography. I really like the photography which I can tell story from. I want to use of work this series of photography.
Malick Sidibé
Malick Sidibé (born 1935 or 1936 – April 14, 2016) was a Malian photographer noted for his black-and-white studies of popular culture in the 1960s in Bamako. During his life, Sidibé gained an international reputation and was considered, along with Seydou Keïta, to be Mali's most famous photographer.
From Wikipedia
He is more documentary photographer who was taking photography on the street. He said in the film "Dolce Vita Africana", "in 1960, It was creativity into the world. It was cosmopolitan. " Everyone seemed really happy, dance, Mali traditional music... He era taking pictures at the moment a lot and then now there are no view which is like picture because of internal trouble. I can say that he captured such important moment of the history in Mali.
(from reflection 11.11)
These are keywords of his words
"I dream about cloud which is muddy water."
"River is freedom place for young people. Girl never had been free."
"rogation always dominate"
"Las Vegas will be reborn"
"No suffering these moment tell you care free moment"
"I always frustrated of community"
"in 1960, It was creativity into the world. It was cosmopolitan. "
Also interesting to focus on their attitude. They look very natural but also bold and confidence.
These posing and attitude show that moment. Their lifestyle. It is interesting to see how much different the posing and attitude compare to now which is very beautiful.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35 mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and conceived of photography as capturing a decisive moment. His work has influenced many photographers.
link from here
His photography always captured miracle moment. He said "It's a matter of chance. If you want it, you get nothing. Just be receptive and it happen" when I do street photography, I should bring camera all the time and go to lots of place to meet miracle moment. He said photography can make the action of keeping forever strongly in mind. photography in only extension of a straight line of eyes. That's why he was using tiny camera for street photography. Like Daido Moriyama. His photography is very normal like daily life(some of them tell historical thing though).It is because he just loved the place where he lived in. All street photography I researched have common thing. They love their surroundings. That's why keep taking pictures. I learned from his photography, as a human, which moment is important for us. which moment is meaningful for us. It is just normal daily life. It can be walking on the street, talking, running. I will try to take not only street snap like Bill Cunningham but also normal moment of Parisian.
Bill Cunningham
William John "Bill" Cunningham Jr. (March 13, 1929 – June 25, 2016) was an American fashion photographer for The New York Times, known for his candid and street photography. A Harvard University dropout, he first became known as a designer of women's hats before moving on to writing about fashion for Women's Wear Daily and the Chicago Tribune. He began taking candid photographs on the streets of New York City, and his work came to the attention of The New York Times with a 1978 capture of Greta Garbo in an unguarded moment. Cunningham reported for the paper from 1978 to 2016. Cunningham was hospitalized for a stroke in New York city in June 2016, and died soon after.
link from here
From the film Bill Cunningham New York, Bill was always saying that the best fashion show is always on the street. Fashion is kind of armor for surviving. The thing is he never cared about the level, brand, class, gender. He was just interested in people who wear amazing clothes in daily life.
Harry Callahan
Born in 1912, Callahan worked as a clerk for Chrysler before attending a workshop by Ansel Adams in 1941 which encouraged him to pursue photography. Although he lacked formal training, his work demonstrates a sustained interest in line and composition which figures strongly in his studies of nature as well as his cityscapes.
link from here
The reason why I like his photography is his pictures is just normal daily life. He didn't set up for shooting. Its just the memory of what was happening surrounding of him in everyday life. He also took lots of photo of his wife like Araki Nobuyoshi. Everyday is repeat and repeat but keep taking pictures and notice that what I did today, To turn and face today and everyday. I will try to take every moment I feel or think something when I go to shooting.
Mark Rothko No. 1 1964
Pierre Soulages
Pierre Soulages is a French artist whose thick black brushstrokes—labeled outrenoir (beyond black)—against lighter backgrounds have characterized his painting and printmaking practice since the late 1940s. Part of the movement towards abstraction with Jean Fautrier and Hans Hartung in Paris, his gestural paintings echoed the Abstract Expressionist movement emerging simultaneously in the United States. His strong application of pigment in non-representational forms is said to have been influenced by the prehistoric and Romanesque art near his childhood home. Soulages became the first contemporary artist to be shown at St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum in 2001. Born on December 24, 1919 in Rodez, France, Soulages currently lives and works between Paris and Sète. The artist donated 500 works to the Musée Soulages that opened in his hometown in 2014.
link from here
He is one of the most favourite painter in the world. He is famous of black paintings. Black has an authority. It doesn't compromise. It is colour but It is not colour. also his black doesn't express dark side. If the light capture, It changes like phantasmagoric. Like his drawings. when I went to Paris and saw his drawings on my eyes, literally depends on the place, the colour change. Also his painting is quite simple but I feel he said to viewers, see the reality, shape, texture and also the relationship between light and space.This is my drawings. I felt like that. It gave me such a strong power. the way of capture the light on the black canvas. My inside was black. and the sunlight in Paris. The sunlight capture my heart. It was completely same as his drawing the relationship between light and space and black canvas.
EXPERIMENTS
It was very fun to take street photography in Paris. Actually I didn't care about concept or rule. I just kept taking photo as my initial research. I asked lots of people to take photo and all of them are accept to me. Also I didn't say anything to them when I took street snap. It is because I wanted to see their natural attitude and posing. It was successful. I can tell lots of story from their gaze, pose, attitude. Also some people ask me my instagram account and we share information. Just I felt heartwarming how much they are kind. I was scared to ask for the first time but If I said to them and be nice, they gave me back. Also It was fun to take secret picture. Sometimes It was obvious to see I am taking pictures but nobody warn me so I think It was fine.