beauty call

Lucy McRae is a visual artist and body architect most famous for collaborating with Dutch artist Bart Hess to produce Lucyandbart, a project that explores futuristic human forms that could result from plastic surgery and evolution.  Using the body as a canvas, Lucyandbart create grotesque sculptures that directly attack vanities typical in both men and women.

The overly muscled person

The emaciated person

The plastic surgery addict/fashion victim

During her July appearance at Rojo Nova Work In Progress, the seven-week live-art event at the Museu da Imagem in Sao Paulo, Brazil, McRae’s work continued to develop her Lucyandbart themes.  McRae glued thousands of safety pins to a model’s face and torso, creating an oddly beautiful effect that was a result of a modern, industrial fashion tool yet simulated fur in a pattern similar to chimpanzee hair, which is sparse on the face and between the shoulders and chest.

McRae’s Rojo Nova work is a departure from Lucyandbart in that, rather than focusing on evolutionary progress, she suggests devolution, or maybe a return to a primal state: those who blindly follow fashion are no more sophisticated or intelligent than primitive humans.

The Rojo Nova recap video beautifully captures the development of McRae’s safety pin work.

Pictures via Creative Tempest and Crushable

Over the summer, SHOWstudio invited artists to contribute to “The Fashion Body,” a videographic study of body parts.  Each artist focuses on a single part of the body, and the result is an astounding array of approaches to and messages about how body parts function physically and symbolically; as fashion objects and in personal expression.

The most interesting part of “The Fashion Body” is the effect of the videos together—each artist’s interpretation of their body part, if successful, offers insight into their attitudes toward the body as a whole, which ultimately reflects a rich spectrum of reactions, methods and impetuses toward human objectification.  The project smartly coincides with Fashion Week, when even the objectified body can be lost in an overwhelming obsession with what clothes it.

Sam McKnight’s “Hair,” is a striking yet straightforward record of the visual effects and movement specific to hair.

Natasa Vojnovic and Barnaby Roper’s “Mouth” is both a visual study of the mouth’s expressions and a commentary on what the mouth and our incessant use of it actually expresses—Vojnovic and Roper seem to view it as a tool of social control and emotional manipulation through which one’s self-expression, or figurative voice, is lost or even strangled.

Lady Gaga’s “Left Eye” similarly captures an inability to communicate or connect one’s outer and inner worlds.  Another installment in Gaga’s somewhat tiresome dissection of the “fame monster,” it is nonetheless interesting for someone who is so much in the public eye to literally turn their eye on the public.

Noki’s “Right Knee” explores the transition from childhood to adulthood through clothing and fashion’s ability to erode innocence into something sinister and soulless—all though a montage of kneecap coverings and a particularly frightening cape.

On the other hand, Alice Hawkins’ “Chest” celebrates the empowering potential of female sexuality through the naked breast and a Nancy Sinatra soundtrack.  The video is slightly gratuitous at first, but, by the end, Sinatra may as well be singing “one of these days these boobs are gonna walk all over you.”

Solve Sundsbo’s “Left Forearm” celebrates fashion’s capacity for personal expression by capturing the styling potential of the left forearm alone.

Whether narrative or meditative, positive or negative, sexualized or internalized, “The Fashion Body” videos are a compelling survey of the body’s power and its roles in fashion and society.

Videos via SHOWstudio.

Of all the fabulous, wearable fashion in this month’s Vogue, the most striking spread is Monsters, INC, in which Raymond Meier shoots fall’s hottest fur accessories modeled atop performance artist Nick Cave’s very furry soundsuits. Like a psychedelic Where the Wild Things Are or an edgy Dr. Seuss illustration, Cave has captured every imagined childhood monster in his suits, right down to the pile of laundry that comes alive—the suit sporting a Marc Jacobs bag is made entirely of socks—and has made them fun.

Cave’s soundsuits as Meier has captured them are fanciful, outlandishly attractive and as well-crafted as any couture, but their visual appeal is only the beginning of their wonder. The first suit began as a sculptural costume constructed from thousands of twigs and never meant to be worn. Cave donned it on a lark and discovered that the twigs’ rustling and clattering when he moved crated a beautiful visual and audile effect. He ultimately chose to combine the suits’ dramatic rhythm with dramatic and rhythmic African dance; his goal is to make people “step outside of themselves” and “delight within a moment.”

Below is a video of UCLA world arts students performing in Cave’s suits at the opening gala for the Los Angeles Art Show in January.

I can’t decide which one I like more: the enchanting abandon of soundsuits in action, or Vogue Fasion Editor Elissa Santisi’s genius in combining light-hearted art with fashion—an art that is often taken too seriously. Either way, Cave’s suits do their job—both are absolutely blissful.

Images Via The Fashion Spot. Thanks to UCLA for the video.

Marc Jacobs’ new men’s fragrance, Bang, has caused quite a stir lately with provocative print ads that feature Jacobs himself greased-up, nestled in crinkled metal and covered only by the Bang bottle.  Jacobs came up with the name, which he chose for its immediacy, power and masculinity, while at the gym.  The ad campaign was designed around the name by Juergen Teller, who has been photographing for Jacobs since 1998.  Impact—visual, sexual, olfactory—seems to be the driving theme behind Bang, and the scent’s bottle fits in perfectly.

The crumpled effect Teller uses in the ad reminded me of Stephen J. Shanabrook and Veronika Georgieva’s “Paper Surgery” collection, which features magazine photos twisted and stapled to distort the subjects’ faces.  The beautifully disturbing result is grotesquely impacted images— as though the subjects were pummeled by a prizefighter and the duo photographed the bloodless aftermath.  Shanabrook, whose parents were an obstetrician and a coroner, often explores disfigurement in his work: he is most famous for a series of chocolates created from casts of injuries on cadavers.

Despite their superficial similarities, these works have polar opposite messages: Teller’s accentuates the human form, glorifies sex and promotes mainstream fashion, while Shanabrook and Georgieva’s finds aesthetic in a rearranging the human form by distorting an image of sex and mainstream fashion.  Still, that doesn’t make the latter completely anti-establishment—Comme de Garçons commissioned a “Paper Surgery” image for their S/S 2010 SHIRT campaign.

As much as I love Teller’s and Jacobs’ other work, I have to say I find Shanabrook and Georgieva’s twisted surgery to have far more impact than Jacobs’ glittering exhibition.

Images via Stephen J Shanabrook and Beauty Snob