Please access the viewing room here.
Regency-era dandies fancied a wasp-waisted broad-shouldered look. Were they anything more than ghosts, when one knows that their cravats were so rigid that even if they vanished – as one commentator jokes –- their shape would remain in place? Isn’t the cravat itself the real dandy and the body just a wandering image, inside this rag-figure of style?
Celebrities now paint, and for a good reason, for fame authorizes vision and wealth in a cycle of celestial equivalence. An unnerving development for some, as it might be, and an epoch of champagne and celebration for us, cynics anonymous of the art worlds international.
Bas Jan Ader disappeared at sea, and for good reason, as good as anybody’s ever had, for disappearance is the act of turning inside out the hide of the artist, which –, as proven by dead dandies, painters, hanged thieves and red carpet history– - is dotted with a million stars.
‘Who are you wearing’ is a three-part exhibition about the role of public image in art, featuring artists who use public image as part of their medium.
