Page 53 - Studio International - March 1969

New York POETRY EVENTS AT THE CENTRE FOR Rodriguez Arias-Stoppani Fruits, flowers and scraps of
INTER-AMERICAN RELATIONS AND THE material. John Perreault Hairdress. Hannah Weiner
Wear your luggage. Photo: Jim Stephens
commentary ARCHITECTURAL LEAGUE OF NEW YORK; 2
THE WHITNEY ANNUAL James L. Byars Hat for 25 people Photo: Jim Stephens

Professor Diogenes Teufelsdröckh would have
found ample material for his twelve sacks of
notes on the profound meaning of clothes in
the 'Fashion Show Poetry Event' staged at the
CENTRE FOR INTER-AMERICAN RELATIONS. Con-
cocted by three poets with the collaboration of
a dozen artists, the event brought together
some fashionable ideas and some fashionable
people to bear out Carlyle's hint that finally,
everything can be reduced to clothes.
If the three poets —Eduardo Costa, John Per-
reault and Hannah Weiner—had not been at
such pains to insist on the philosophical and
literary moment of their endeavour, the event,
like all other theatrical phenomena recently
occurring in New York, might have been en-
joyed for the ephemeral pleasure and amuse-
ment it afforded. The costumes invented for
the occasion were sprightly enough; the imita- fashion, is certainly echoed by these event- of fashion shows using the whole battery of lan-
tion of the fashion show was adequate, and the makers. They even suggested in their manifesto guages at their command including the
general atmosphere of 'in' vanguardism enter- that it might have been interesting for them to language of the body and the language of the
taining, as it always is. There were a few laughs, have asked the artists to tell them orally of plastic artist. This is an awful lot of language,
and a few visual shocks, and a sense of having their ideas for garments which they would then needless to say, and the powerful verbs have
been where, as they say, the action is. write about without having had real garments slipped out of the poet's hands. The poets
But the inventors of this happening are not as models. But they did not pursue this inter- wishing to move away from personal ex-
content to be merely entertaining. They have esting idea. pression have moved away from expression in
a programme which, among other things, aims Instead they went through the costly and com- their own medium, handing over the standard
to 'move outside the limitations of the printed plicated machinery of having the real gar- to the artists.
word, to move away from personal expression, ments made and then presented in the manner As far as I could determine, the artists had no
and to present a fictionalized version of a real of the high fashion show. This they explain intention of grabbing the standard. Their
life event that would appeal to an audience through their desire to use what they call an reasons for participating were mainly light-
accustomed to sophisticated perception of `objective mass-media style' the meaning of hearted. They concocted the costumes for the
visual phenomena.' Lurking behind the mani- which never becomes quite clear in their mani- fun of it, and saw the whole thing as a nice
festo, I suspect, is an American translation of festo. What is clear enough is that they— the visual joke. They had no stake in theorizing
the linguistic culture of France, and specifically poets—are not satisfied with the image of the since most of them did not expect to change the
of Roland Barthes. Although Levi-Strauss traditional poet pouring forth his soul into the course of their own work by means of a fashion
rather than Barthes is named, the authors of word, and sometimes being overheard. They show or anything else. Alan d'Arcangelo, for
the manifesto might have taken a long look at want to fraternize; to be seen; to be collabor- instance, thought it amusing to translate the
Barthes's 'Le Systeme de la Mode'. They seem ative; to be heard in person; to share in the signs in his paintings into another medium, but
to be interested in Barthes's tour-de-force an- kind of visual attention the plastic or theatrical did not expect it would alter his painting.
alysis of fashion as a system of signs other than artist can command. They also want to in- Oldenburg's habitual sense of humour led him
spoken or written language, and have adopted tellectualize, proselytize and introduce theories to propose a blindfolded nude girl whose
his rhetoric of coding, de-coding and trans- of non-verbal communication. They also want clothes would be provided by the poets. Noth-
lating in their explanations. But there are sig- to experiment, and in this case, experiment ing the poets could say would matter to an
nificant areas in which they abandon Barthes's with a Barthes-like notion that 'there is a diff- audience confronted with a beautiful nude.
rigorous logic. erence between a description and that which The eye is the window to the soul, etc., etc.
Barthes, when he undertook his study of this description appears to describe. We are There may have been some involuted motiva-
fashion, began with a generally sociological interested in this difference.' tion on the part of some of the artists who nor-
approach, seeking the significance of the non- As an experiment, the poets must have seen mally work with abstract form. They may
verbal language the individual adopts when that not only is there a difference, there is a have enjoyed the possibility, denied them in
he selects his costume. He eventually aban- problem. The problem is that, as Barthes dis- their style, of manipulating the human body,
doned this 'metaphorical' approach for a struc- covered, the vision has nothing to do with the adorning it, revelling in its nuances and possi-
turalist approach proper to his discipline. He writing and can stand alone. The 'writing' in bilities. Surely the insistent reference to René
discovered, for instance, that the images in this event proved dispensable since the models Magritte in many of the costumes suggests a
fashion literature interfered with his analysis with their extravagant garments upstaged the nostalgia for symbolic figurative art. But be-
of fashion as written. When the book was pub- poets all the way. At best, the blithe little com- yond the pleasures of the flesh, the artists had
lished, it contained no illustrations because, as mentaries (which in most cases are written little investment in the event.
he explained, it was about description which has with more wit and irony by the real fashion Finally then, it was an affair of literary people
nothing to do with vision. Barthes's interest in copywriters) were like Muzak in a crowded, wishing to participate in the mass exodus from
the discourse that issues from clothes, which he noisy dining hall. fixed artistic forms. These poets, by using real
sees as something separate from the clothes I imagine the theorists would say that this was bodies and their coverings or uncoverings,
themselves, and the very means of survival for intentional; that they were 'writing the style' have disembodied their poetry in embodying