God Save my Shoes

The Bata Shoe Museum hosted a preview of God Save My Shoes, a documentary film about women's passionate and often obsessive relationship with shoes. The film features top shoe designers Christian Louboutin, Manolo Blahink,  and Bruno Frisoni, as well as women shoe lovers/collectors from New York, Los Angeles, Paris and Milan, including Dita von Teese and Fergie. Experts, including Dr. Valerie Steele, Director and Curator of the FIT Museum, and Elizabeth Semmelhack, Senior Curator of the Bata Shoe Museum, give thought-provoking interviews on women's obsession with high heel shoes.

This movie looks at the reasons why 5-inch stilettos have become contemporary symbols of femininity, embodying pleasure and pain, sensuality and seduction, but also effectively hobbling women's gait and impeding their mobility. Elizabeth Semmelhack compared such shoes to the chopines worn by women in Renaissance Italy as well as to "hooker" shoes, showing actual examples thereof. Although some people might argue that high heels are a symbol of women's power, she suggested that if such shoes really represented power then men would also wear high heels.


Some of the quotes from the film:

"A shoe tells who you are."  Fergie

"These are S and M shoes. Stand and model only." Christian Louboutin salesman

"For me, a high heel can never be too high." Christian Louboutin

"Sexual commodification is an important part of high fashion today." Elizabeth Semmelhack

"There was a time in my life when I was really unhappy and the only thing that made me happy was a pair of new shoes." Beth Shak, Shoe Collector

The documentary DVD premiers in New York tonight - March 30th, 2012. See it if you can. It is a beautifully crafted and thought provoking film written by Julie Benastra.

Creative Process Journal: My Double

My Double (Work in Progress) by Ingrid Mida 2012

This is the doll that I have decided is my double. I found her in Paris and she is normally dressed in a burgundy knee-length sheath dress with a matching coat and pill box hat. She is smaller than a Barbie, not as tall, not as busty nor as curvy. Her hips are narrow and she is petite, as I am. Her glasses are a match for my own.

My research -- into the uncanny, fashion dolls, wunderkammer, and the museum as a metaphor -- will be translated into designing two outfits for my double that will be placed inside a glass "coffin". The outfits will be constructed from scraps of material from my mother's dresses that I photographed in the series "My Mother/Myself".

My Mother/Myself #3, by Ingrid Mida 2010

My Mother/Myself #1 by Ingrid Mida 2010

These dresses will be fit for my double and then laid inside the glass coffin with archival tissue, like in a museum.  The glass "coffin" is a metaphor for the museum and for my ultimate death. For we shall all die, and my greatest fear is that I will die like my mother, as a prisoner of my body.

Progress on the dresses has been slow. My double is petite and I was careless with the first version of her dress, shown in the top photo above. The fabric is silky and frays easily and I made some errors in handling it. It looks okay but it is not perfect and I am making it over. I will construct a muslin toile for the next attempt because I have very little fabric to play with. My drive for perfection permeates all that I do and my double deserves no less.

Creative Process Journal: The Dress in The Museum

Untitled by Valerie Belin, 1997

This dress, stuffed with archival tissue, is from a series of works by French photographer Valerie Belin that were exhibited at the Musee des Beaux-Arts in an exhibition called "State of Things, States of Places" in 1997. The work is described in the exhibition catalogue as follows: "These dresses are like bodily remains...still moulded in places to the shape of their former presence, giving the appearance of the body itself." (Muller 78)

Having been behind the scenes in many museums, and having surreptitiously taken a few photos of beautiful things inside museum storage facilities, I am drawn to this photo.... It evokes so many things for me including the duality of beauty and decay, life and death, as well as my affinity for museums and  the ephemeral nature of fashion.

If I could, I would create a series of photos taken behind the scenes in a museum like the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musee de la Mode in Paris... But baring that, I will have to find some other way of depicting this idea. It seems to bring me back full circle to the original source of inspiration for this creative project, which was a quote from Elizabeth Wilson's book Adorned in Dreams when she wrote:
"The living observer moves with a sense of mounting panic, through a world of the dead…We experience a sense of the uncanny when we gaze at garments that had an intimate relationship with human beings long since gone to their graves. For clothes are so much part of our living, moving selves that, frozen on display in the mausoleums of culture, they hint at something only half understood, sinister, threatening, the atrophy of the body, and the evanescent of life.” (Wilson 1).

References:

Muller, Florence. art and fashion. London: Thames & Hudson, 2000
Wilson, Elizabeth. Adorned in Dreams. London: Virago Press, 1985.

Creative Process Journal: Museum in a Box

Museum in a Box (My Mother/Myself Series) by Ingrid Mida 2012

Through my process work for this creative project, I took a journey of surreal wonder. I was inspired by the Viktor and Rolf exhibition and followed that spark into research about Freud's Uncanny, fashion dolls, and the museum as a metaphor.  Although I expected to create something related to fashion dolls, this process work has revealed a different path.

Museum in a Box 2 (My Mother/Myself Series) by Ingrid Mida 2012

These small glass boxes are like the glass vitrines of a museum. By curating a number of objects in my studio, I have created assemblages of memory. Each box contains objects that were either collected by my mother (tea spoons, watch parts, rose buds) or made by my mother (lace doilies). The doll hands are my own additions to reflect the graceful movement that is no more, since she can no longer make or hold such delicate things.

Museum in a Box 3 (My Mother/Myself Series) by Ingrid Mida 2012

Watching my mother suffer in the prison of her body with late stage Parkinson's disease is one of the most painful stories of my life. Much of what I do is haunted by that experience and I am acutely aware of the need to make the most of each day.

Museum in a Box 4 (My Mother/Myself Series) by Ingrid Mida 2012

Within these boxes, I have become a curator of my own museum. It is a museum of memory and love.

Museum in a Box 5 (My Mother/Myself Series) by Ingrid Mida 2012

Creative Process Journal: The Metaphor of the Museum

Joseph Beuys Felt Suit at the MOMA
Photo by Ingrid Mida

In contemporary art, context plays a role in defining what is considered art. One of the most well known examples of how this works are Marcel Duchamp's readymades, including the urinal, bottle-rack, bicycle wheel and snow shovels, which were presented as artworks. These mass-produced objects, displayed in the context of a gallery, challenged the notion of "aura" and prestige associated with objects of art. Since Duchamp there have been an array of artists who have used context to define their work such as Joseph Beuys did with the Felt Suit.  Others, like artists Sophie Calle,  Fred Wilson and Cornelia Parker,  have explored the metaphor of the museum as inspiration for their work.

The Birthday Ceremony by Sophie Calle 1991 

Sophie Calle played with the notion of the museum vitrine in her work The Birthday Ceremony 1991. In fifteen medical-style vitrines, Calle assembled an inventory of items received as birthday presents between 1980 and 1993. Each year on her birthday she had a birthday party, archiving her presents and exhibiting them in this display.

In Fred Wilson's The Museum: Mixed Metaphors (1993), the artist placed a man's suit amongst a group of traditional African robes and sculptures inside the Seattle Art Museum. This installation included a cheeky parody of the museum labelling system which read "Certain elements of dress were used to designate one's rank in Afica's status conscious capitals. A grey suit with conservatively patterned tie denotes a businessman or member of government. Costumes such as this are designed and tailored in Africa and worn throughout the continent." (Putnam 135)

In 1995, Cornelia Parker and Tilda Swinton presented a performance piece called The Mayse at the Serpentine Gallery in London. In this work, Tilda Swinton lay asleep in a glass display case during gallery hours. In the surrounding gallery space, Parker presented a collection of borrowed items from various museums that were related to people from history, such as the brain of Charles Babbage (1760-1871).

I am fascinated by the concept of the museum as a metaphor and as a place of artistic intervention. If I could, I would mount my own intervention into the museums in Toronto. Their staid, conservative programming needs some shaking up in my view and I believe they would benefit from seeing outside the box so to speak. But that is unlikely to happen in time for the unfolding of this particular project. I suppose a girl can dream....


References:
Putnam, James. Art and Artifact: The Museum as Medium. London: Thames and Hudson, 2009.
Tate Gallery Web link  http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=26293

Creative Process Journal: The Cabinet of Curiosities for Fashion

The Cabinet of Curiosities at the Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty Exhibition at the Met
(Photo by Ingrid Mida 2011)

Most museums today offer an aesthetic of pristine perfection. This connoisseurship bias rejects anything showing signs of use (the sweat or stains of life on a dress for example) or items that are broken or damaged. Order, perfection and education seem to be the guiding principles of museum presentations today, leaving little room for imagination and wonder.

This is quite unlike the idea of the Wunderkammer or Cabinet of Curiosities that were popular in the 15th to 19th centuries (see my previous post). These rooms or cabinets were packed full of objects meant to inspire delight and wonder at the juxtaposition of rare and unusual objects. The aesthetic of dense accumulation of objects is rarely seen anymore although I can think of one museum where it still exists (The Redpath Museum on the campus of McGill University in Montreal).

The Concise Dictionary of Dress, Blythe House 2010
Photo by Julian Abrams

Artists and designers often accumulate a range of objects in their studio for use in the background of their still-life works or as a source of inspiration. Some have used such objects in their artworks and the idea of the cabinet of curiosities has been used as a concept of presentation within a number of exhibitions of fashion and art. The ones that come to mind include: The Viktor and Rolf Retrospective at the Barbican Gallery in London (2008), The Enchanted Palace at Kensington Palace in London (2010), The Concise Dictionary of Dress at Blythe House in London (2010), and Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2011). In each case,  objects of fashion, such as dolls or accessories, were presented in a type of cabinet or room and inspired a sense of surreal delight. Using the concept of the cabinet of curiosities, I intend to create a museum in a box so to speak for this creative project.

Creative Process Journal: Doll Houses and Wunderkammer

The Doll's House of Peronella Oortman c. 1686-1710
Inspiration for Viktor and Rolf's doll house

Another interesting aspect of the Viktor and Rolf 2008 retrospective at the Barbican Gallery was a 6-metre high doll's house which could be viewed from three different levels of the gallery. The giant Viktor and Rolf doll house references the seventeenth century cabinet houses or doll's houses from the collection of  the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where Viktor and Rolf live and work. Designed by Siebe Tettero, the Viktor and Rolf dollhouse, was three storeys, with each room containing one or more dolls dressed in a Viktor and Rolf creation.

The concept of Viktor and Rolf's doll house reminds me of a cabinet of curiosities, or what was once known as the Wunderkammer.

Wunderkammer of Ferrante Imperato, Naples 1599

As a predecessor to the contemporary museum, the Wunderkammer differed widely from the clinical, purist aesthetic common in museums today. Celebrating curiosity and wonder, the Wunderkammer was popular during the 16th to 18th centuries.  Based on the idea that "an entire cosmos could be controlled within the confines of a room", an individual would present their collection of rare and unusual objects therein. The intent was to invoke a sense of wonder and stimulate creative thought. Objects were arranged to highlight aesthetic pleasure and sometimes optical illusions were created through mirrors and special lenses as a way of further distorting reality. The notion of the bizarre, the rare and the precious was celebrated with a sense of capricious lack of rational classification.

The Cabinet of Curiosities played with the same concept but on a smaller scale, generally confined to a cabinet which revealed the collection as drawers and panels were opened. According to Walter Benjamin, the notion of collecting is a form of memory in that "Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories." (from Das Passagen-Werk, Volume 1 quoted in Putnam 12).

Museum by Joseph Cornell c1944-48

Many artists have also been inspired by the idea of Wunderkammer, using assemblage and bricolage to create collections of objects that provoke or inspire through their dialectical juxtaposition. In 1944-48, Joseph Cornell created an assemblage of objects called Museum which was presented in a red velvet lined box which emphasized the delicate contents of the glass specimen bottles contained therein.  More recently, artists like Andy Warhol (Raid the Icebox 1970), Jeffrey Vallance (The Travelling Nixon Museum 1991) Damien Hirst (Dead Ends Died Out, Explored, 1993), Fred Wilson (The Museum Mixed Metaphors, 1993), Sophie Calle (The Wedding Dress, 1999), and others have explored the concept of the museum as a medium of artistic expression.

Raid the Icebox by Andy Warhol, Museum of Art, Rode Island School of Design, 1970

I want to play with the concept of the curiosity cabinet or the more contemporary version of a museum in a box fascinating and use this form in some way as part of my creative project. How that will come together at this point, I'm not sure, but the concept  of containing memory in a box fills me with wonder.

References:

Evans, Caroline. The House of Viktor & Rolf. Ed. Susannah Frankel, et al. New York: Merrell, 2008.

Putnam, James.  Art and Artifact, The Museum as Medium. London: Thames and Hudson, 2009.

Creative Process Journal: Les Jeux de la Poupee (The Doll's Games)

Les jeux de la poupee by Hans Bellmer 1949  

Hans Bellmer (1902-1975) was a German artist, who used self-crafted life sized dolls assembled from a range of materials in photographs which explored erotic themes. He hand-coloured the images and published ten of them in a book in 1934. Bellmer made a second doll in 1935 using the head and hands from the first doll and also incorporating a number of ball and socket joints which allowed the doll to be manipulated into a variety of contortions. The doll had interchangeable limbs and other parts, as well as an extensive wardrobe. He photographed this work in 1935 but it was not published until 1949, in part because his work was considered 'Degenerate' by the Nazis (Wood 316). Bellmer's is associated with the Surrealist movement, and after moving to Paris in 1938, he spent some time in an interment camp in the south of France alongside Max Ernst.

Various authors have suggested two sources of inspiration for Bellmer's work. In 1931, Bellmer attended Max Reinhardt's production of The Tales of Hoffman in which there is a mechanical girl/doll named Olympia who seduces a living man (Freud also mentioned this literary work in his essay The Uncanny). As well, Bellmer's mother apparently sent him a box of childhood toys which included broken dolls (Sulick 14). Whatever the inspiration, Bellmer was not the only artist using dolls or mannequins at the time. Man Ray, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Andre Masson and others all incorporated dolls into their artistic practice around this time.

I find Bellmer's photographs disturbing, but also strangely fascinating. The bizarre range of contortions and dismembered limbs are haunting, but as abstract forms, the images are striking in their virtuosity of composition.

References:

Sulick, Amber Rae. Hans Bellmer's "Les Jeux De La Poupee". Ed. Hans Bellmer and Joint Graduate Program in Photographic Preservation and Collections Management, 2008.

Wood, Ghislaine. Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design. London: V&A Publications, 2007.

P.S. The Canadian Opera Company is performing The Tales of Hoffman in their spring production lineup (April 10 - May 14, 2012). I plan on attending. For more information, visit the COC website here.

Creative Process Journal: Barbie

Barbie

In 1959, when the Barbie doll was first introduced onto the market by Ruth Handler, more than 350,000 units were sold and since then an estimated that over 1 billion dolls have been sold. She has survived a range of assaults, including the firing of Ruth Handler from the company in 1971 and backlash from feminists and women's rights advocates. Robin Swicord, an author and screenwriter, said "In countries where they don’t even sell makeup or have anything like our dating rituals, they play with Barbie. Barbie embodies not a cultural view of femininity, but the essence of woman” (qtd. in Lord 80). 


Barbie was a respectable version of the Lilli doll in Germany. Lilli was "a German doxie - an ice-blond, pixie-nosed specimen of an Aryan ideal" that was popular among German men who often placed her on the dashboards of their car or gave the doll as a gift to their girlfriends (Lord 8). Handler recast Lilli as a wholesome all-American girl and marketed the doll to young girls. The rest is the stuff of marketing legend.


Barbie has been characterized as "a space-age fertility symbol: a narrow-hipped mother goddess for the epoch of casarean sections" (Lord 75) and a scaling up of her hour glass proportions suggest that she would be unnaturally slender. According to Professor Janet Treasure, an expert on body size and image at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, "Barbie's body shape and proportions are among the many things that play up to this 'thin ideal' which is ubiquitous these days. The promotion of dolls with such a body shape, and other things like size zero, have wider public health implications, like an increased risk of eating disorders." (Qtd. in BBC News On-line Magazine 2009)

Barbie by Jocelyn Grivauld

Nevertheless, the "mythic resonance of her form" and her longevity has made Barbie into an icon of popular culture (Lord 6). She has served as inspiration for a wide variety of artists including painters like Andy Warhol and Grace Hartigan, mixed media artists like Maggie Robbins (who hammers hundreds of nails into Barbies) and photographers like Barry Sturgill, Susan Evans Grove, Felicia Rosshandler, Dean Brown,  David Levinthal and Jocelyn Grivauld (who has "appropriated" the style of Dean Brown in depicting Barbie in iconic art references).


There is something about Barbie that I can relate to. Perhaps her embodiment of "perfection" is at the root of it, because those who know me well, know that I am haunted by the unattainable standard of  perfection. I can also relate to her German roots as well as the hostility that her petite frame engenders. In seeking out a doll double for my creative project, I would have to say that Barbie might be the one, although I'd definitely need to dress her in a more geeky, academic type of look.


References:
Lord, M. G. Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll. 1st ed. New York: Avon Books, 1994.

Skariachan, Dhanya. Mattel profit tops estimates, sales miss. Reuters in Globe and Mail. On-line Published Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012, Accessed February 29, 2012 Link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/mattel-profit-tops-estimates-sales-miss/article2320652/ 

Van der Broek, Anna. Barbie Inspired Art. Forbes Magazine Published March 5, 2009. Accessed February 29, 2012. 

Link: http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/05/barbie-boll-art-business_art.html

Winterman, Denise. What would a real life Barbie look like? BBC News Magazine. Tuesday, March 9, 2009. On-line. Accessed February 29, 2012. Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7920962.stm

Creative Process Journal: The Doll in my Studio

Her Face, Photo by Ingrid Mida 2012

I have a doll in my studio -- a Santos Cage Doll that I purchased a number of years ago in a vintage furniture shop. I didn't even know what kind of doll she was when I acquired her, and only learned later that these types of dolls were used as a form of altar for homes in Spain and Mexico. She has sat unadorned, until now. All this research into dolls has led me to want to do something with her, so I've begun to make her a skirt out of mesh. In the photo you can see the basque for the skirt around her hips. This isn't intended to be the final product of my research, but just one path in my creative exploration.

Santos Cage Doll in Studio, Photo by Ingrid Mida 2012

Creative Process Journal: Fashion Dolls

Jointed wooden doll, 17th-18th century

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, fashion dolls were used by dressmakers as a way of illustrating the latest styles to their potential clients. Dolls dressed in the latest Parisian styles were on display in fashionable shops and also were sent regularly to London and to the courts of Europe. The dolls were considered precious and sometimes even had diplomatic immunity during times of war. Although the most fashionable dolls originated from Paris, dolls were also made up in England and sent to the American colonies, where England was the dominant cultural influence.

19th Century Fashion Doll by Simonne Paris c.1877-78

Although fashion dolls were largely supplanted by journals as a tool of disseminating fashion information, they have not disappeared. In 1945, a travelling exhibition of Parisian fashion dolls was conceived and presented called Theatre de la Mode in an effort to restore the haute couture industry after WWII. With outfits designed by Dior, Lucien Lelong, Piguet, Carven, Nina Ricci, Jean Patou, Schiaparelli, the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture showcased the best of French fashion - in miniature. Milliners, shoemakers, glovemakers, and jewelers all contributed to the project to help fulfill the designer's vision.

Theatre de la Mode doll by Lucien Lelong photographed by David Seidner c.1990 

With blank faces, wire bodies and real hair, these small scale mannequins (27.5 inches in height) were clothed in miniature versions of the designer's clothing and accessories. Everything was replicated with precision: pockets opened, buttons could be unbuttoned and handbags unclasped. The effect was surreal and the audience, who had "been starved for beauty, for glamour, for amusement after four years of occupation" streamed in (Braun-Munk et al 46). An estimated 100,000 visitors saw the exhibition in Paris before it travelled to cities like London, Barcelona and New York. The dolls were packed away in a basement in San Francisco for several years before being sent to the Maryhill Museum of Fine Art in Washington. They have been redisplayed on occasion including an exhibition at the Musee des Arts Decoratif in Paris in 1990 and at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1991.

Theatre de la Mode doll heads, Photograph by David Seidner c.1990

The photographs by David Seidner for the book Théâtre De La Mode seem to embody the essence of Freud's uncanny. Juxtaposed in contemporary contexts, with blurred backgrounds evoking decay, these photos of the dolls present them as objects posited on the boundary between animate and inanimate, life and death. This is fuel for the creative process....

References:

Fox, Carl. Doll. Ed. Herman Landshoff. New York: Abrams, 1972.

Mac Neil, Sylvia. The Paris Collection. Grantsville, Md.: Hobby House Press, 1992.

Théâtre De La Mode. Ed. Eugene Clarence Braun-Munk, Edmonde Charles-Roux, and Susan Train. New York: Rizzoli in cooperation with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991.

Creative Process Journal: Freud and The Uncanny

In 1919, Sigmund Freud wrote an essay called The Uncanny in which he described the intense feeling of strangeness that can occur when encountering something that is both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, causing doubt as to whether or not the object is, in fact, alive. The essay begins with a semantic analysis of the origins of the German word for uncanny, which is unheimlich and its opposite, heimlich which means homely. He ties the notion of uncanny to something that is familiar but strangely unsettling, such as dolls, doubles and waxwork figures. 

Wax-head doll. English c.1882

Freud also analyzed the idea of the double in his essay, drawing on the writings of Otto Rank who linked the double to “mirror-images, shadows, guardian spirits, the doctrine of the soul and the fear of death”. Doubles were used in ancient civilizations, where artists formed images of the dead as “assurance of immortality” and an “energetic denial of the power of death”.  Freud suggested that the double “having once been an assurance of immortality”, could also be an “uncanny harbinger of death.” (Freud 142). He also describes the fantasy of being mistakenly buried alive as "the most uncanny thing of all". 

Twin dolls c. 1840

In the 2008 Viktor and Rolf retrospective at the Barican Gallery, the use of dolls as mannequins was a curatorial choice designed to invoke a sense of the uncanny. The curator Caroline Evans mentions this in her essay from the exhibition catalogue and asks "If the dolls in the Barbican came to life, what might they not do? With career ambitions to match those of their makes, they may even now be planning their future in the powerhouse of Viktor and Rolf" (Evans 20). 


Image credits: H. Landshoff from The Doll (1972)


References:
Evans, Caroline and Frankel, Susannah. The House of Viktor and Rolf. London: Merrell. 2008.
Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. London: Penguin Books, 2005.

Fox, Carl. The Doll. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc, 1972.

Creative Process Journal: The Viktor & Rolf Dolls

Viktor & Rolf doll for 2008 retrospective

The dolls used in the Viktor and Rolf retrospective at the Barbican Gallery in 2008 were based on a nineteenth-century bebe type doll intended as a plaything and produced by the Maison Jurneau in Paris. A Belgian doll maker used real human hair, bisque porcelain faces and paper-mache bodies for the Viktor and Rolf dolls.

Bedtime Story Autumn/Winter 2005-6 Viktor & Rolf

There were two sizes of dolls used in the exhibition at the Barbican: 70 cm tall dolls dressed in miniature versions of the designer's collections and life-size dolls dressed in the actual garments. The shift in scale created an Alice in Wonderland illusion and it was somewhat surreal.

Cover of the exhibition catalogue

The cold perfection and the haunting gaze of the Viktor and Rolf dolls at the Barbicon – both large and small – depicted what Freud has defined as uncanny (and which will be the subject of an upcoming post). Caroline Evans referenced Freud’s essay in the exhibition catalogue and she also pointed out that “the double poses a challenge to the idea of individuality and the doll straddles an uncomfortable boundary between the living and the dead.” (Evans 19).

References:

Evans, Caroline and Frankel, Susannah. The House of Viktor and Rolf. London: Merrell. 2008.
Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. London: Penguin Books, 2005