Dr Craig Douglas: Fashion & Art: A Cultural Dialogue
Senior Lecturer, Art Theory, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
To refigure the catwalk is to redefine what fashion can be, and the means by which it colludes with or seeks escape from the powers of the commercial market. How has fashion, as a form of consumption, been transformed into a cultural entity re-assembled in the art museum and redefined as a form of artistic tour de force? In this double presentation, we will consider the changing notions of fashion display and presentation that transformed fashion from consumer product displayed in the shop window to objet d’art as seen through artists’ eyes; and from a collection showing on the catwalk to an art performance underlined by theatrical device and artifice. Finally, we will consider the links between art, fashion and museological exhibitions.
Part 2
Often it has been stated that museums are compromised institutions, caught between their dual desires for both authenticity and the spectacular. Displaying fashion in the art museum, while a cultural expression of abstract ideas, is an engagement with the unique vision of the designer mediated through the garments on display. The museum, unlike the shop window and the catwalk is a zone of objectification - a space and a place where the theatre of fashion, the spectacle, and the unique cohabit. Consumerism in museums, unlike that which drives the fashion industry, is acted out through the politics of display and the reception of the museum visitor. Employing selected exhibitions of fashion, fabric and performance, including some from Australian art museums, this paper interrogates and acknowledges the place of the museum as a significant contributor to the cultural dialogue on fashion as art.