Adam Geczy - Fashion and Art

Finally a book on the complex relationship between art and fashion adopts a different approach. Instead of the usual attempts to decide where the boundary lines might be drawn, this anthology examines the areas where art and fashion meet. These essays are not only vital for scholars and students within both disciplinesfor anyone and everyone, this is a highly enjoyable book.

Pamela Church Gibson, Reader in Cultural and Historical Studies,
London College of Fashion, University of the Arts, London

A book that both traces, and participates in, the decay of the idea that Fashion is the superficial Other of Art. Between the covers of this book lies all the evidence one might need about the sustained collaboration between modernist artists and fashion designers. Through a wealth of historical detail and conceptual sophistication this book tells a fascinating story whose relevance will lie far beyond Fashion Studies.

Michael Carter, author of Fashion Classics from Carlyle to Barthes

There have been previous books written on Fashion and Art, but none is of this standard. In its reach and sophistication, this book is a stand-alone in its field. For many years, fashion and art have been points of discussion and debate, and the subject of isolated disciplinary studies. Geczy and Karaminas and the key authors assembled here have done us a great service in elevating this topic to an area of serious interdisciplinary study, giving it coherence and circumscription. Fashion and Art is a landmark book for whose appearance couldnt be more timely.

Joseph H. Hancock II, Drexel University, Philadelphia

A much awaited and exciting collection bringing together some of the most prominent scholars and curators working within fashion (studies) and art (history), Fashion and Art boldly problematizes the conflicting, yet symbiotic relations between art and fashion.

Louise Wallenberg, Director, Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University

Using thickly described and critically analyzed case materials, the authors in this edited volume break new ground in the ongoing debate regarding fashion and art. From euromodernities to contemporary, global fashionscapes, this volume sheds refreshing light on the ambiguities, anxieties, and aesthetic pleasures associated with the fashionart relationship.

Susan B. Kaiser, Chair of the Division of Textiles and Clothing at the University of California, Davis

Edited by
Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas

This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

English edition
First published in 2012 by
Berg
Editorial offices:
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA

Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas 2012

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Berg is an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN 978 0 8578 5214 4

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To Julian, Michelle, and Dante.

We would first like to thank our editor, Anna Wright from Berg Publishers, for her patience and support. We would like to acknowledge Karen Langley from Dazed and Confused magazine, Marie OMahony and Maria Blaisse, whose work is the inspiration for the cover of this book. We are also indebted to the generosity of photographer Jason Kibbler for the cover image.

Thank you to Professor Brad Buckley at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney; Professor Desley Luscombe, Dean of the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building; and Professor Lawrence Wallen, Head of Design at the University of Technology, Sydney, for their unwavering support.

Most importantly, we are indebted to the contributors themselves who saw the worth of this project. We hope that this volume will be the beginning of many such discussions of this caliber.

Herbert Blau is Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor of the Humanities at the University of Washington. He has also had a distinguished career in the theater, as cofounder and codirector of the Actors Workshop of San Francisco, then codirector of the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center in New York, and as artistic director of the experimental group KRAKEN, the groundwork for which was prepared at California Institute of the Arts, of which he was founding Provost and Dean of the School of Theatre and Dance. Among his books are Take Up the Bodies: Theatre at the Vanishing Point; The Audience; To All Appearances: Ideology and Performance; and recently, Sails of the Herring Fleet: Essays on Beckett. He has also published a book recently on fashion, Nothing in Itself: Complexions of Fashion, and a new collection of essays, The Dubious Spectacle: Extremities of Theatre, 19762000, as well as As If: An Autobiography and Reality Principles: From the Absurd to the Virtual.

Hazel Clark is Research Chair of Fashion Parsons the New School for Design, New York. She is a design historian and theorist, specializing in fashion and textiles, and in issues of design and cultural identity. Her publications include: The Cheongsam; Old Clothes, New Looks: Second Hand Fashion (coedited with Alexandra Palmer); The Fabric of Cultures: Fashion, Identity and Globalization (coedited with Eugenia Paulicelli); and Design Studies: A Reader (coedited with David Brody).

Diana Crane is Emerita Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender and Identity in Clothing and The Transformation of the Avant-Garde: The New York Art World, 19401985.

Joanne B. Eicher is Regents Professor Emerita at the University of Minnesota and a specialist in the Anthropology of Dress. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Berg Encyclopedia of World Fashion and the Berg series Dress, Body, Culture. She is the author of Dress, Adornment and The Social Order, The Visible Self, Dress and Identity, Dress and Gender, Dress and Ethnicity and Fashion Foundations.

Adam Geczy is an artist and writer who is Senior Lecturer in Studio Art and Art Theory at Sydney College of the Arts, a faculty member of the University of Sydney. With more than twenty years of artistic practice, his mixed-media installations, videos, and performance-based works have been exhibited throughout Australasia, Asia, and Europe to considerable critical acclaim. He is coauthor with Michael Carter of Reframing Art. An author of numerous articles and several books, his Art: Histories, Theories