The Sole of Architecture Part II

From two weeks ago--"Regarding exhibiting shoes as a work of art:  Why should the space be occupied by this material?  What would justify our time spent viewing these objects?  Was it purely an aesthetic experience?  Richard Martin's final question to us is particularly apropos to this blog and the upcoming exhibition at MOCA – are shoes the most architectural expressions of the fashion phenomenon?"

I left you two weeks ago to ponder the questions above and in all fairness, I should say that I’ve had several years to think about them (as a student, as a fashion historian, and as a museum professional) since my conversation with Richard Martin so many years ago. 

Let me deal with the defense of fashion as museum object first.  When fashion was first shown in a museum setting it was primarily as a social history tool – something to capture the spirit of the time, an illustration of who we were before who we are now.  It was often used in conjunction with other objects, shown in the same rooms as furniture, paintings, and other decorative objects but all were used to primarily convey a social history message.  This changed in the mid-20th century when James Laver’s groundbreaking exhibition at the Met refocused the viewer’s gaze onto the objects themselves and not their place in the timeline of social history. 

Since then, the tension between fashion as art object and fashion as social phenomenon has continued and even curators as accomplished as Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton express unease with this aspect of their work (see “Dangerous Liaisons” and “Anglomania”, two recent shows placed within the period rooms of the Met’s decorative arts department). 

So I would suggest that in an atmosphere where even those who proliferate the concept are unable to soundly justify its rightful place within the lexicon of art, the average viewer is hard pressed to find ease with the subject of fashion as art and fashion as art museum object.  This, in turn, creates an environment where the best defense for the presence of fashion in an art museum is largely an aesthetic one.  Fashion, like abstract painting or ultra-modern decorative art design, can exist outside its original context as a covering for the human form, ignoring the body for which it was designed and, as James Laver so artfully did, draw the viewer’s gaze to its component parts and aesthetic whole.

With that said, I’d like to beg your patience and put off the discussion of architecture and shoe design until next week.  So, until then, make sure you pay a visit to MOCA or LACMA or Boston MFA to make up your own mind about the relevance of fashion in an art museum setting.