February 28, 2010

French Potatoes

What we classify as good enough to show off, in public, in galleries, at the Olympics etc. What passes the test for US products? What doesn't? Some products are sold in South Korea before they are sold in the US as to see how well they did hear measuring whether the profit in South Korea would make a profitable impact in the States.

The separate consumer locations now classify social status and where you can shop. The separate portrayals of classy and not classy all depend on where you buy it rather than what you buy. Fashion judges everywhere seem to have thier eye on you in Reality TV shows like What Not To Wear and Project Runway.

The "Revocable Aesthetics" mentioned in Nicolas Bourriaud's The Radicant are served to us as the-best-possible-thing-you-could-ever-need and decided upon by a set hierarchy that was put into place by who knows who - God supposedly.

So if something else maybe unpleasant was placed in the window what would everyone say?
NYTimes - I think there was a naked person on a corner window and the caption was - "its not inappropriate it's art". So would you approve of a naked woman or man standing in a window display at a corner in New York City?

Well should there be limitations to some media? What media? What art? Should what is displayed in windows be something that can only be sold to the public? Artists can take that even further and represent ideas that are 'sold' to the public. Persuasive arguments that convince people to support this or that idea displayed in a corner store window. What about a politician's message or protester signs?

Is anything in a corner store window aesthetically pleasing because it is displayed as such? What makes it more valuable to be on the Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri rather than in the JCPenny outlet store down the way? I guess this is in terms of fashion, but fashion is 'supposedly' an artform where the public as the opportunity to wear it around in public for everyone to see rather than keep it in a gallery. Does the art of fashion mean since everyone can enjoy it everyone can dictate it?

According to the French, some American women dress like sacks of potatoes and look like ghosts without their makeup and hose, or witches with their flat footed shoes. So the french determine American fashion now? Well no. I am just illustrating the effect other countries and other perspectives have on each other in the art/fashion/music world.


(and maybe Jackie Kennedy)

One question Bourriaud asks;
"How do artists take account of the space in which they live?"

Through exploration and contact with other cultures something new emerges and an Fremerican or Amerench fashion emerges so instead of just looking like a sack of potatoes one can go about looking like...just Potatoes.

Now the world will have to strive for relating art and food in order to 'equally distribute' this necessity as well.

2 comments:

  1. There was a pair of really silly pants that is traditional apparel back home but looks absolutely ridiculous. A year or so ago, those pants really took the fashion world by storm and everyone everywhere started wearing these pants. It was all over The Sartorialist. I don't really know whether all those fashionistas in New York actually had any idea regarding the origin of these unflattering, trés chic pants but I think something about the name suggested Indian. So I really want to ask Mr. Nicholas that if I wear these pants now, would people think I'm so last season because we are all potatoes or they will be more sympathetic because I'm a Subcontinental-Potato?

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  2. The speed of the fad certainly more intense than it was pre satellite dish. There was always the radio broadcasting Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles and related fab fashion. Can't lose site of power of past "new media"....

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