IN SEARCH FOR IDENTITY
Michael Ho Tutor: Susan Chai
You live wherever you live, you do whatever work you do, you talk however you talk, you eat whatever you eat, you wear whatever clothes you wear, you look at whatever images you see… YOU’RE LIVING HOWEVER YOU CAN. YOU ARE WHOEVER YOU ARE. “Identity” … of a person, of a thing, of a place. “Identity”. The word itself gives me shivers. It rings of calm, comfort, contentedness. What is it, identity? To know where you belong? To know your self worth? To know who you are? How do you recognize identity? We are creating an image of ourselves, We are attempting to resemble this image… Is that what we call identity? The accord between the image we have created of ourselves and … ourselves? Just who is that, “ourselves”? We live in the cities. The cities live in us … time passes. We move from one city to another, from on country to another. We change languages, we change habits, we change opinions, we change clothes, we change everything. 1
1
Wim Wenders, ‘Notebook on Cities and Clothes’, France, 1989
A silhouette can reveal the very essence of a person, animal or object and therefore forms the most basic understanding of identity. The subject is represented through a solid shape, using a singular color – usually black - to illustrate its outline or shape. In figure 1 it forms a starting point to identify and categorize the presented object as a human being based on its silhouette, yet it does not reveal any other trademarks then its mere outline, bestowing a rather mysterious character to the figure. If we are to project the understanding of the silhouette on to the modern age, the notion of identity has attained in a similar way such ambiguity and is in search for a “New Vision”2 . During the mid 18th century portraying people through their silhouette became very popular. It was a cheap and effective alternative option to the portrait-miniature. Artists would either cut out a high quality portrait out from lightweight black cardboard or draw the outline on paper, which was then painted in. The term ‘silhouette’ was particularly important to the world of fashion, as the word itself comments on the outline, hence describes the shape of a person’s body while a piece of clothe is worn.
Yohji Yamamoto in Paris, making final revisions to the show for Spring Summer 1991
2 Jeffrey Saletnik; Robin Schulder, ‘Bauhaus construct: fashioning identity, discourse and modernism’, Routledge, London, 2009, p. 183
For the avant-garde Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto, the silhouette can be the seen as the ethos that drives his work. Born in Tokyo in 1943 while it was bombed by the United States, his father was drafted and killed during the war. “The ruined Tokyo”3 became Yohji Yamamoto’s root and memory of his childhood. The melancholic atmosphere and search for “quietness”4 is engraved in him as a person. Black, a color in which he always is comfortable in5, became Yohji Yamamoto’s everyday life color as he did not want “to disturb people, peoples eyes”6. Different to other colors black does not ‘disturb’ and is detached from any emotions, which therefore allows his work to entirely shift the focus towards the “silhouette or form”7. Yamamoto always begins with the fabric, which then will gradually transit into the imagination of what shape it will create. If we are to take a look at figure 1 again, the mysteriousness created by the silhouette leaves the question whether it is a male or female figure in uncertainty. When Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo (founder of Comme des Garçon) were presenting their clothes for the first time in Paris in 1981, the audience was in shock. “It was “extraordinary, it was a revolution”8. The public was not ready for the avant-garde designs that were brought over from Japan. The western fashion industry of that time tended to be very bright and vivid in appearance. In this regard, presenting a collection, in which the majority of pieces were black was already arousing attention since it was not a color that was appropriate for high fashion. Apart from using the color black, the definition of identity – the identity of the male and female figure – that was put into question by Yohji Yamamoto, using fashion as a means to communicate his Yohji Yamamoto, Fashion show 1981, Paris
vision was revolutionary. When his clothing line Y’s was established in 1977, Yohji
3 Theo Stanley, ‘Yohji Yamamoto: This is my dream,’ 2011 4 Ibid 5 Ibid 6 Ibid 7 Wim Wenders, ‘Notebook on Cities and Clothes’, France, 1989 8 http://bon.se/issue/bon-68/it-was-extraordinary-it-was-a-revolution/
Yamamoto wanted women to wear men’s clothes. His idea was that the coat would guard the woman’s body, which for him was always “mysterious”9. The controversial concept woman wearing men’s clothes seemed to be almost unheard of for the western society during that time. Although society and the fashion industry of the 1980s had started to loosen up the gender preconceptions, particularly with the establishment of the new phenomena of ‘power dressing’ for professional women, the image of the man and woman was nevertheless very much set. We have learnt how to behave masculine or feminine and follow the gender identity that has been imposed on us by our culture. Men would usually be depicted wearing a suit and tie, which would reflect their own ideas of power and control, whereas in women would be wearing a dress and accessories such as earrings, necklaces or a handbag that would be represented passiveness and domesticity. The misread of the woman’s body results in scrutinizing the credibility of identity. Can we still trust identity? The underlying foundation of identity seems to start crumbling with modernity. The latter one shares many of the characteristics that are present in architecture and build space. The most obvious one is “the three-dimensional realization of an idea either by mass or space construction”10. Similar to fashion, the art of sculpture works with the realm of shapes, outlines and volumes. From a traditional understanding, a sculpture is an object that plainly existed in a space. Breaking away from these conventional values, the modern British artist and sculptor Barbara Hepworth introduced a new language and understanding of sculptures, perceiving it as an opportunity to create space within the sculpture. She was born in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in which the landscape would become her childhood recollections. While moving through the landscape she would perceive hills as sculptures that were defined by the surrounding roads. These memories of the landscape would manifested in Hepworth’s work as forms, shapes and Hepworth sees herself as the sculptor who would become the landscape herself. Mostly associated working with wood, she would hollow it out by carving into it, a process that became very important to
9 Theo Stanley, Yohji Yamamoto: This is my dream, 2011 10 Extracts from 'Sculpture', in Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, ed. by J.L. Martin, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo, London, 1937, p. 113
Hepworth in order to express her ideas. The process of making a sculpture form a very intimate relationship between Hepworth and the object, in which the rhythm of movement grows into the sculpture itself. “Carving is interrelated masses conveying an emotion; a perfect relationship between the mind and the color, light and weight which is the stone, made by the hand which feels”. The starting point is formed by the raw material that could be either a stone, marble or a tree trunk which firstly needed to be understood purely for its shape before it would allow for the
“true
appreciation
of
sculpture”11. It took a long time for Hepworth to find her own personal way of making sculpture Barbara Hepworth works on “Curved Form, Bryher II” (1961); Bowness Hepworth Estate
earliest work is realistic, yet
it
already had a monumental feeling.
Over time her work became more and more abstract and would be reduced to purely shape and forms but would always retain the relationship of the human figure to landscape. To many people abstract art is not clear as they are accustomed to pictorial realism, nevertheless it is essential in order to understand the “real sculpture”12. In the non-realistic art, the artist is free to follow his imagination and therefore can fully express himself. In this sense, Hepworth sculptures can be seen as a realization of herself, they are expressing her identity in its very essence.
11
Extract from Hepworth's statement in the series 'Contemporary English Sculptors', The Architectural Association Journal, London, vol. XLV, no.
518, April 1930, p. 384 12 Extracts from 'Sculpture', in Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, ed. by J.L. Martin, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo, London, 1937, p. 113
Following from the idea that sculpture can contain a space within itself, it was taken one step further with the realization of the private museum complex ‘Museum Island Hombroich’ in Germany. Located near Neuss, Germany it was founded by the art collector Karl-Heinrich Müller in 1987. It formed a playground for the German sculptor Erwin Heerich who studied under Joseph Beuys at the Kunstakademie in Insel Museum Hombroich, TR8-95 Archiv 2000; Thomas Riehle
Düsseldorf. From 1982 to 1994 he designed the landscape. They are creating a dialogue
between architecture, landscape and nature. The pavilions were formed out of the most basic geometric shapes such as the circle, the square and rectangle and are now serving as exhibition spaces for the art collection. The design of the pavilions is purely based on form and composition and are regarded as ‘walkable sculptures’ by the artist himself. These pavilions present themselves as an interesting case study, especially because Erwin Heerich is not a trained architect and therefore has a completely different design approach to an architect. The result is evident in the pavilions. There is no real function to the space than to be space itself. Here architecture has been simplified and abstracted to its most basic definition. For an architect the concept of a space to have no function seems strange and pointless. Accordingly, this set of work can be seen as the perfect example, where the boundary between sculpture/art and architecture are completely blurred into a new language. Furthermore, Heerich used to work mostly with cardboard and emphasized that for him, "cardboard, like polystyrene, had no specifically aesthetic or historical connotations, the materials are value-neutral to the largest possible extent,"13 and therefore allowed
13 http://socks-studio.com/2015/01/30/erwin-heerichs-abstract-geometrical-compositions-and-other-works/
for creative freedom. In a similar manner to Yamamoto, both artists are trying to appreciate the materials to be almost free of any connotations, any identity. The general appearance of the pavilions can be described as very ‘humble’. The sculpture’s exterior skin is constructed by a mundane layer of bricks, whereas the interior is dominated by perfectly proportioned white rooms. It is surprising for the visitors to enter the sculpture, as the exterior is very misleading in terms of what it actually contains. This depicts a further loss of identity, in which there is a total disconnection between the interior and the exterior space, “an interior with no corresponding exterior, and an interior with no corresponding interior - a disparity [that is exists for the modern man but] was alien to ancient peoples”14. It is a circumstance that developed throughout time and reflects the modern man and his identity crisis. The agenda and relationship of exterior and interior is one of the key aspects in the work of the Austrian architect Adolf Loos. From his perspective architecture was entirely about the interior space and therefore design should be based from the inside out. The exterior space for him did not have to have any relationship to the interior, creating an ambiguity that Adolf Loos always had valued. Since the design is based on the interior, Loos’s view on the interior furnishing were very strong. Form and material, the same old dilemma that runs throughout all creative fields are forming the foundation
of
Loo’s
interior
spaces.
Furnishing the house according to him should not be based on the architect but should be the ‘Turm’, Museum Insel Hombroich, 1988; Thomas Riehle
client’s choice. He demonstrates this principle one carpet on the floor and hung four other
carpets to form the wall. In this exemplar the concept of the wall that was always associated with a flat and rigid surface to divide or contain a space has been reinvented. The separation of the interior from the exterior for Loos already begins with the structural frame that is needed to support the carpet/ wall. The wall becomes a garment that envelopes the space, it would “cover
14
Rüdiger Safranski, ‘Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography’, W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition, p.119
the occupants as clothes cover the body”15 and form an entity in itself. After having analyzed the work of Erwin Heerich and his interior spaces, which are completely submerged in white, one can see a strong relationship to the interior space of Lina Loos’s bedroom; the “bag of fur and cloth”16. It conveys an in between state of architecture and fashion or how Loos described it, the “membrane between them”17, where “clothes” have become abstracted to such an extend in which they start exist as architecture, similar to the Herrich’s pavilions in Germany that eventually have manifest themselves as sculptures.
Adolf Loos Bedroom for his wife Lina Loos
The relationship between architecture and other creative fields that is established – in this case fashion – supports the idea that architecture in its definition is not as precise as it was with its traditional understanding of being a process and product of planning, designing and creating buildings and other physical structures. Architectural representation was redefined by Adolf Loos, is it necessary for the modern man to redefine identify? The the metropolitan individual is immersed in a world full of abstract relationships, contradictions and changes to which he has to 15 Beatriz Colimina; Jennifer Bloomer, ‘Sexuality and space’, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY, 1992, p.93 16 Beatriz Colimina; Jennifer Bloomer, ‘Sexuality and space’, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY, 1992, p.93 17 Ibid, p. 95
adjust through “thousand individual modifications”18, only then is he able to develop a “protective organ” against the external events that seems to threaten him - which is fashion. This brings us back to our starting point of Yohji Yamamoto. His work is often rejected by the majority of people in our contemporary society. People are still trying to express themselves through ‘fashion’ that imposes a certain value through color, shape or materiality in order to establish an identity or social status. The modern man is blinded by brands, especially the luxurious ones such as Louis Voution, Chanel or Armani that are often creating a social disparity, which is hindering him to see beyond this ‘fake’ layer that envelopes him. Turning back to our starting point, it might be true that Yohji Yamamoto has been born in Japan, but he does not necessarily represent the country and there is no nationality impregnated in his clothing. As mentioned before, he has always been seeking for the mysterious character of the silhouette which resulted in him simply working with black as there is no color needed to represent the outline. We can therefore argue that his clothes are the clothes of the metropolitan individual as, “we have become more refined, more subtle. Primitive men had to differentiate themselves by various colors, modern man needs his clothes as a mask.”19 In contrary to other brands Yohji Yamamoto is looking for an uniform look. Rather than imposing an identity onto the wearer, Yohji Yamamoto’s clothes ensures the freedom to unfold your own personality. His clothes cover the individual but at the same time detach him from himself as an anonymous figure. Individuality is not expressed through what we wear anymore, the exterior has been rendered obsolete “all its richness must manifest in the interior”20. What we wear is not sufficient anymore in order to establish an identity, to define who we are. Especially in the realm of architecture the loss of identity is evident. What really defines what architecture is nowadays? Is it a place where we live in? Is it a shelter? Or can it be any sort of structure that exists? More and more often, architecture is recurring as a term within the fields of photography, art and sculpture. It seems like “Identity is out, out of fashion. Exactly. Then what is in vogue, if not fashion itself? By definition, fashion is always in”21. This is only possible through the endless revisions it goes through, hence fashion will always reflect society in its current state. The new introduced trends often seem abstract, a word where the previous mentioned artists and their work find a common ground. "'Abstract' is a word which is now most frequently used to express
18
19
Georg Simmel, The metropolis and mental life, Syllabus Division, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1961, p. 12
Beatriz Colimina; Jennifer Bloomer, ‘Sexuality and space’, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY, 1992, p.93 Ibid, p.94 21 Wim Wenders, ‘Notebook on Cities and Clothes’, France, 1989
20
only the type of the outer form of a work of art; this makes it difficult to use it in relation to the spiritual vitality or inner life which is the real [identity]”22. Identity turns out to be hidden and needs to be rediscovered. It has gone beyond its classical definition and we are finding ourselves in an identity crisis. In order to regain the understanding of the modern man’s identity, the traditional understanding needs to be challenged and revaluated. Identity can not be described through a fixed definition anymore. The subject of identity needs to work in a similar way in which fashion is working that is to be in a constant state of flux. The metropolitan individual needs to first abstract his identity in order to reveal its true understanding and then constantly redefine the term itself in a manner of a ‘trend’ for otherwise “we are hollow men”23.
22
Extracts from 'Sculpture', in Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, ed. by J.L. Martin, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo, London, 1937,
p. 113 23
T.S. Eliot, ‘Hollow man’, 1925, England
Bibliography Jeffrey Saletnik; Robin Schulder, Bauhaus construct: fashioning identity, discourse and modernism, Routledge, London, 2009, p. 183
T.S. Eliot, ‘Hollow man’, 1925, England Beatriz Colimina; Jennifer Bloomer, ‘Sexuality and space’, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY, 1992 Rüdiger Safranski, ‘Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography’, W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition Jeffrey Saletnik; Robin Schulder, ‘Bauhaus construct: fashioning identity, discourse and modernism’, Routledge, London, 2009 Georg Simmel, The metropolis and mental life, Syllabus Division, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1961
Filmography Theo Stanley, ‘Yohji Yamamoto: This is my dream,’ 2011
Wim Wenders, ‘Notebook on Cities and Clothes’, France, 1989
Webography http://socks-studio.com/2015/01/30/erwin-heerichs-abstract-geometrical-compositions-and-other-works/ http://bon.se/issue/bon-68/it-was-extraordinary-it-was-a-revolution/