It was hard work because he wanted to make every piece by himself, stubborn as he was, not hiring anyone to help him. This was done in order to keep the “product” authentic and pure. It took 3 months working 15 hours a day to finish the 2 collections. They sold with success and it was then that he decided never to make this type of costume jewelry on a large scale again. It seemed that his artistic talent was being wasted on something so fleeting and frivolous as fashion. During the same time period as the jewelry, inspired by all the excitement, Dirk Marwig devised and designed together with his girlfriend a “Do it yourself TShirt kit which he called “UCREATE”. It sold for $25 to many artmuseum stores in the United States including the Guggenheim and Whitney Museum stores in New York City, the Museums of Contemporary Art in Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles including the largest toy store in New York City, F.A.O.Schwartz. See photos:
The UCREATE box The UCREATE logo Image taken from the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago 1988 gift shop catalog. Painted example by Dirk Marwig
The large department store J.C. Penny offered to pay $15.000 for the ownership of the trademark and distribution of the product. Because of the product’s success in an upscale market, the little amount of money offered seemed unfair, so the young couple refused to sell. The consequence of this decision being that J.C. Penny imitated the UCREATE, downscaling every aspect of the product, turning it into something cheap and ugly, which on top of it sold for half the price! The market was now saturated with the new cheap J.C. Penny version and with other big companies joining the party and producing horrible knockoffs. This was the absolute death sentence of the U Create. It was then also when Dirk Marwig realized that he was not cut out for the cutthroat rag trade.
Photograph of Dirk Marwig in his studio taken by Linda Covello in 1988 beside an untitled painting done a few years earlier.
Money, time and energy were spent and tensions in his relationship were high, so Dirk Marwig decided to spend a few months away from New York City. He went to Germany and at his parent’s house dedicated his time only to his painting and to his newly discovered love (through the making of jewelry): sculpture. The initially only 3month long period turned in to a 6month long episode during which he sold a very large canvas to an acquaintance from his earlier years spent in Frankfurt. Unfortunately no photo reference exists of this painting. Here are some recovered images of sculptures and one painting from that time. From top left to bottom right: 1) The Couple (Wood) 2) Scream (Ceramic) –side view 3) Scream (Ceramic) –semi front view 4) Mediterranean Plate (Ceramic) 5) Domina Black and White composition ( Oil on canvas) 6) Mediterranean Bowls (Ceramic) 7) Tattoo on Wrinkly Suntanned Skin Vase (Ceramic with oil paint) 8) Landing on the Face (Ceramic)
Upon returning to Manhattan with most of the work he had done in Germany, he encountered an unchanged domestic situation. Distance had grown between the young couple, which depressed him very much. He had no patience or desire to put up with the rules of the city and did not even try to present his work to the galleries. Existence without love to him seemed absurd and futile. New York City was a great place to live if you had love, youth, hope, strength and, of course, money. It seemed to him as if he was losing the first four and would never be able to attain the latter. At 29 years of age he was tired and disillusioned and felt the urge to escape the rat race once and for all.
So, one autumn evening after having a minor dispute with his girlfriend, Dirk Marwig left his apartment on 12th street taking with him only a little backpack filled with photographs of his recent accomplishments as a reminder to himself of the things that he was capable of doing. He began to walk the long way uptown to the George Washington Bridge and with nothing to lose chose to hitchhike west, by chance ending up in Laredo, Texas on the Mexican boarder. During this adventure he soon realized the absurdity of this naïve escape attempt. Encountering extreme ignorance, exploitation, deceit and brutality along the way, Dirk Marwig returned to New York City a month later, in the same fashion he had left. After this misadventure, he made up his mind to leave the New York and with that, the United States in order to move to Spain, Barcelona being his destination from which he had stored such fond teenage memories. Two months before his departure, he met with famous French hautecouture designer Christian Lacriox, who just happened to be in town staying at the Plaza Hotel in order to give him photos of his recent accessory collections to establish some kind of future collaboration between the two. This was meant as a kind of backup plan in case everything in Spain went wrong.
Not speaking a word of Spanish and not knowing anyone in Spain, Dirk Marwig left New York City and his long time girlfriend forever in February of 1990. He arrived in Madrid on a oneway ticket with photographs of his work, a few drawings, aquarelles and suitcase of clothing, planning to take a train or bus to Barcelona as soon as he could. One day in early spring while strolling through the streets of Madrid, Dirk Marwig walked up to a newsstand and stumbled upon an issue of French Vogue. He quickly flipped through it and to his disillusion and disappointment found that Christian Lacroix had obviously incoporated the ideas from the photos given to him earlier in New York to compliment and highlight his latest haute couture creations. No mention or credits were given to Dirk Marwig, who was living at that time a financially meager daytoday existence in Spain’s capital. This was the straw that broke the camels back and the moment he decided to ‘reinvent’ himself. In comparison to the “Big Apple”, Madrid felt like a small to town him. The pace was slower and the Mediterranean lifestyle more in accordance with his personality. Unlike the false, awkward and pretentious AngloSaxon approach to social interaction that he was accustomed to from New York, no protective shield was necessary in Madrid. The Spanish people he met throughout his first few months brought out the best in him. His bright, humourful and charismatic personality that was dormant for so many years in New York suddenly began to bloom again in the new environment. Mixing socially and avidly embracing a new language and culture, he openly exchanged his ideas at first in French, English or just plain ‘sign language’. Enjoying the diverse company of the many new people he had met, Dirk Marwig immediately made lifelong friends, felt welcome and at home in Madrid and therefore never moved to Barcelona.