A friend of mine recently asked me what I’m up to these days and, since you may find the following project somehow inspiring if you are a fashion designer, I’ve decided to use this space to answer her email.
So, what I have been up to recently (among the other things...) is looking at the work of German avant-garde artist Hans Richter with a Japanese photographer and friend, Katsuo Mifreki, trying to develop ideas for surrealist prints for textiles taken from Richter's films.
As you may know, Richter was a painter, graphic artist, director and producer. Influenced first by Cubism and then by the Dada movement, he shot very experimental and abstract films.
At present we are still very much into abstractions (Rhythmus 21, Rhythmus 23 and Rhythmus 25 - 1921, 1923 and 1925), optical illusions and distortions (Filmstudie, 1926) and flying bowler hats and guns (Vormittagsspuk or Ghosts before Breakfast, 1928), while we are also wondering in which ways can Richter's political activism be applied to fashion. Richter believed that the artist's duty was to be actively political, opposing war and supporting the revolution. Now, if a fashion designer is an artist, can a fashion designer be politically motivated and which are the politics behind the fashion creation? Since Richter also shot a film entitled Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947) in collaboration with Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Alexander Calder, Darius Milhaud and Fernand Léger, we are also working on another level, trying to discover which are today’s dreams that money can actually buy. The film - divided in segments ("Desire" by Max Ernst, "The Girl with the Prefabricated Heart" by Fernand Léger, "Ruth, Roses and Revolvers" by Man Ray, "Discs" by Marcel Duchamp, "Ballet" and "Circus" by Alexander Calder, and "Narcissus" by Hans Richter) - tells the story of an ordinary man, Joe/Narcissus (Jack Bittner), who discovers he can see the contents of his mind unfolding whilst looking into his eyes in the mirror and starts selling tailor-made dreams to frustrated and neurotic people. I'm embedding at the end of this post Leger's fragment since it has got some interesting connections with fashion. We're not sure yet which will be the answers to our questions, but I can assure you that, so far, Richter has inspired us to tackle quite a few interesting and thought-provoking issues.
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Excellent post. It makes me realize the energy of words and pictures. I learn a lot, thank you! Wish you make a further progress in the future.
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