Dennis Hollingsworth

Scrapbook: Klein Via Vreeland

Tracing backwards in the stream of my encounters, from William Klein to a movie that Stephanie and I watched recently, Diana Vreeland - The Eye Has To Travel. We caught a glimpse of Klein's work in the Vreeland biopic and jumped down the bunny hole as soon as we got home. My only question at this point is if William Klein's work was a parody of the fashion industry and politics, then did the biographers think that the parody had shone an informative light on the character of Diana Vreeland?

Obviously so.

So, what of the veracity of Klein's critique of aesthetics/consumer culture/"Imperialism", then?

Further down the bunny hole, we sight Marc Jacobs (who is referencing Edie Sedgwick), and into this game, I threw down the card of Daniel Buren, I wikisnip:

...he had abandoned traditional painting for the vertical stripes (8.7 cm wide, alternating between white and a color), which have become his signature. Working on site, he strives to contextualise his artistic practice using the stripe - a popular French fabric motif - a means of visually relating art to its situation, a form of language in space rather than a space in itself. Denoting the trademark stripes as a visual instrument or �seeing tool� he invites us to take up his critical standpoint challenging traditional ideas about art.

He began producing unsolicited public art works using striped awning canvas common in France: he started by setting up hundreds of striped posters, so-called affichages sauvages, around Paris and later in more than 100 metro station stations, drawing public attention through these unauthorised bandit style acts. In June 1970 he put stripes on the front and back of Los Angeles bus benches without permission. In another controversial gesture he blocked the entrance of the gallery with stripes at his first solo exhibition....