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by Olesya Tourkina: What happens when a museum object and haute couture are brought together? |
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The artist Olga Tobreluts literally dresses a digital sculpture of
Aphrodite (Aphrodite with Eros and Pan, first century C. E., the National
Museum) in clothes from Versace (but she does not identify with Aphrodite
as did Joanna Frueh in the performance described in "N. Paradoxa", vol. 1,
1998). In the virtual space of the new technologies she unites that which
has its own form--sculpture--and that which takes on the form of
another--clothing.
Formed on the host-parasite principle, this symbiosis of sculpture and clothing nevertheless looks fairly ambivalent: it is not clear who is the host in this union, who the parasite. The sculpture shows through the clothing, so Aphrodite is not so much concealed as she is revealed under her dress. Since the clothing Aphrodite wears reveals her figure and gives her back her sensuality, becoming as it were a second skin, the robed Aphrodite appears more undressed than a bare statue. In the end, it is hard to say whether Aphrodite is "promoting" Versace, underscoring that firm's allure with her contours, or whether the fashionable clothing brings the goddess to life by paradoxically allowing her to become personified. In the process of dressing, Aphrodite as it were finds herself. Thanks to the art of weaving, a ritual occupation practiced by women for centuries, she transforms the ideal. Weaving might serve as an allegory: the weaving of identity. In particular, this is demonstrated in popular cinema when the heroes change their attire in virtual reality: in the television series "V.R. 5," for example, the heroine Sydney Bloom appears in a new outfit every time she enters a new virtual space. Tobreluts is not attempting to create yet one more ideal by garbing Aphrodite in samples of haute couture. The goddess's "immortality" is not valorized as a sign of high fashion (which we would expect in an advertisement). Aphrodite does not acquire individuality in order to become an object of imitation (in the process of being dressed the sculpture loses its "idealness"); on the contrary, the symbolic membrane of clothing allows the goddess to identify with the ideal Versace customer. |
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With childlike eyes and dyed hair, Aphrodite recalls the characters of
Greek mythology come to life in Jean-Luc Godard's "Mepris" (1963), who are
reassigned to the great film mythologist of the twenties, Fritz Lang. It is
not for nothing that the artist speaks of her desire to "create from
sculpture an image of contemporary man, or as far as possible to impart the
sculpture of ancient Greece and Rome as it was perceived by the people of
that time." Aphrodite entices, but we should be careful: on her chest she
bears the head of the Gorgon Medusa, a symbol designed to scare away
unintended onlookers, a symbol of the goddess Athena. (It is true that the
priestesses of Aphrodite would sometimes don a terrifying Medusa mask when
sacrificing animals to their mistress.) The head of Medusa is the symbol of
Versace. Placed on the aegis, it is a symbol of chastity which brings death
to he who removes clothing without the consent of the woman wearing it,
thus accentuating the clothing and placing a ban on the naked body.
Beautiful as Aphrodite and unapproachable as Athena, the image seduces,
with Medusa's gaze protecting it from being unmasked. The head of
Medusa--like the head of the Russian bogatyr separated from the torso but
still guarding his sword; like the phallus exhibited for worship in the
museum--is separated from its owner. All three are terrifying castration
symbols. Aphrodite has been "castrated" by the artist, who has chosen to
dress only the upper body and has deprived Aphrodite of her companions Pan
and Eros, fertility and madness. The part is presented in place of the whole, thus
demonstrating the principle of secondary symbolization: in the network of
signs the head of Medusa is already perceived first and foremost as the
symbol of a house of fashion. Aside from Aphrodite, Apollo (wearing
fashions from Moschino), Hermes (Gucci), and Antinous (Lacosta) have also
been admitted to the "Fashion Olympus" created by Tobreluts....
Behind a mask, under clothing, under veils, Aphrodite is concealed and revealed. Wrapped in symbolic veils, dreams unmask themselves in much the same way as fashionable clothing exposes an ancient sculpture. The countless sons of Hypnos, the god of sleep, appear to men in various guises, as animals or natural phenomena, but Morpheus alone among them imitates men. Having changed a thousand times in the virtual space of sleep, he represents thousands of new images, images that appear for an instant and just a quickly slip away.
Translated, from the Russian, by Thomas Campbell
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©1998 The Museum of Modern Art, New York