Wearable art, also known as
Artwear or "art to wear", refers to individually designed pieces of (usually) hand-made clothing or jewelry created as fine or expressive art. While the making of any article of clothing or other wearable object typically involves aesthetic considerations, the term
wearable art implies that the work is intended to be accepted as a serious and unique artistic creation or statement. Pieces may be sold and/or exhibited. The modern idea of wearable art seems to have surfaced more than once in various forms. Marbeth Schon's book on modernist jewelry (see the section on jewelry below) refers to a "wearable art movement" spanning roughly the years 1930 to 1960. A 2003
New York Times review of a book on knitting refers to "the 60s Art to Wear movement".
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E3DD143CF937A35756C0A9659C8B63&&scp=1&sq=%22art%20to%20wear%20movement%22&st=cse
Most wearable art is made of fibrous materials and constitutes therefore a branch of the wider field of
fiber artFiber art is a style of fine art which uses textiles such as fabric, yarn, and natural and synthetic fibers. It focuses on the materials and on the manual labour involved as part of its significance.-Fiber:...
, which includes both wearable and non-wearable forms of art using fabric and other fiber products. Wearable art as an artistic domain can also of course include jewelry, or clothing made from non-fiber materials such as leather, plastic sheeting, metals, etc.
Wearable fiber art
Artists creating wearable fiber art may use purchased finished fabrics or other materials, making them into unique garments, or may dye and/or paint virgin fabric. A few artists make their own fabrics, for example on
loomsA loom is a machine or device for weaving thread or yarn into textiles. Looms can range from very small hand-held frames, to large free-standing hand looms, to huge automatic mechanical devices. The ancient Egyptians and Chinese used looms as early as 4000 BC.The basic purpose of any loom is to...
.
As with any other art form, the talent and skills of artists in this field vary widely. Since the nature of the medium requires
craftA craft is a skill, especially involving practical arts. It may refer to a trade or particular art.The term is often used as part of a longer word . For example, a craft-brother is a fellow worker in a particular trade and a craft-guild is, historically, a guild of workers in the same trade...
skills as well as artistic skills, an advanced artist can be expected to study
color theoryIn the visual arts, color theory is a body of practical guidance to color mixing and the visual impacts of specific color combinations. Although color theory principles first appear in the writings of Leone Battista Alberti and the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci , a tradition of "colory theory"...
,
chemistryChemistry is the science concerned with the composition, behavior, structure, and properties of matter, as well as the changes it undergoes during chemical reactions...
,
sewingSewing or stitching or Tailoring is the fastening of cloth, leather, furs, bark, or other flexible materials, using needle and thread. Its use is nearly universal among human populations and dates back to Paleolithic times...
, clothing design, and computer software such as Photoshop and
IllustratorAn illustrator is a graphic artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
. Classes in clothing design and marketing may be learned from such colleges as the
Fashion Institute of TechnologyThe Fashion Institute of Technology is a State University of New York college of art and design located in New York City, New York, United States.- The Institute :...
in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
.
The
New ZealandNew Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses , and numerous smaller islands, most notably Stewart Island/Rakiura and the Chatham Islands. The indigenous Māori named New Zealand Aotearoa, commonly translated as The Land of the Long White Cloud...
city of
NelsonThe city of Nelson is close to the centre of New Zealand. It lies at the shore of Tasman Bay, at the northern end of the South Island, and is the administrative centre of the Nelson region....
has gained a worldwide reputation in the field of wearable art, with its
World of WearableArt Awards, held annually since 1987. From 2005, the show moved to
WellingtonWellington is the capital of New Zealand, at the southwestern tip of the North Island between Cook Strait and the Rimutaka Range. The Wellington urban area is the major population centre of the southern North Island and is New Zealand's third most populous urban area with residents. There are ...
. In Australia, the Shearwater Wearable Arts or W.A.V.E. (Wearable Arts Vision In Education) has developed from a High School initiative to become a leading Wearable Arts Event.
Jewelry as wearable art: the mid-twentieth century "wearable art movement"
Some twentieth-century modern artists and architects sought to elevate bodily ornamentation — that is, jewelry — to the level of fine art and original design, rather than mere decoration, craft production of traditional designs, or conventional settings for showing off expensive stones or precious metals. In "Modernist Jewelry 1930-1960: The Wearable Art Movement" (2004), author Marbeth Schon explores unique and innovative wearable art objects created by surrealists, cubists, abstract expressionists, and other modernist artists working in the middle decades of the twentieth century.
http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=modernist+%22The+Wearable+Art+Movement+%22&qt=owc_search For the main article on this kind of wearable art, see
art jewelryArt jewelry is created with a variety of materials not just precious metals and gems. Art jewelry should be compared to expressions of art in other media such as glass, wood, plastics and clay...
.
Extreme examples of wearable art
Not all garments created as wearable art are made from traditional fibers or fabrics, and not all such artworks are meant for ordinary, practical use.
PerformancePerformance art is art in which the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work. It can happen anywhere, at any time, or for any length of time. Performance art can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the...
and
conceptual artConceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
ists have sometimes produced examples which are more provocative than useful.
A well known example is the "Electric Dress", a
burqaA burqa is an enveloping outer garment worn by women in some Islamic traditions for the purpose of cloaking the entire body...
-like costume consisting mostly of variously colored electrified and painted light bulbs, enmeshed in a tangle of wires, created in 1956 by the Japanese Gutai artist
Atsuko TanakaAtsuko Tanaka was a pioneering Japanese avant-garde artist.-Biography:Born in Osaka, on February 10, 1932.. She went to several local art schools where she worked in mostly figurative mode...
. This extreme garment was something like a stage costume. Not really wearable in an everyday, practical sense, it functioned rather as part of a daring work of
performance artPerformance art is art in which the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work. It can happen anywhere, at any time, or for any length of time. Performance art can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the...
(though the "performance" element consisted merely of the artist's wearing the piece while mingling with spectators in a gallery setting).
http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/art/reviews/9937/
In
Charlotte MoormanMadeline Charlotte Moorman Garside was an American cellist and performance artist.She was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. She studied cello from age ten and won a scholarship to Centenary College where she took her B.A. in music in 1955. She received her M.A...
's 1969 piece called "TV Bra for Living Sculpture," she wore a bra made of two small television sets.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE2D7143DF93AA35752C1A967958260
More recently, Canadian artist Andrea Vander Kooij created a group of pieces called "Garments for Forced Intimacy" (2006). According to an essay at
Concordia UniversityConcordia University is a comprehensive public university located in Montreal, Canada, one of the city's two universities whose primary language of instruction is English...
's Faculty of Fine Arts gallery website, these hand-knit articles of clothing are designed to be worn by two people, and they, "as the name states, compel the wearers into uncharacteristic proximity."
http://fofagallery.concordia.ca/ehtml/2007/acting.htm
External links