ART
God's Gaultier
/ Derek McCormack
09.01.06
Kathy Acker’s ghost. She’s shopping in San Francisco. She stares into a window. A second-storey window. What she sees: garments floating, fluttering. Gaultier, Westwood, Comme des Garçons.
“This,” she says to herself, “is the greatest store I have ever seen.”
Kathy Acker’s ghost moves among garments.
“Everything,” she says, “is so me.”
“Everything,” she says, “fits like a dream.”
As it should. The clothes are hers. Were hers. Kathy Acker died in 1997. Novelist, essayist, librettist—she left behind a beautiful body of work. She was also a shopper. She left behind a lot of labels.
Too Young to Die, Too Fast to Live. A slogan slapped on a Jean-Paul Gaultier gown. The gown’s vintage. Gaultier showed it in the late 1980s. A Vivienne Westwood suit coat. Norma Kamali body suits. Betsey Johnson babydolls. Yohji Yamamoto.
“This isn’t a store,” she says. She’s right: It’s an art gallery.
This isn’t a store. It’s a séance.
How to summon the spirit of a shopaholic?
Display the clothing she loved. Kathy Acker’s ghost slips in and out of outfits. “Who did this?” she says. “Dodie?”
Dodie Bellamy, a brilliant poet and Acker’s contemporary. She installed Acker’s clothes at New Langton Arts Center in San Francisco this past summer. “Kathy Forest” she called the show.
“We hung the clothes from fishing line,” Bellamy tells me. “About twenty-five pieces, making sure there was enough space for people to walk between each piece. The clothes twirled in the breeze.” Shirts, skirts, shrugs. “Our idea was a forest of clothes, and after the fact, I named the exhibit.” If this was a forest, where were the trunks? Trees don’t twirl. Bodies do. Shades of a gallows. Shades of hangman’s trees. Corpse copse.
Shades of many things. A weird window display. A Halloween haunted house. A spiritualist’s salon where revenants roam. Bellamy was the medium. Q: What size dress did the spiritualist wear? A: Medium. Kathy Acker’s ghost wafts among her wardrobe. She lived in these clothes. These clothes lived through her. She was, without a doubt, the most spectacularly-clad writer I’ve ever seen. Who she was was wrapped up with what she wore.
I first came across Kathy Acker in an article in The Face in 1984. Acker, the magazine stated, “will wear wide, wide boiler suits over zipped and frilly nylon blouses, T-shirts exquisitely slashed, sinister silver jewellery of cockroaches and skeletons.” Accompanying the article, a portrait of Acker by Robert Mapplethorpe. She’s in a sack of a sweater. Her favourite designers, she said, were New York J.D.s (juvenile delinquents) who “don’t know much about the shape of the body yet.” “Street fashion is where the art is for poor people,” she said. “I can’t afford to buy a painting so if I get some money I go buy a dress.”
“This,” she says to herself, “is the greatest store I have ever seen.”
Kathy Acker’s ghost moves among garments.
“Everything,” she says, “is so me.”
“Everything,” she says, “fits like a dream.”
As it should. The clothes are hers. Were hers. Kathy Acker died in 1997. Novelist, essayist, librettist—she left behind a beautiful body of work. She was also a shopper. She left behind a lot of labels.
Too Young to Die, Too Fast to Live. A slogan slapped on a Jean-Paul Gaultier gown. The gown’s vintage. Gaultier showed it in the late 1980s. A Vivienne Westwood suit coat. Norma Kamali body suits. Betsey Johnson babydolls. Yohji Yamamoto.
“This isn’t a store,” she says. She’s right: It’s an art gallery.
This isn’t a store. It’s a séance.
How to summon the spirit of a shopaholic?
Display the clothing she loved. Kathy Acker’s ghost slips in and out of outfits. “Who did this?” she says. “Dodie?”
Dodie Bellamy, a brilliant poet and Acker’s contemporary. She installed Acker’s clothes at New Langton Arts Center in San Francisco this past summer. “Kathy Forest” she called the show.
“We hung the clothes from fishing line,” Bellamy tells me. “About twenty-five pieces, making sure there was enough space for people to walk between each piece. The clothes twirled in the breeze.” Shirts, skirts, shrugs. “Our idea was a forest of clothes, and after the fact, I named the exhibit.” If this was a forest, where were the trunks? Trees don’t twirl. Bodies do. Shades of a gallows. Shades of hangman’s trees. Corpse copse.
Shades of many things. A weird window display. A Halloween haunted house. A spiritualist’s salon where revenants roam. Bellamy was the medium. Q: What size dress did the spiritualist wear? A: Medium. Kathy Acker’s ghost wafts among her wardrobe. She lived in these clothes. These clothes lived through her. She was, without a doubt, the most spectacularly-clad writer I’ve ever seen. Who she was was wrapped up with what she wore.
I first came across Kathy Acker in an article in The Face in 1984. Acker, the magazine stated, “will wear wide, wide boiler suits over zipped and frilly nylon blouses, T-shirts exquisitely slashed, sinister silver jewellery of cockroaches and skeletons.” Accompanying the article, a portrait of Acker by Robert Mapplethorpe. She’s in a sack of a sweater. Her favourite designers, she said, were New York J.D.s (juvenile delinquents) who “don’t know much about the shape of the body yet.” “Street fashion is where the art is for poor people,” she said. “I can’t afford to buy a painting so if I get some money I go buy a dress.”