Violence in creativity

I'd have to apologize for my temporary death online. I've whizzed back and forth the Asian continent in the last 6 days for one of the most intense competition experiences I've ever had, only to bumble into a new school term and looming examinations and confront the icy realism of having to deal with matters of practical consequences alongside matters-in-the-cloud, and a generally very lousy aesthetic environment with worldly negativity floating around like it's nobody's business. And of course I turn to the alternate continuum with alternate people and an alternate energy balance that is the Internet, and for now I've decided that the best way to combat the dreary, almost vulgar lull of it all is to explore the concept of violence in creativity, through a medium that is very close to my heart: fashion. And of course this form of ammunition is not sustainable, because that is the nature of violence, and society is constructed around gravitational spheres such that even the strongest missiles will bend under sheer pressure when met with them. 


I guess I would start with the anti-artist of today's theme. 

And of course there isn't a need to put a face to the name, because, he is after all the wizard, fiction and omnipresence of the fashion industry. What I'd like to bring into focus today is that it is not very difficult to find out what lurks beneath the man himself, the man as an artist, the man's creative identity -because like all brands he unwittingly conforms to certain standards, and as a result his creations lack the luster of violence which characterizes the core and spirit of creation. Where Pablo P. was able to actualize his inner visions with a precision of a shotgun and a provocation that hinged upon the intensity of sexual energy, Karl's rifle, though loaded, remains silent. 

To illustrate my point I have chosen to include a range of sketches that Karl did up in a collaboration with Hogan. Not my favorite of his sketches, but I wanted to see a cohesive collection of sketches -no matter that the strand of cohesion was not strung through his own artistic outlook but was instead secondary to it, the consciousness and ugly awareness that the designs were slated for eventual marketing and sales with another brand with its own set of rules on top of everything. 

Images the courtesy of telegraph.co.uk

The above serves as visual evidence of how Karl's creative process is like an almost jarring composition of frozen music. The dominant melody is one which rings with an almost eerie note of finality -yet staccatos of thought and consideration, the more abstract and less certain bits of an artist's creative process, puncture the piece at odd intervals, the messy script amongst the coordinated color scheme and shades of shadow and background meant to complete. The music which trickles out of the sketches appears almost engineered, as if the designer himself had stopped short right before bursting into a passion of violent improvisation, depriving the piece of its defining characteristics and hence its name. In the same vein, but in a significantly more eloquent and well-written piece by (favorite) fashion journalist Robin Givhan:

For a historian who takes the long view of fashion, Patricia Mears, deputy director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, has little interest in Lagerfeld’s work—even though the Couture Council, which financially supports the museum, honored him in 2010. “It’s not really fashion forward. It’s very derivative. It’s a mishmash of trends ... He draws what he thinks is interesting. There’so no continuum. It can be kind of scattershot,” she says.

The lack of the spirit of a continuum perhaps best sums up why there is a stark void of violence in Karl's work, and the man himself, or at least the public projection and perception of him. Then again, there may not even be a line between those two. Head to the above article to read Givhan's viewpoint, and decide for yourself.


On to the artists whose creations I feel embody the brave, violent soul of creation. 

Meadham Kirchhoff 

Images the courtesy of style.com

This collection was presented with the violent flourish that usually accompanies works of the theatrical tradition. Works of theatre are one of the few that champion the delicate balance between the immediacy of artistic creation and experience -the splinter or creative fraction of a second during which the artist gains the impetus for creation and formulates his artistic vision, as well as the instantaneous and often subconscious response ignited within an audience when introduced to a piece of art- and the maintenance of a continuum of creation, the anchoring of a piece of art, the quality that gave birth to timelessness and variety in interpretation. The collection did just that -as the warrior princesses storm down the runway, the various visual motifs and individuality of the characters seem to shift continuously, bristling with a life fueled by both the artist's and the audience's imagination. 

Vivienne Westwood

Images the courtesy of style.com

While the continuum -the source of violence, originality and truth- of Kirchhoff's collection was the evolution of the unscripted play enacted on the stage of their inner theatres, the quality of it all being that of an unpolished diamond, Westwood managed to retain this excruciating violence in the impeccable, Japanese culture and Baroque era inspired faces of her jewels, and if we were to connect her collection to the aesthetic vibes of a certain physical space it would be that of a performance museum.

Female protagonists

I figure I should set the pen in motion again, this time not only just to avert a fungi attack on my mental faculties, but also an internal pandemic of unhealthy perfectionism. In other words, I have to loosen the braid of the rope which governs the creation of each blog post (coming up with this statement alone had cost me a span of five minutes, during which I held an internal debate, oscillating between decisions to use a pot of stew or a rope as a metaphor for what I wish to express. I decided on the latter) in order for myself to remain accountable to this blog, and the beings on Earth and galaxies beyond which may be interested in it. And in simpler, more unrefined terms yet, I have to stop being a chicken when it comes to creation, both for myself and for other people -and I'm only working in prose now, no visuals. So it's supposed to be a breeze, so I'm supposed to be able to make peace with the plain text I'm offering to you. Which today would begin with...

The Life and Times of Female Protagonists in Film and Literature

Or, the lace-shrouded, bonbon-wrapped interactions they have had with the author-in-question, including conversations held over cold English tea and Madeleines, in between recitations of French poetry and Valentine's Day cards, garlanding of flowers and making sculptures of scented wax; how she identifies and empathizes with them, marvels at the antics of teenage girlhood in different eras and places all around the globe, and muses about her own reactions had she been clothed in corsets and late Victorian-era dress and sent to a certain mystical geographical landmark or had she a wealthy benefactress to fund her education and enrich her travel experiences, like some of the characters have. 

1. Isabel Archer, The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

She will have no pictorial representation, because not a single one (covers of various editions of the novel, portrayals in movies, interpretations done up by artists scattered around the Internet) to be found fulfills my vision of her; and if I can venture further to make the selfish assertion, does sufficient justice to her portraiture. It is a selfish declaration, one that is tipped with the poison of literary hypocrisy as deadly as belladonna, because I'm giving myself a deliberate break from my personal policy, and probably also the policy held by most if not all the people who have literary indulgences, which holds that there is no set interpretation of any piece of art, because the character-in-question stares out from the novel at me with a conviction and definite quality that can only be conveyed through ones reflection in the surface of a lake, or a piece of self-portraiture, or one done by someone who loves you, who seeks to comprehend you. I have overstepped my authority as a reader, because not only have I kidnapped the character-in-question on the pretext of a laughably commonplace occurrence of having established an immediate connection with her upon our acquaintance, I am also attempting to dictate other readers' response towards her -a crime as a literary student, a double penalty as one who respects, at the utmost, the liberty of an artist. 

In any case, Henry James, in his characteristic florid writing style which spares no detail and deals with things from under wraps, rolled out each shade and gradient of color of Isabel's character with majesty. (He writes of the highly 'original' beauty who, at the core of her remarkable worldview, values her independence over everything else, "She carried within herself a great fund of life, and her deepest enjoyment was to feel the continuity between the movements of her own soul and the agitations of the world.") But this post isn't a review of James' writing style, and I guess I should try and provide a decoding of why the bells of resonation were struck so audibly when I met Isabel. Perhaps to tell you that both her overt actions and internal landscape, others outward perception and inward sentiment towards her completely correspond with that of my own is my best explanation. But because one doesn't usually claim a "beautiful, intelligent and independent" (as quoted from the blurb) female protagonist to be ones alter ego (and because I know for a fact that I fall short of Isabel of her many traits, most notably her sharpness when interacting with others), I only have the capacity to assert that her "lava of existence" (refer to my first post) is not dissimilar to my own. 

For that reason, she remains faceless in this blog post, only unveiling herself to me and her creator, Henry James.

The following characters do have faces though:

2. Victoria Winters (played by Bella Heathcote♥) and Carolyn Stoddard (played by Chloe Moretz♥), Dark Shadows by Tim Burton

Film stills

My attraction to Victoria Winters began the very instant she was introduced in the film; the alacrity and quiet smile with which she pronounced her newly assembled name, the flame of mystery she spoked in the hippie van from which she hitched a ride and her trek towards the monumental dwelling of the Collins in her neat and quaint uniform rustling vaguely of the 70's. Her slightly airy, ethereal quality was rekindled and intensified at certain points of the film -where we witness her interactions with the ghost of Josette du Pres, for instance -the context of her very beginning was also reminiscent of another proclaimed novel of Henry James, The Turn of the Screw, which too speaks of a governess, except that Winters was better able to accommodate the vast, ornamented interior of the Gothic architectural fixture she was situated in, as compared to the governess in Henry James' tale who internalized her bewilderingly romantic situation and haunting beauty of her surroundings and companions to the point where her sanity was threatened. 

I think Carolyn is really a more intense version of anyone who is thick in the teenage girlhood experience, in the sense she is so brutally honest about it -and she is probably also an encapsulation of all the brooding and angst that bleeds out of our hearts during this phase. I mean, how many of us have not built a fortress out of our room in defense of everything else that lies outside, drenched it with references to popular culture, and danced to ourselves against a backdrop of strange, hypnotic music blaring out of a gramophone? But what gives her poignant Riot Girl character an individualized edge is the juxtaposition of her external landscape with her internal. The enemy she is pitted against is of a literally much more daunting scale than compared to ours -the four walls keeping her from eloping to New York and with Alice Cooper are those belonging to the Gothic tradition, her room is her defense mechanism against and escapade from a surrounding steeped in excessive aesthetics and tradition but one which is fertile ground for romantic adventures. Then again, this would all feel very familiar to a teenager trapped in suburbia -it shows that the rebellion unique to teenage girlhood can resist even Goth architecture, and that the werewolf Carolyn turns out to be lives within all of us.

3. Miranda St Clare (played by Anne Louise Lambert), Picnic at Hanging Rock by Peter Weir

Film still

"I know that Miranda is a Botticelli angel." 

How else can one respond to a film which revolves around a geographical presence symbolizing the epitome of Nature's mystery -its elixir of life, with a flock of girls in their budding teenage years donned in the delicate fabric and elaborate silhouettes of late Victorian-era dress under the guardianship of an isolated educational institution as its main players, and a yet stronger soundscape simmering with the excitement of a St. Valentine's celebration, sexual repression and flute-playing, other than to be shaken thoroughly to ones hearts core at the end of it, trembling with the terrifying beauty of it all? Relenting myself to the annoying tendency of a 21st century viewer to re-imagine the movie in the light of contemporary times, I would have liked the same Victorian dresses -corsets intact, but this time knee-length. But in the modern Digital and Information Age, I think it would be close to impossible to re-enact the effect which the girls' disappearance gripped the local neighborhood and their school -the effect which was like the permeation of slow poison and the viscosity of honey, the suspense accentuated by the sensual pace with which everything unraveled. 

4. Cecelia Lisbon (played by Hanna R. Hall), The Virgin Suicides by Sofia Coppola

Film Stills of Cecelia's room

Cecelia was the youngest of the Lisbon sisters -the sister who documented her life in a rainbow-emblazoned journal, the sister who an had exceptional Virgin Mary presence in her life, the sister who was the first to go.

We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn't fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.

Meditation

I don't have much to offer at the moment, so I figure I'd let you look at the clockworks of my brain, which means you would have to bear the self-centered and sentimental nature of the following. It still primarily deals with fashion. I hope it opens up an artery for an interesting conversation though; let me hear your thoughts. 


1. Phases I, II, III, IV and ongoing

I. I remember when I first started out I wanted all the visuals. I wanted fashion as architecture on a monumental scale. I had a very fierce and strict onus for the designers who rolled their collections out on style.com. They had to shock and please, thrill and delight and overstimulate my senses. I don't think I cared so much about structure in what inspired me as to momentum -I relished the heart-throbbing rhythm that is the core of fashion in its truest sense. This was probably something borne out of my entry into Tumblr, where stream of consciousness is key. The many things that appealed to my seven senses went straight from the point of excitement with my neurons to my online weblog. Amidst the color and lightning, it was the phase where I became sensitive to beauty. Sensitivity breeds adrenaline, dependency and tears -soon it was second nature for me to recognize beauty, to want to tear beauty out of all those editorials and faces and fabrics and preserve it in amber. It also awakened a need in me to have that beauty in my life, and it is here my first carefully-considered outfit makes its awkward debut (which I remember vividly and fondly): a pair of white shorts with a multicolored bohemia scarf used as a casual belt with a black long-sleeved DKNY top, a brown handbag borrowed from my mom and Converses which were 2 sizes too large for me, but I wore them anyway.

II. Some time around here, I became attuned to standards. The classical hierarchies and pecking orders of Tumblr blogs, editorials, brands, names. I unwittingly sifted out a number of inspirations which were my previous darlings from my Tumblr, my conversations with friends, and eventually my mind entirely -because they were "low" on the list. Suddenly that energy was channeled towards advancement -of what sort I have not figured out as of now. 

III. Henri Cartier Bresson: Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst. Do not look at them.

Ira Glass: All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, 

is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. 

Spurring the realization of an artistic potential within oneself is usually good taste, that sensitivity to beauty. That is why you end up despising your own creative handiwork, because it does not live up to your good taste. It is at that peak of displeasure that I find myself attempting to consolidate personal style and seek taste in my relationship with fashion. It is difficult, this period of absolute uncertainty and ginger treading. 

IV.  There is now an alarming need to streamline my choices pertaining to style. It has to be perfectly in tune, pitch and all, with my personal philosophies, my mood, myself as a character in its entirety. I need to identify with myself, to fully comprehend and take charge of my interaction with fashion. I want to exert absolute control over it, for it to dance to my own unique tune and no other. I want to be as powerful as the Pied Piper of Hamelin. I want to manipulate fashion, to extort everything I want from fashion in the way I want it.

For this to happen, I need to come to terms with myself