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JOURNAL ARTICLE

Target publication

Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, Bloomsbury Press

http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/journal/textile/

Louise Baker

Second skin: used clothing and representations of the body in the work

of Louise Bourgeois and Christian Boltanski

Abstract

Both Louise Bourgeois and Christian Boltanski appropriate used clothing in

their work. With particular focus on Bourgeois’ Pink Days and Blue Days and

Boltanski’s No Man’s Land, I will discuss how each artist subverts traditional

representations of the body, constructing alternative identities and evoking the

abject. However, each artist approaches the use of worn clothing in different

ways with quite different effects.

I will consider the materiality of clothing and how it evokes memory, absence

and loss. I will examine the idea of cloth as second skin and empty clothing as

cadaver. I will explore Kristeva’s notion of the abject in relation to used

clothing. I will also consider the multi sensory nature of cloth, particularly

touch and smell, and how these elements can add meaning.

Gender dichotomies are key to my discussion. Referring to Rozsika Parker’s

notion of the gendering of cloth, I will explore the femininities associated with
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cloth, the stereotypical divide between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art and the body in

personal and public spaces.

Used clothing is possibly worn, faded, stained and dirty, and might have an

odour. In the light of this, I will look at the work of Mary Douglas, who

described dirt as being ‘matter out of place’ and explore the gendering of dirt

as described by Julia Kristeva.

Key words

Used clothing - Body - Gender – Materiality – The abject

Introduction

The use of second hand clothing in art can have multiple meanings. With

particular focus on Louise Bourgeois’ Pink Days and Blue Days (Fig. 1) and

Christian Boltanski’s No Man’s Land (Figs. 2, 3 and 4), I will discuss the

different ways in which these artists use worn clothing to represent the body,

constructing identities which evoke memory, absence and loss (Bourgeois in

Herkenhoff 1997; Rosenbaum-Kranson 2010; Bernadac 2006). I suggest that

by using ‘familiar forms and shapes to reference the human body,’ both artists

‘… transgress the rules of normal representation of bodies’ (Arbus date

unknown).

Through semiotics, clothing is regarded as a signifier, something external to

the body (Chandler 2013), but clothing can also be seen as an extension of

the body, a second skin (Bristow 2011: 48). I will explore ways in which the

materiality and multi-sensory nature of clothing blurs the boundaries of visual

and tactile experience (Bristow 2011: 45). I will also consider the smell of
 3.

worn clothing which so vividly evokes memory (Boltanski 2010; Goldsmith in

Wildgoose 2008: 66).

There are various femininities associated with used clothing which have

potential for adding subversive meanings to representations of the body in art.

According to Rozsika Parker, cloth itself is a gendered material; in her book

The Subversive Stitch, she analyses the gender divide between ‘high’ art and

feminised craft (Parker 2010: 5; Carson 2000a: 27). She proposes that cloth is

a signifier of the private, and thus feminine, sphere (Parker 2010: 5).

Discarded clothing, with signs of wear and stains, is generally considered to

be dirty, so I will also explore the femininities associated with dirt. Mary

Douglas, who describes dirt as ‘matter out of place’, observes that the

categories of clean and unclean are ‘projected on to the female body’ (in

Campkin and Cox 2007: 4; Carson 2000b: 63), while Julia Kristeva asserts

that ‘sexual difference is at the heart of the social difference between clean

and dirty’ (in Wolkowitz 2007:18). Also, worn clothes produce contamination

anxiety, the private made public, which is yet another gender dichotomy

(Carson 2000b: 55).

I will discuss the different ways that Bourgeois and Boltanski use empty

second-hand clothing to suggest a physical absence, and ultimately death,

which prompts an abject response. Kristeva describes ‘the abject’ as ‘the

human reaction (horror, vomit) to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused

by the loss of the distinction between subject and object or between self and

other’ (in Felluga 2011). She goes on to argue that ‘the corpse is the utmost of
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abjection’ (Kristeva 1982: 13). Abjection also has associated femininities,

linked to dirt and disgust.

Both Louise Bourgeois and Christian Boltanski are prominent artists in the

world of contemporary fine art. I will explore the idea that by rejecting

traditional fine art media and choosing to use discarded garments, their work

questions the orthodoxy of the patriarchal hierarchy of ‘high art’ and

challenges notions of embodiment. The materiality and multiple gender

dichotomies associated with used clothing communicate complex meanings

through their work.

As an artist who also works with clothing, I am particularly interested in these

meanings and the ways that my findings will inform my practice.

Clothing as body

In semiotic termsi, clothing is external to the body, a signifier, and can signify

many things including wealth, status, attitude and class (Prasarn 2012).

However, there is a merging of the senses of touch and sight associated with

cloth; ‘The eye…does not simply look. It also feels. Its response is both visual

and tactile…’ the senses are ‘…each enfolded in the other’ (Barnett 1999:

185). This means that clothing can also be regarded as an extension of the

body, a second skin. I suggest that the materiality and skin-like nature of

cloth provides an alternative range of meanings to the use of clothing in art,

operating ‘both through the haptic and the scopic simultaneously, the two
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modes of perception provide differing points of access to the viewer’ (Dormor

2008: 240).ii

The intimacy of prolonged contact allows clothing to take on the shape of the

human form and absorb the scents and bodily stains of the wearer. The body

is ‘an eminently osmotic shell: when we adopt certain garments...through

direct physical contact we...assimilate them, we make them our flesh’

(Cavallaro and Warwick in Simonson 2008: 217, their italics). This

assimilation blurs the boundaries between skin and clothing, ‘creating new

areas for meaning’ (Dormor 208:241). Clothing becomes a second skin.iii The

intimate physicality of clothing adds a haptic element to the visual language of

semiotics, a multi-sensory dimension which expands its significance; the

clothing is seen as body not symbol of body.

That clothing is an unconventional medium in fine art also adds to the

meaning it conveys. Traditionally, hard, durable materials like stone, marble

and bronze have been used for sculpture; the soft, impermanent nature of

clothing, however, evokes the human form and its mortality, revealing

alternative meanings in its folds and surfaces (Barnett 1999: 186) and

seeming to ‘take on a bodily resonance rather than to offer up symbols as

such’ (Nixon 2005: 174).

The notion of fetish is also associated with cloth through touch (Hamlyn 2003:
iv
14) but is outside the scope of this article.

As well as touch and sight, the material nature of clothing can involve the

sense of smell which can powerfully evoke memory. v Jerry Gorovoy, Louise

Bourgeois’ assistant of many years, highlights the important link between

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smell and memory when he says of her clothing, ‘Personal memory was a

very important part of her work and these were things that had also come into

direct contact with the body. On some you could still smell her perfume’ (in

Wroe 2013). Louise Bourgeois was clearly conscious of this link, as she

declares ‘Smell of sweat- it is a symbol of life’ (in Celant 2010:116).

Boltanski’s intention for No Man’s Land (Figs. 2, 3 & 4), as part of the

immersive experience, was that the installation would have the very distinctive

smell of used clothing. He asserts ‘These…are bodies. And the bodies smell’

(Boltanski in Rosenbaum- Kranson 2010). Unfortunately the clothes he

acquired were too clean so had hardly any odour.

Both artists have spoken about clothing as body; Boltanski states, ‘used

clothes are like a body’ (in Rosenbaum- Kranson 2010) and Bourgeois

declares, ‘These clothes are connected to my body. This is what sculpture is

about’ (in Sonnenberg 2010: 37). I suggest that choosing to use clothing, a

‘surrogate skin, a body at one remove’ (Hamlyn 2000: 42), with the stimulation

of multiple senses involved, has enabled both Bourgeois and Boltanski to

create unorthodox representations of the body.

Clothing and memory

‘Clothes are the body’s second skin; they cling not only to its shape but also to

its spirit, enclosing the fragrance of a specific period in their folds’ (Bernadac

2006: 154). Worn clothing can evoke individual memories or a more universal
vi
sense of loss depending on the context. It is clear that Bourgeois and
 7.

Boltanksi have consciously chosen different kinds of clothing and installed

them in specific ways to evoke particular memories and thus to represent

different kinds of bodies.

The memories that Bourgeois’ work evokes are very personal. She asserts, ‘A

garment is...an exercise in memory. It makes me explore the past’ (Bourgeois

in Herkenhoff, 1997: 260). In Pink Days and Blue Days (Fig. 1), she has

selected ‘her own carefully preserved clothes’ that she has compulsively

stored since her childhood, ‘lifeless relics that are nevertheless imbued with a

lifetime’s emotions’, to ‘reconstruct the past’ (Bernadac 2006: 154; Hauser

and Wirth 2013; Gorovoy 2013).vii

Much of Boltanski’s work, however, deals with a universal, fabricated memory.

He maintains ‘Part of my work…has been about trying to preserve… memory

…memories are very fragile; I wanted to save them’ (in Garb 1997: 19). viii

In both artworks, the clothing clearly represents bodies, but in Bourgeois’ work

there is a fragility in the suspended forms, notions of personal memory, and in

Boltanski’s work, because of its scale and immersive nature, a sense of

corporate memory and loss.

In No Man’s Land (Figs. 2, 3 & 4), Boltanski’s use of 30 tons of anonymous

discarded clothing to represent bodies ‘…comments on the most brutal losses

for mankind: the loss of identity, individuality and memories’ (Park Avenue

Armory 2010; Yamada 2012). Bourgeois’ approach to the selection of her own

clothing, however, is more intimate. Her use of clothing has been described

as ‘an envelope that bears the imprint of a person;…a relic that serves as
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replacement...a transitional object that represents a person, suggests a mood

or evokes an emotional experience’ (Bernadac 2006:155).

There is an element of autobiography in all of Bourgeois’ work, but the

personal significance of these items of clothing is summed up when she

asserts ‘I am not interested in fabric per se; I am interested in my

clothes...These pieces had to be made from my clothes or they would not

exist’ (in Sonnenberg 2010: 37).ix Gorovoy says of the garments she hoarded

‘…They're the equivalent of a diary, so they really trigger moments in time’ (in

Sischy, date unknown). Bourgeois also regards her clothing as a personal

memorial; ‘I have held on to certain pieces of clothing for a long time, and I

want to make sure they will exist when I'm gone, so I use them as raw

material for sculpture’ (Bourgeois in Castro 2004).

In contrast to this, Boltanski’s work, ‘is a memorial to nothing, to everyone

and no one’ (Searle 2010). He claims that ‘There’s nothing personal in my

x
work. Ever’ (Boltanski in Garb 1997: 27). Unlike Bourgeois’ careful selection

of personal items, Boltanski maintains that the materials he uses are not

precious. Discussing his work, he suggests ‘It’s not an object but an idea. I

consider what I do to be like a musical score, and anyone can play it. But

each time it’s played, it means something different… Around half of the work I

do is destroyed after each show, but the show can always be done again’ (in

Garb 1997: 16, 17). xi He stresses, ‘I want to be faceless. I hold a mirror to my

face so that those who look at me see themselves and therefore I disappear’

(in Garb 1997: 24).

 9.

I feel that Bourgeois has produced a more private representation of the body

and Boltanski a more public one. This divide between private and public is

generally regarded as a gendered issue, so it interests me that Louise

Bourgeois, as a woman, produces the more private, ‘feminine’ work while

Boltanski produces the more public piece.

Both artists, however, are very vocal about their work. They openly discuss

their associations with psychoanalysis and that they regard their art as a form

of therapy (Boltanski in Garb 1997: 9; Bourgeois in Wallach 2001). I suggest

that this sense of vulnerability is another way that the artists construct

different identities and subvert traditional representations of the body by

making public things that are stereotypically regarded as private (Perry 1999:

29).xii Unfortunately, this is outside the scope of this article.

I will argue that although Bourgeois adopts the ‘feminine’ perspective of

personal memories she actually challenges the gendered divide in the way

that she installs the clothing she has chosen, creating a disquieting tension.

Gender and cloth

Cloth is widely regarded as a gendered material. Rozsika Parker discusses

‘the privatisation of female embroidery skills and their role in the inculcation of

an ideology of femininity as devout, chaste, obedient...’ (in Carson 2000a: 27).

She suggests that ‘...fine art was established as a public activity of high status

associated with male professionals, while embroidery became a low status

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craft associated predominantly with women and domestic spaces’ (ibid).xiii

The links between embroidery and cloth are clear.

I think that choosing to use clothing, with its associations with craft and the

feminine, instead of the more conventional materials of fine art, is another way

that the artists subvert traditional representations of the body and produce

‘different sorts of images of...bodies’ (Perry 1999: 29).

Much has been written by feminist art theorists about the work of Louise

Bourgeois, but she was, in fact, a reluctant feminist. Sadly this also is outside

the scope of this article.xiv Her work, however, does highlight the ‘feminine

concerns’ of the use of cloth in art and its ‘power to shock and unsettle

conventional ideas about the sculptural object’ (Nochlin 2007: 191). Her fabric

works, ‘despite their rejection of conventional notions of sculpture...share

certain essential properties with conventional sculpture in bronze, clay or

marble’ (ibid.). The power of this work, however, lies in the ‘departures from

the niceties of the traditional media’ (ibid.). In Bourgeois’ stitched work, the

‘grotesque handiwork’ and the ‘deliberate ferocity of bad sewing’ challenges

the gendered expectations of work with cloth (ibid.). In Pink Days and Blue

Days (Fig. 1) I suggest that the contrast between the ephemeral baby blue

and pink clothing with the bones as hangers also challenges those

expectations.
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The gendering of dirt

Second-hand clothing often bears marks of wear and is stained, either with

bodily fluids like sweat, or with other matter like food or dirt. Even when it is

washed it can evoke a response of disgust. It is generally regarded as dirty.

This is yet another gendered issue. Mary Douglas describes dirt as ‘matter out

of place’, hence the ‘self-stains’ caused by bodily fluids (Sorkin 2001: 60)

result in the idea of ‘pollution’ being ‘linked to a rejection of the female body’

(Wolkowitz 2007:17,18). xv The ‘self-stain’ ‘renders the body uncontrollable:

both capable and culpable of transmission, transgression and impurity...

surpassing the boundaries of the skin…This...social taboo is the source of the

stigmatised stain (which) elicits fear and disgust’ (Sorkin 2001: 60). Julia

Kristeva also maintains that, ‘Fluids and ‘leakiness’ are associated with

femininity, the solid and concrete with the masculine’ (in Wolkowitz 2007:18)
xvi
and can produce contamination anxiety. Second-hand clothing as a

medium in art, therefore, creates uncomfortable associations with pollution

and has a powerful effect on the way the work is perceived.

Used clothing and the abject

Julia Kristeva’s notion of ‘the abject’ is closely linked to the idea of pollution

and consequently also has associated femininities. She describes it as a

violent natural reflex of horror or disgust, a ‘combination of physical, moral

and psychological reactions’ to an ‘external menace’ which also ‘may menace

from inside’ (in Felluga 2011; Campkin and Cox 2007: 11, their italics). She

claims ‘…nor is the abject ever simply ‘Body’: it is located wherever there is
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ambivalence, ambiguity, the improper or the unclean, the overflowing of

boundaries, fusion and confusion, or whatever disturbs identity, system, order’

(Kristeva 1982: 4).

Empty, used clothing inevitably has strong connotations with absence and

death. Second-hand clothing is a ‘haunting device’ which ‘serves to represent

the previous wearers even though they have long departed...(They) are no

longer connected to the living but bear their marks’ (Healy 2008:94).

Kristeva asserts that a dead body elicits the deepest abjection. She maintains

‘It is death infecting life’ (Kristeva 1982: 13). Clothing as skin ‘provides...a very

real…material boundary and...a more ambiguous metaphorical boundary

between self and ‘not self’ (Bristow 2011: 45). I suggest that the

decomposition of death could be regarded as the ultimate in ‘self-staining’, a

blurring of these physical and metaphorical boundaries. The focus in Western

death rituals is on ‘ensuring that the borders between the inside and outside…

between the private and the public are…solid and impenetrable.

However...death hovers at the threshold…beckoning the self to take up the

place of abjection, the place where meaning collapses.’ (Selket 2007: 54)

Boltanski and Bourgeois use worn clothing in different ways to prompt an

abject response. Boltanski claims that No Man’s Land (Figs. 2, 3 & 4) is about

‘unicity and the big number…’ (in Rosenbaum-Kranson 2010). He maintains

‘used clothes...represent...that the subject is missing...it’s going to show

absence’ and ‘all these clothes in No Man’s Land are dead clothes’ (Boltanski

in Rosenbaum-Kranson 2010). Bernadac says of his work, ‘found-object

clothes were a sign of death and disappearance’ (2006: 155).

 13.

I think that the scale and immersive nature of Boltanski’s work is most

significant in its evocation of the abject. The ‘eerie landscape of discarded

clothing, organised in 45 rectangular plots…culminating in a 25 foot high

mountain of garments’ (Art Daily 2010) and the mechanised claw which, ‘…in

an act meant to resonate with the arbitrariness of death and survival...’

(Spears 2010) grabs and drops a ‘random assortment’ (ibid.) of clothing from

the mountain, not only evokes the Holocaust but also a form of universal

mass tragedy (Art Daily 2010). Boltanski asserts ‘There have been

holocausts after the Holocaust…My work is about the fact of dying…’ (in Garb

1997: 22).

I think that Boltanski also invokes an abject response through the way the

multiple garments are displayed in tangled piles, which evokes the fragility of

blurred identities. He declares, ‘These shows are bodies…but in the mountain

(of clothes), there’s no more identity because you can’t see if it’s a jacket or

coat - everything is mixed together…everybody is so fragile...’ (Boltanski in

Rosenbaum-Kranson 2010).

I suggest that participation also adds to the abjection. The public can walk

through the installation and are immersed in it, ‘they are mostly looking down

…they are not speaking…they become a part of the work’ (Boltanski

in Rosenbaum- Kranson 2010). The harnessing of multiple senses, as

discussed earlier, together with the ‘ceaseless, reverberating soundtrack of

thousands of human heartbeats’ (Spears 2010) which accompanies the

installation, adds to the immersion and amplifies the abjection.xvii ‘And it’s this

idea of being inside the work that is important to me.’ (Boltanski

in Rosenbaum- Kranson 2010).

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The piece evokes universal loss yet also prompts a personalised abject

response. ‘Each one is within the piece, reading it how he or she wants to

read it. For Jews here, it’s going to make them think about the Holocaust, but

for people from Haiti, it’s going to make them think about the earthquake…’

(Boltanski in Rosenbaum-Kranson 2010) For others it will stir up private grief

(Spear 2010). xviii

For Bourgeois, her use of clothing also has associations with death and the

abject, but unlike Boltanski’s work, it is a very personal memorial, as

discussed earlier. xix Her fabric sculptures invoke an abject response through

‘some overtone ...of horror...’ which makes us ‘uncomfortable in our

skin...which, these works remind us, is only a temporary covering…and a

highly vulnerable one’ (Nochlin 2007: 190). In Pink Days and Blue Days (Fig.

1), the ephemeral clothing hanging from bones conjures up notions of

mortality. ‘This sculptural presence of the skeleton, apart from its morbid

effect, invokes the structures of the human body when it has been stripped of

flesh, when only the ghostly presence of the empty garments remains…such

works are simultaneously grotesque and troubling…’(Bernadac 2006: 154)

The contrast between the insubstantial clothing and the metal structure and

hefty bones is highly disturbing. When Bourgeois declares, ‘My clothes…have

always been a source of intolerable suffering because they hide an intolerable

wound’ (in Celant 2010: 120), I think she provides a key to this feeling of

abjection. Hanging the garments also emphasises the sculpture’s ‘fragility and

vulnerability’ (Larratt-Smith 2011). Bourgeois asserts that the hanging thing

‘…is very helpless’ (in Nixon 2005:170) and ‘Hanging and floating are states

of ambivalence and doubt’ (in Larratt- Smith 2011). It is clearly significant to

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her. I think the hanging motif distinguishes ‘very different identities for (her)

sculpture…suggesting a kind of displacement’ (Barlow 1996: 9) which also

adds to the feeling of abjection.

I suggest that it is understandable, then, that used clothing and its

connotations of absence and death invokes an abject response. This

inevitably adds further unsettling meanings to the use of second hand clothing

in art.

Conclusion

Using second-hand clothing to represent the body in art conveys multiple

meanings. Analysing Louise Bourgeois’ Pink Days and Blue Days (Fig. 1) and

Christian Boltanski’s No Man’s Land (Figs. 2, 3 & 4), I have compared the

different ways the artists have used worn clothing to create unconventional

embodiments. I have examined what the artists have said of their own work

and also what has been written by others about the use of discarded clothing

in art.

I have found the notion of clothing as second skin illuminating; the multi-

sensory nature and materiality of clothing alongside the blurring of the scopic/

haptic divide allows the artists to appropriate used clothing as body, not just

as a symbol of body. The idea of harnessing senses other than sight,

including the sense of smell, in works of art, is potentially an area for more

research. I am also very interested in exploring further the impact of the scale

and immersive nature of Boltanski’s work and the way it evokes the abject.
 16.

I have done some research previously on the gendering of cloth and its

associations with the private sphere and craft; examining dirt and the abject,

however, in the context of used clothing, has been a revelation to me. I have

found that the additional femininities linked to stained, discarded garments

add exponentially to the layers of meaning in the work; exploring the many

gender dichotomies associated with used clothing has highlighted the

complexities of meaning clothing communicates when it represents the body

in contemporary art. I look forward to using my findings to inform my own

practice.

I have analysed the different ways that Louise Bourgeois and Christian

Boltanski have used second-hand clothing to create unconventional

representations of the body, conjuring up memory, absence and loss. Used

clothing, as a medium associated with several different femininities, blurs the

boundaries between public and private, pure and polluted, ‘high’ and ‘low’ art,

and can trigger an abject response. The materiality of clothing suggests the

body, and ultimately, the dead body, the deepest abjection.

By choosing to use such an unorthodox medium, both artists construct

‘different sorts of images of...bodies’ (Perry 1999: 29), establishing alternative

identities for their work. They ‘… transgress the rules of normal representation

of bodies’ (Arbus date unknown), creating unsettling associations with gender

dichotomies and the abject. In each case, utilising the multiple senses linked

to cloth, and its materiality, also has a powerful effect on the way the work is

experienced.
 17.

Bourgeois evokes personal memory and the abject through the use of a small

selection of her own carefully preserved clothes suspended from a metal

frame and cattle bones, suggesting frailty and a disturbing sense of loss;

Boltanski’s installation, using tons of anonymous discarded, tangled clothing,

through the scale and the multi-sensory nature of the immersive experience,

elicits a fabricated, universal memory of mass tragedy which triggers a

personalised abject response.

By subverting traditional representations of the body through the use of

second-hand clothing in their work, I have shown that Louise Bourgeois and

Christian Boltanski question the orthodoxy of the patriarchal hierarchy of ‘high’

art. Nevertheless, they are both highly acclaimed as contemporary fine artists.

It is a tribute to each that they are able to identify and communicate such

complex meanings through the appropriation of used clothing in such

compelling ways within their work.

 18.

Fig.1: Louise Bourgeois, Pink Days and Blue Days, 1997

Steel, fabric, bone, wood, glass, rubber and mixed media

297.2 x221 x221cm

 19.

Fig. 2: Christian Boltanski, No Man’s Land, 2010

Installed at Park Avenue Armory, New York

Used clothing, lighting, claw

 20.

Fig. 3: Christian Boltanski, No Man’s Land, 2010,

detail of grid of clothing and lights,

Installed at Park Avenue Armory, New York

 21.

Fig.4. Christian Boltanski, No Man’s Land, 2010,

detail of mountain of clothing and mechanical claw

Installed at Park Avenue Armory, New York

 22.

Fig. 5: Christian Boltanski, Personnes, 2010

Installed at The Grand Palais, Paris

Used clothing, lighting, claw

 23.

Fig. 6: Christian Boltanski, No Man’s Land, 2012

Installed at The Satoyama Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan

Used clothing, claw

Bibliography for Independent Research Project

Louise Baker

Sept. 2013- Jan. 2014

Books

Attfield, Judy, 2000, ‘Wild Things, the Material Culture of Everyday Life’,

Oxford, New York: Berg

 24.

Barlow, Phyllida, ‘The Sneeze of Louise’ in Cole, Ian, (ed.), 1996, Museum of

Modern Art Papers, Volume 1 Louise Bourgeois, Oxford: Museum of Modern

Art pp4-11

Barnett, Pennina, 1999, ‘Folds, fragments and surfaces: towards a poetics of

cloth’ in Hemmings, Jessica (ed.), 2012, The Textile Reader, Berg: London,

New York pp 182 -190

Barrett, Estelle, 2011, Kristeva reframed : interpreting key thinkers for the

arts, London: Tauris 

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pp 44 - 51

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 25.

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Cox, Rosie et al, 2011, Dirt: The filthy reality of everyday life, London: Profile

Books

Doy, Gen, 2002, Drapery: Classicism and Barbarism in Visual Culture,

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Garb, Tamar, 1997, ‘Interview: Tamar Garb in conversation with Christian

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 26.

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 37.

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[Accessed 10 January 2014]

Endnotes
i
‘Semiotics is an investigation into how meaning is created and how meaning is

communicated’ (Sign Salad 2013). Chandler extends the link between meaning and

communication to include ‘the construction and maintenance of reality’ (2013).

ii
Dormor defines the ‘haptic…(as) that which pertains to touch and induces the sense of

touch. ..(and the) scopic... (as) that which pertains to sight and the act of seeing’ (2008:

251).

iii
Dormor explains that cloth ‘in acting as crucible/filter is both inter-dermal and intra-

dermal. Thus a terrain is established which folds in upon itself again and again repeatedly

creating new areas for meaning’ (2008: 241).

iv
Anne Hamlyn introduces the ‘politically uncomfortable associations between women,

fetishism and cloth’ when she asserts, ‘Fabric occupies the interstices between the needy

flesh of the infant and the nurturing flesh on which it depends and, as the child develops,

such textile coverings naturally inspire curiosity as to what lies beneath their folds and

stays. What lies beneath—the “reality” that fabric brushes up against—is female genital

difference. It is the refusal to recognise that difference that, for Freud, lies at the root of

fetishism’ (2003:14).

v
When she began to work with used clothing, the artist Shelley Goldsmith discovered that

‘...perfumes and bodily smells were revealed, I found it rather spooky and provocative...we

are unable to live our life without leaving a part of ourselves behind in them’ (in Wildgoose

2008).

vi
Of the recent Cloth and Memory 2 exhibition, curator Leslie Millar writes, ‘The haptic

relationship between our bodies and the textiles which accompany us provides an

alternative language of memory…a revisitable memory…a transformed memory,

‘representation without resemblance’’(John Sutton in Millar 2013: 15).

vii
Of Pink Days and Blue Days (Fig. 1), magazine editor Ingrid Sischy says, ‘Even if you

don't know those memories, you see the pieces and they evoke so much. They're

emotional and physical’ (date unknown).

viii
Boltanski often uses found objects, like clothing or photos, of which he says ‘(it) is an

object, and its relationship with the subject is lost. It also has a relationship with death’ (in

Garb 1997:25).

ix
She reinforces their significance when she says ‘Both my parents dressed me and

competed with one another over it. They were rivals at getting me the best dresses and

the latest fashion statement’ (Bourgeois in Celant 2010:180)

x
Of his childhood, he confesses ‘I have lied about it so often that I no longer have a real

memory of this time and my childhood has become, for me, some kind of universal

childhood, not a real one. Everything you do is a pretence. My life is about making stories’

(Boltanski in Semin 1997:8)

xi
No Man’s Land (Figs. 2, 3 & 4) has, in fact, been installed in at least three sites; it is

different every time. In January 2010, in Paris, it was called Personnes, meaning nobody,

(Fig. 5) and in 2012, in Japan, No Man’s Land again (Fig. 6). In Japan it was very different

as it was installed outside so subject to the elements.

xii
Boltanski acknowledges ‘Art for me is one way of talking about problems and about the

past; sometimes, as with psychoanalysis, you are a little better for having done so’ (in

Garb 1997: 9). Gorovoy describes Louise Bourgeois’ work as ‘her own psychoanalytic or

therapeutic activity’ (in Wroe, 2013) and she famously said ‘Art is the guarantee of sanity’

(Bourgeois in Wallach 2001). The significance of the title of Pink days and Blue days (Fig

1) is apparent in Bourgeois’ statement that, ‘There are days when you feel good about

yourself and nothing can go wrong. Those are the pink days. The blue days are when
you’re down in the dumps and you’re depressed. In the aftermath you gain control, you

find your equilibrium, and you begin again’ (Art Daily 2013). This fragility is evident is the

work of both the artists. The transient nature of fabric and its predisposition to decay

mirrors this fragility and adds poignancy to their work.

xiii
Judy Attfield, design historian, also discusses the private nature of cloth by proposing

that ‘because clothes make direct contact with the body, and domestic furnishings define

the personal spaces inhabited by the body...cloth is proposed as one of the most intimate

of thing-types that materialises the connection between the body and the outer world’

(2000: 1).

xiv
Bourgeois did not ally herself strongly with feminism. There are clearly many aspects of

her work that are open to a feminist interpretation, including the title Pink Days and Blue

Days (Fig 1) and it’s association with the traditional gendering of colour, but she said ‘I

don’t believe there is a feminist aesthetic. A lot of the emotions that I am expressing in my

work are pre gender’ (Bourgeois 2004)

xv
Ward also maintains that ‘dirt is associated with femininity itself’ (1992:8).

xvi
‘Bodily fluids (blood, milk, urine, sweat and tears) stand for potential threats to the social

collectivity...Reflections about purity and pollution are actually reflections about order and

disorder, form and formlessness, being and non being’ (Wolkowitz 2007:17).

xvii
The temperature is also an important factor for Boltanski. He asserts ‘In Paris…it was

very cold. I refused the heat, and it was terribly cold…It’s important for me to work with

cold... When you are cold, you are inside the work.’ (in Rosenbaum-Kranson 2010) He

goes on to say that he had hoped that in New York it would be warmer to bring out the

smell of the clothes as, ‘If it smells, you are inside the work’ (ibid.). Unfortunately, as

already discussed, the clothes were too clean.

xviii
The installation also ‘aims to inspire questions like “Why did my mother die?” and “Why

am I still here?” Its large-scale exercise in futility ultimately points to a single fact, Mr.

Boltanski suggested during a recent tour of the drill hall. “You can hold onto the clothes,

and even the heartbeats of many, many people,” he said. “But you can’t keep anybody.”’

(Spears 2010)

xix
Her assistant, Gorovoy says ‘… While she never talked about death…she wondered

what would happen to all this stuff she had saved for so long and had so much meaning

for her... she wanted to use this raw material to make sculpture that would survive beyond

her’ (in Wroe 2013).