” …a fictive space was created in the painting, modelled on illusionistic one-point perspective but deliberately subverted. In de Chirico’s paintings this established disturbingly deep city squares, bordered by receding arcades and distant brick walls; or claustrophobic interiors, with steeply rising floors. Within these spaces classical statues and, most typically, metaphysical mannequins (derived from tailors’ dummies) provided a featureless and expressionless, surrogate human presence… [The] central concern was true reality (where the past recurs), which is hidden behind the reality of appearances and visible only to the ‘clearsighted’ at enigmatic moments. In his paintings de Chirico sought to unmask reality and reveal its mysterious truth.”

–Matthew Gale, from Grove Art Online, © 2009 Oxford University Press

“The mannequin is a key player in the surreal game. Hourglass of figure and glamorous, she is a readymade plaything: the female tamed, acquiescent and silent; the poupee made over to the male. She is the sister of E.T.A.Hoffmann’s doll, Olympia (a key example of Freud’s uncanny ), and the very apogee of consumer art, plucked from the shop window, interchangeable with her mute commercial sisters, made first of wax and then of papier mache.”
– Margaret Plant, professor emeritus of history of art, Monash University, Melbourne

(photographs of Masson’s mannequin by Raoul Ubac)

“The German artist Hans Bellmer’s pre-war photographs explored fantasies of the female body, interweaving themes of sadism, masochism, hermaphroditism, paedophilia and fetishism. Bellmer lovingly crafted life-sized dolls, which could be assembled from an extensive range of individual components and placed in virtually any stance by means of ball-and-socket joints… Bellmer opted for the photographic medium because it was considered to be objective, lending his perverse fantasies a high degree of realism. The Nazi designation of his work as ‘Degenerate’ did not hinder him in the years leading up to the war. His flight to Paris in 1938 brought him into closer contact with the Surrealists and encouraged him to produce even more provocative work.”

– Thimo te Duits, art historian and Curator of Twentieth-Century Design and Decorative Arts at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

ART ATTACK
An Auction in support of Buddies
Contemporary Art. Cultural Adventures. Cool Stuff. THURSDAY NOVEMBER 26, PREVIEW 7PM, LIVE AT 8PM SHARP

Visual Art curated by Sholem Krishtalka, Stephanie Rogerson and Ryan G. Hinds
Hosted by Keith Cole with special guest stars
Auctioneer Charlene Nero

Buddies is proud to unveil its annual fundraising auction – reimagined. This year you’ll find the sexy standards you’ve come to expect along with a curated line-up of contemporary art by Toronto’s hottest artists. ArtAttack is a chance for art collectors to catch fresh new work and for cultural trailblazers to take home coveted design treasures and enchanting excursions at a steal – all while supporting Canada’s home for Queer Culture.

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This is the entire photo essay, called Mannequin, that Hamish Kippen and I worked on for Fresh magazine’s Sept 2007 issue. I consider myself very fortunate for having had the opportunity to work with him. After the jump is the accompanying text I wrote for the images.

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Hamish Kippen was a fabulous photographer who died last year. I never got to know him personally, but I loved collaborating with him.

I knew him as talented, inspired and easy going. He was already making a name for himself, and I was sure he would one day be shooting for glamourous fashion magazines.

In his all-too-short career Hamish Kippen not only displayed to the world his unique vision of beauty but he also developed an exceptional way of communicating with and through his subjects.

If you knew Hamish or his work please join us in celebrating Hamish’s incredible life and work at a gallery exhibit of his spectacular photographs. The exhibition will run from October 2 to 31, 2009 (including Nuit Blanche), and will be held at The Great Hall Gallery, 1087 Queen Street West (at Dovercourt), Toronto.

A book featuring his beautiful work will be published this fall by Hamish’s family and friends and will be launched with the exhibition.

 

I went to see the Surreal Things exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario (extended until Sept 19th) yesterday.  It brought me back into an old obsession in a totally new way. I’ve been captivated by the beauty of mannequins since I was about five years old. I wanted to share a section of the curatorial text below by Ghislaine Wood (also author of The Surreal Body: Fashion and Fetish) because I found it as fascinating as the art.

The Mannequin
For the Surrealists, the mannequin embodied the contradictions of modern life. It confused the boundaries between the animate and inanimate, human and machine, male and female, sexualized and sexless, and ultimately life and death. It was simultaneously a commodity, a simulacrum, an erotic object and the embodiment of the uncanny.

For Freud, the uncanniest objects were ‘waxwork figures, artifical dolls and automatons.’ In the Freudian uncanny, the mannequin also represented the suppressed primal human being emerging from the unconscious. Andre Breton saw the mannequin as the ultimate representative of what he termed ‘convulsive beauty.’