Tuesday, December 8, 2009
The step from traditional Mexican textile patterns to (soft) porn seems to be quite a big one. How would can you link these too subjects? They don’t seem to have too much in common. For at least as far as I know there’s no fetish movement that is sexually obsessed with traditional clothing that is hand made by Indian tribes of Middle America. But ey. You never know…
Anyhow: One posibble solution to this riddle goes by the name of Jeff Koons. If you try to find a book with the tagword “kitsch” you will find almost nothing – if it wasn’t for Jeff Koons. With his work I have the same ambiguous love-hate relationship that is characterizing my affiliation to Indian art as well. I described this in my first entry. So to close this blog I chose a book titled “The Jeff Koons Handbook”. Since everyone is familiar with Koon’s Balloon dogs I want to invite you to take a look at his photographic “art” – or rather: bad, bad kitsch…
– koon – 3
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
The second book I chose is titled Mexican Patterns – A design source book. As the title suggest already this book is meant to inspire modern designers. Content wise the book is dealing with the very traditional and yet so vivid patterns of current Mexican textiles. Or in the words of the author Chloë Sayer: “Contemporary Mexican textile design derives its richness and variety from the fusion over centuries of decorative skills from both old and new worlds.”
This mix of traditional elements and modern influences makes the patterns so appealing and at the same time so open to the exploitation for kitschy designs. The patterns seem to be almost as vulnerable to this as the habits and customs of their creators are to the influences of the so-called modern world.
Again I have this strange mix of feelings: On the one hand there is the recognition of the craftsmanship and the tradition. On the other hand I can’t help getting the feeling that it’s all merely kitsch…
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