Celeste

Celeste, thickly covered in a fur of dust, was found behind the radiator when the new heating was installed. She looked like a rodent, and must have been trapped there for close to 10 years. Now freshly washed she reminds me how fond I, and later my children, were of the Babar family with their admirable and quite extra-ordinary dress sense.

Oppression?

“A chandelier made from 25,000 tampons might not be everyone’s idea of a centerpiece, but for Joana Vasconcelos it proved a great way of catching the artworld attention at the 2005 Venice Biennale. The Portuguese artist’s London debut features similarly spectacular collisions between showy décor and domesticity as she transforms crochet’s oppressive connotations as something that kept women busy indoors into a medium that threatens to take over the world. She’s covered everything from a baby grand piano to a ceramic lobster with the delicate, handcrafted stuff, and combines it with buttons, pom-poms and more to create the showstopping monster-sculpture, Victoria.” ss

Haunch of Venison, London W1, until 25 September 2010

The Guardian, The Guide, exhibitions, 23 July 2010, p.38

Damp sheets

“Few things are attended with more serious consequences than sleeping in damp linen. Persons are frequently assured that the sheets have been at a fire for many hours, but the question is what sort of fire and whether they have been turned so that every part has been exposed to the fire. The fear of creasing the linen, we know, prevents many from unfolding it, so as to be what we consider sufficiently aired; but health is more important than appearances. With gentleness, there need to be no fear of want of neatness.”

Enquire Within upon Everything (1926), Herbert Jenkins, London, p.346

Zebra stripes

“Perhaps of all four-legged animals, the zebra is the most well made and the most elegantly dressed; it has the figure and grace of the horse, the lightness of the deer, and its coat, striped with black and white bands, arranged with so much regularity and symmetry, makes it seem as though nature used a ruler and compass to paint it. The alternating bands of black and white are all the more remarkable because they are narrow, parallel, and precisely divided, as in striped cloth; […] they are always a lively and brilliant shade on the short, fine, thick coat, its luster augmenting the beauty of the colours.”

G.L. de Buffon, Histoire naturelle, 3rd ed., vol.12 (Paris, 1769), pp. 323 – 24
Cited in Pastoureau, Michel, 2001. The devil’s cloth: a history of stripes. Translated from French by Jody Gladding. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Singapore: Washington Square Press, pp. 45, 46

Joseph Beuys: Filzpostkarte

A multiple that is also a play with words: Filzpostkarte - felt postcard - Feldpostkarte, the latter the word for postcards sent from and to soldiers in the battle fields through the German military postal service. Now family keepsakes or collectors items, they are reminders of affective bonds across distances in dark, difficult and distressing times, entangled - "verfilzt" with Beuys' own felt legends and affinities.

Pink net

“Do you have a friend getting married? Have you been selected as the maid of honour? It’s your responsibility as the maid of honor to throw her a party. Why not a pink hen night.”
Pink things at Ms Pink http://www.mspink.net/

Folds

“European folding culture may never be as resplendent as it was in the seventeenth century, when Nuremberg was the home of an entire school devoted to the art of folding napkins, but there are still masters of the art. Joan Sallas who has lived for years in Freiburg, Germany, is one of the few people in the world who knows how to fold a napkin into the lily that once decorated the tables of the Habsburgian Kaisers […]. The tradition that […] Sallas’s folded allegories keep alive today, echoes Leibniz’s conviction that every part of matter contains a garden full of plants and trees, a lake full of fish, and every part of an animal, and every drop of water, is again such a garden and such a lake.”

Daniel Birnbaum, Ingestion/Folded allegories, in: Cabinet: a quarterly of art and culture, Spring 2010, Issue 37, p.16

German article

video

Swim wear

“There is no special etiquette in bathing except that a woman’s bathing-dress should not offend against modesty. It is absurd for her to wear a dress that will hamper her movements in the water, but it is far worse to wear a garment so attenuated that general attention is attracted to her when she goes down to the water and comes out of it. There is no set rule as to what kind of dress should be worn. It depends entirely on the individual. A well-bred woman is her own best guide in the matter.”

Lady Troubridge (1926), The Book of Etiquette, Vol.II. The Associated Bookbuyers’ Company, Great Britain, pp. 104, 105