In yesterday's post we looked at geometries in art, so let's continue the art thread today, but move onto repetitions and accumulations. Many creative minds have followed these principles coming up with visually striking and mesmerising artworks.
There are artists who prefer creating several small pieces, and then combine them together in a larger work, but there are also artists who collect several parts made by other people (think about waste materials) and then assemble them in their own compositions. Though the principles behind artworks based on repetitions and accumulations are easy to follow, the results are therefore completely different.
Inspired by her own compulsions and anxieties, Yayoi Kusama has employed the repetition technique for her polka dot patterned environments to create infinite spaces, and in her installations and sculptures made with hundreds of stuffed elements resembling limp phalluses.
In other cases accumulations of materials are employed by artists to prompt us to ponder about pollution and consumption: Aurora Robson creates for example large-scale installations and sculptures from plastic waste such as discarded plastic bottles and caps.
African artist El Anatsui is well-known for his tapestries made with found materials such as discarded aluminum caps and plastic seals from liquor bottles, which he flattens, shapes, perforates, and painstakingly sews together with copper wire.
Assemblages of repeated materials can also be employed to tackle social issues as proved by Jean Shin's "Chance City", a sort of architectural model of an imaginary town made with thousands of discarded "Scratch & Win" losing lottery tickets, almost a physical representation of the shattered hopes of all the people who played the game to win money and change their lives forever, but also a symbol of a widespread gambling addiction.
"More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid" (1987) by the late Mike Kelley is instead a mixed media assemblage, a three-dimensional tapestry made with cast-off toys, stuffed animals, dolls and blankets found in thrift stores.
These items usually given as tokens of love, point at hours spent stitching, knitting and crocheting, hours that could never be repaid, the piece is therefore a meditation about love and loss.
This artwork was transformed last year into fashion when Supreme collaborated with the artist's archive, designing a shirt and a hoodie with a digital print of "More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid" that managed to give an illusion of three-dimensionality to the objects replicated on the fabric.
Repetitions and accumulations have often been used by designers to add intriguing twists to their creations and, come next Spring, these trends may be back in fashion.
French designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac has often used it in the past for his own collections (remember the teddy bear coat from his A/W 1988-89 collection View this photo or his jacket decorated with four colourful miniature garments View this photo?) and relaunched the idea for Benetton's S/S 20 designs (he already attempted to reuse it in the first collection he did for Benetton with a monumental jacket made with several stuffed and colourful sheep).
For the second United Colors of Benetton collection (entitled "Color Wave"), the French designer moved from the sea, so the opening looks at the runway show that took place in September during Milan Fashion Week, comprised neoprene mini-dresses calling to mind diving suits, tops with anchor motifs and prints of Popeye the Sailor Man.
There were plenty of colourful items on which pockets or striped motifs were repeated, the best one was a check denim kilt that opened up on a rainbow-coloured insert and that was matched with a rainbow-striped top and tights.
Then followed the pieces revolving around the concept of repetition and accumulation, including minidresses and tops covered with mini-sweaters and mini-Tshirts printed with images from Oliviero Toscani's advertising campaigns for Benetton.
JCDC then added a touch of sustainable surrealism with a waterproof trench coat made out of paper (apparently bags used to carry flour or cement powder) and recycled fibers, and a cropped top that looked as if it were made with cardboard matched with a white skirt with an appliqued silhouette of a figure in the same cardboard-like material.
Will JCDC's arty accumulations of materials save Benetton? After all, the company lost a lot of popularity in the last few years being among the brands producing clothes at the Rana Plaza factory complex that collapsed in Dhaka in 2013, killing over 1,100 people, and ending up at the centre of a diatribe about road safety in Italy after the Morandi bridge collapsed in Genoa last summer (the family is Europe's largest toll road operator).
Jean-Charles de Castelbajac can deliver fun collections, but the brand will probably be saved by constant radical changes that may appeal to consumers: the Benetton Group is currently among the brands that partnered with Greenpeace's Detox program; JCDC seems keen on working on eco-friendly designs (for the S/S 20 collection he developed drawstring jeans made with non-toxic dyes) and there is a collaboration coming for Benetton with the environmentally conscious Woolmark Company. So, hopefully, repetitions will remain confined to garments and accessories from now on for the Benetton Group, rather than to disasters.
