Frequently throughout fashion history, we've witnessed designers appropriating others' creations, whether from the archives of a renowned fashion house, from a more recent runway show or from traditional garments of distant cultures.
While this could lead to legal complexities regarding copyrights, there are instances where such borrowing ignites a spark of innovation, but this can also happen in art, a discipline that in turn can help us reimagining original inspirations. So, let's consider Red Grooms' reinterpretation of Paul Gauguin's "The Yellow Christ".
Gauguin's original, "Le Christ jaune" (The Yellow Christ, 1889), drew inspiration from his time in Brittany, France, where he immersed himself in local history and customs. The vibrant depiction of a crucifixion scene against an autumnal landscape, with peasant women praying at the foot of the cross in their distinctive regional costume symbolizing the cycle of Christian life (birth, life, death, and rebirth) and the harvest season. Gauguin's bold use of colors aims to evoke emotions and highlights nature's spirituality. Besides, the autumnal palette of yellow, red and green in the landscape echoes the dominant yellow in the figure of Christ.
American artist Red Grooms took Gauguin's "Yellow Christ" and transposed it onto a New York City backdrop. The result was "Yellow Christ on Park Avenue" (1990), a mixed-media artwork in which the original painting underwent a metamorphosis, shedding its original meaning to become something new.
Decades before this painting, Red Grooms, along with his then-wife Mimi Gross, crafted monumental installations such as "The City of Chicago" (1967) and "Ruckus Manhattan" (1975). These immersive artworks, termed "sculpto-pictoramas," depicted urban life on a grand scale, featuring detailed recreations of cityscapes.
"The City of Chicago" (1968) marked the beginning of a series of mixed-media installations, each capturing the essence of urban life. Spanning 25 feet square, this environment set the stage for subsequent works. Years later, for example, "Ruckus Manhattan" emerged as a colossal reproduction, encompassing over 10,000 square feet of the borough's landscape. From Battery Park to Times Square, this installation boasted intricate details, including a nearly life-size subway car and a metal Brooklyn Bridge.
The creation of these environments required the collaboration of numerous assistants, collectively known as the Ruckus Construction Co. Using materials such as papier-mâché, vinyl, fiberglass, cardboard, canvas, hot glue, burlap, and paint, along with staple guns, sculpture wire, fabric, foam and plexiglass, the team meticulously crafted every detail to bring these immersive worlds to life.
In his rendition of "Yellow Christ", Grooms departed from the traditional painting overimposing it into a three-dimensional portrayal of Park Avenue.
Initially conceived as a celebration of the city, the artwork evolves into a commentary on urban existence and its impermanence: through a blend of materials and techniques, Grooms creates indeed a multidimensional grid-like map of the cityscape, blurring the lines between architecture, painting, and sculpture.
Cars seem to flow over the figure of Christ, cascading over it like water from a fountain, while the praying women are transformed into buildings. The colors are brighter, almost cartoonish and this metaphorical portrayal reflects the vibrancy and complexity of American pop culture.
Grooms' reinterpretation merges past and present, it is a symbolic journey from the sacred to the secular, encapsulating both the allure and the pitfalls of urban life. Besides, within this portrayal, we also witness a merging of different disciplines: the painting overlays the cityscape with its architectures, crafting a three-dimensional tableau, a tangible map, perhaps symbolizing suffering and anguish in the urban context (can being stuck in the traffic in New York be compared to the agony on the cross?).
The mixed-media technique adds depth to the artwork, intertwining cityscapes, architecture and, painting, culminating in a metaphorical cartography of American pop culture's exuberant architectural landscape. This interplay of layers and dimensions constructs a microcosm, a mini-metropolis, emerging from the depths of the Yellow Christ. Thus, through acts of appropriation and reinvention, a work of art can be turned on its head, offering fresh insights and interpretations that resonate with contemporary audiences (that said, fashion design students reading this, exercise caution and refrain from appropriating paintings or any other creative works that are still copyrighted; seek inspiration from public domain sources or obtain proper permissions and licenses when working with copyrighted material).
Comments