KAWAKUBO – ABSTRACT EXCELLENCE

I can’t stop drawing Kawakubo.

Since I saw the Comme des Garcons exhibit at the Met, I have made a Kawakubo inspired Transparent Drawing every day.  The more that I look at the photos that I took in the exhibit, the more I try to understand the form and how it is resolved.  The first Kawakubo inspired page can be found here, Kawakubo at the Met.

I took the photo below. And every time that I look at it, I have to remind myself that this is a skirt, thru which a human body inserts itself. Every time I look at the photo, it seems that the form can exist completely independent of it’s purpose.

How do you say this;  the form transcends the function?  The form symbolism has been separated from cultural meaning?  The form, because it is complete in and of itself, becomes universal?  When the design is transcendent, it could be either a house or a skirt?

Because of the way the exhibition was set up, I could not photograph many of the pieces from more than one viewpoint. That was the case with these, as you could not walk around and see the forms from the other side.

With a little digging around on the web, I started to get the sense of how these were put together. The black bands are where the primary seams occur. And then the rest of it sort of pillows and drapes from these seams. There must be some sort of structural capacity that the pieces get from the seams, which contributes to the overall form.  The materials list in the catalogue does not mention any sort of padding or wire support materials.

Only after making my initial study above did I get the inspiration that indeed the Kawakubo forms could inform an enclosure. The result is my drawing from drawing below, which would serve as a nice starting point for a unique building.