Transforming Culture

Recently NPR’s Studio 360  aired a piece about an artist named Robert Fontenot who purchased textiles and other materials from an auction at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The pieces he procured included Guatemalan, Indian and Korean textiles, traditional ethnic clothing and craft pieces as well as some historic designer clothing made by well known designers. What has caused many people to take notice of Mr. Fontenot’s activities is what he did with the pieces once in his possession. The artist proceeded to cut up and pick apart these once-museum quality textiles and repurpose them into new, completely different crafts, clothes, toys and other household items. A pair of 1920s American men’s knickers were transformed in to a set of boxing gloves. A silk textile form Rajasthan, India became a decorative awning in a bathroom. A traditional purple Korean skirt became a dog bed.

All of the pieces Mr. Fontenot purchased were modestly priced, each approximately $20 or so with the most expensive around $200. At no point during the transaction or afterwards did LACMA make any limitations to the use of the textiles, yet some in the art and design community have been offended by what Mr. Fontenot has done with the materials, claiming that he has destroyed the pieces, including work by name designers. Reaction within LACMA is even mixed, with one curator amused by the idea of using a museum’s collection for transformative, repurposed new artwork, while others at the museum are taken aback by the end result, going so far to call it “vandalism.”

Mr. Fontenot’s work is playful, creative, and perhaps most important these days, green. Once LACMA got rid of the items, they essentially relinquished say over their use by the new owner. The pieces left the museum sector and became a part of the general culture, where many feel that like any media in mass culture, should be considered fair game for reuse and repurposing. This approach is very similar to Mark Hosler’s  approach of creating audio and visual collages using found materials, pop culture and other pieces of mass media. In both the case of Mr. Fontenot and Mr. Hosler, the end pieces are new creations of art, bear no competitive resemblance to the original piece, and often go so far as to make commentary on the original piece, or the process of transformative art as a whole. To paraphrase Mr. Hosler from the COSE forum on September 2nd, the job of the artist is first and foremost to make good art. If that means that creating a new piece of art to fulfill the artist’s vision means using a traditional textile that was once in a museum, or making a sound collage out of a confused message from a preacher that aired on the radio, then it should all be in the name of transformative art and the freedom to use pieces of popular culture to comment back on that culture.