Question

I know that you are interested in the history of fashion and its relation to art and the avant-garde. I am wondering in what ways your knowledge of fashion and the discourse regarding fashion informs your recent work?

Answer

Neveruses (Unprincipled), 2014, plastic, wool, silk, paint, paper, 15.5 x 15 inches

My interests, and consequently my practice has tended to fall between, around, and outside of established disciplines. Fashion is fluid in that it speaks to many discourses: art and film history, sociology, economics, psychology, anthropology, and political science. Yet it does not sit comfortably within any of these silos. I have always been interested in fashion, but I didn’t think of it as essential to my work as an artist until I began teaching. My first teaching job was a cultural studies seminar I devised called “Fashion and Modernism.” The course evolved out of research into historic costumes designed by avant garde artists like Sonia Delaunay, Varvara Stepanova and Ernesto Thayaht as well as fashions by Paul Poiret and Elsa Schiaparelli. Drawing connections between Modernism as an historical movement and the sociological implications of fashion at the turn of the twentieth century, I found new and continuing interests in domesticity, leisure, work, and the readymade. Fashion’s interface with artists and the art world during this period was vital; color, pattern, and form were politically charged and visually agitated. These notions continue to influence and shape my own work.

Neveruses (Couse), 2014 plastic, silk, wool, paper 17 x 16.5 inches

Neveruses (Couse) rear view

Josh Blackwell