Carol Christian Poell

[hallucination]

What I reject is this whole idea that we're all "looking the other way." My god, it's right in front of our eyes! Linz! Finally, someone dared speak the name...

It's not like Linz is some obscure hamlet in the Austrian countryside.

Had Poell been born in Salzburg, would we be looking for references to Mozart? Eh, maybe, maybe not...

Every city in Austria was touched by Nazism in some significant way.

In full agreement with Chinorlz here...

So I guess you'll be humming Edelweiss and not Tomorrow Belongs To Me?

[cremaster]

I agree with Christian in regards to Actionism's influence on Poell's work.
To compare YSL or Raf's direct print onto an outfit in one season has nothing to do with with a driving influence throughout an aesthetic.
As mentioned Poell's references to abbettoirs, meat hooks,blood etc are all hallmarks of of actionism.
If anyone can get the chance to look at the book - Viennese Actionism published by Actar - you can clearly see a correlation.

[copacetic]

Sharply tailored clothing has connections with no history in particular.


Try Beau Brummell.

You're arguing against yourself.

So is Poell referencing dandyism or Nazism? Oscar Wilde and the SS: they all wore tight pants!

[hallucination]

Huh?

Military frock coat morphs into first mens 'suit' round about the time of Brummell, that's all = birth of sharp tailoring? = history? As opposed to no history.

Leave the dandy for the Ann Dem crowd.

[the breaks]

And how does a german wear Poell? ;)

very carefully

[BSR]

i side with chinorlz, people need to stop with nazis stereotypes, some were wearing dropcrotches and draped tees

[Peasant]

I've always found that any Nazi connections to fashion were forced. Vague coincedences.
The Nazi's wore pants. That guy designs pants!!
Ok, maybe not that vague.

[Faust]

Absolutely hilarious.


I see no Nazi connection in Carol's clothing and even very minimal military influence in his designs overall. He's always spent a predominance of his interest in the materials and treatments over anything else. Short of his brief explorations years ago into the realm of gravid women and corpulent men, themes of collections have not been about history or people but of techniques, materials etc.

Completely agree.

[BECOMING-INTENSE]

. . . and Hermann Nitsch is just an ebullient fat man who gets off on double rainbows and coloring the world with lustrous pigments

yes, Something like that, though ebullient I do not know.

[Faust]

Why would this default one to Nazi's? Abbatoirs are where animals are killed; existing millennia before Nazi era and extant now. Meat hooks are the same and have zero Nazi connotation. Experimental stitching? Surgery/Sutures do not equate Nazism. Human skin and hair do not either. To head off the potential that someone would bring up the oft-mentioned human skin lampshade story it has never been conclusive or even confirmed to exist.

By linking Nazism to Carol's work provides one that personal fascination... a personal (if erroneous) linkage of Carol and the macabre (an indisputable linkage) to another subject that is macabre; The third reich. It's just too easy and unlikely. You can draw parallels (erroneous or otherwise) between just about anything and Nazis.

Exactly. I can draw just as clear a parallel that he was influenced by Updike's The Jungle.

[philip nod]

Ann dem with the riding boots and jodhpurs and double breasted coats and decorated vests is a more literal visual parallel to Nazi costuming but clearly that discussion ain't happening over in the Anne D thread. nor do I think it should be.
I do however think ccps work has always been about more about that other Austrian, Freud, and the how the psychological plays out in his (insert dark adjective here) designs. does the mood and tone of his work relate to his childhood in Linz? I would bet on it. is this related to the emotional rupturing (of the suit) and surface scarring as lasting, wearable evidence of the cycles of cultural repression and amnesia in the wake of hitler's long shadow? I would bet on it. am I a terrible gambler? you can bet on it

[ES3K]

Even with heavy use of riding boots like in F/W 07, Ann always looks romantic to me, never reminded me of any Third Reich asthetics. Nor does CCP.

On a side note, anyone remembering this show?

[francojean23]

these types of analyses, which i thoroughly enjoy, are not about truth. they are about creation. of course each artist has intentions at the time of creation, but once it makes its way into the public sphere, it is up for interpretation. certainly it's easier when the author is dead, but when alive, it is much more difficult to overcome the hang-up of 'figuring out' the work rather than interpreting it. you give the author immense control when you constantly relate your analysis back to him for confirmation.

[JetLag]

For those who don't know this yet:

http://hipsterhitler.com/

[crouka]

what overlaps ccp in my mind is those who long ago expressed defiance of nomos in the form of concetto. pontormo for instance

The only way to gain access to the room in which he slept and worked, was by climbing a ladder which he used to draw up after him

it seems to me that pontormo's ladder doesn't differ very much in kind from ccp's internal ladder that physically appeared in S/S 98 and S/S 07, and the rope one hung from the second floor of his atelier in S/S 02. a ladder is a representation of not only rise of libido but also access to thanatos. and pontormo is said to have had some interest in corpse.

" plonger au fond du gouffre, enfer ou ciel, qu'importe?
au fond de l'inconnu pour trouver du nouveau! "

to me they are an escapee from tradition, orthodoxy, something fixed, although eccentricity may sometimes be their weapon.
from asian's viewpoint it looks more of a pan-european thing that appears every now and then. I guess there has been a ladder with which they come and go stealthily between polis and oikos, overground and underground, life and death, clarity and obscurity, the established and the hidden, something enlightened and something unmarked, new.