art on legs
November 26th 2007 11:49
Fashion designer, performance artist, nightclub sensation and model for the painter Lucien Freud, Leigh Bowery (1961-1994) said “I think of myself as a canvas.” He believed that every time he went out it was a performance, and Boy George branded him ‘art on legs’.
His life project was his body, which he distorted and thwarted through the most outrageous self-costuming involving extensions, padding, binding, corsetry, gaffer-taping and piercing. He saw such modification as not only a way of transforming himself but of claiming ownership of his body, which he felt was under constant threat of control from external societal forces.
The most iconic image of him is the one in his orange spot creation, where the large polka dots extend from his jacket, shoes, scarf and trousers to his flesh so that his painted face and hands became one with the clothing. He is his costume, and the ‘natural’ body and ‘constructed’ attire are merged so that his performance is all there is.
He blurred the boundary between art and life; put the banal, beautiful and grotesque side by side; exhibited the marvelous in the mundane, and showed that art can be made anywhere from anything. You could do the same.
Quote of the day:
"Freaks. There's a quality of legend about freaks.
Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle.
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience.
Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats."
(Diane Arbus)
"Freaks. There's a quality of legend about freaks.
Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle.
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience.
Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats."
(Diane Arbus)
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