‘I’m a Work of Art’ T-shirt Dress (Ripping Myself Off)

‘I’m a Work of Art’ T-shirt Dress (Ripping Myself Off), from 1978-1979, was executed during what could best be described as one of Colette’s most intense and interesting periods as a progressive postmodern multimedia artist. Around that time Colette had come to realise and accept the fact that her art, as well as her image, had not only established itself as a source of inspiration to the art community but also started to spread into the wider commercial world of fashion and design.

Like her fellow Manhattan-based contemporary artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987, American visual artist and leading figure in the pop art movement, considered one of the most important American artists of the second half of the 20th century), Colette was acutely aware of the blurred lines between fine art and consumerism that defined much of the art scene in the post-war years. This prompted Colette, on her own terms, to adapt to the times in a daring manoeuvre that would ensure that she retained control over her narrative. Colette famously staged her on death in the 1978 installation performance ‘The Last Stitch’ at the Whitney Museum of American Art, only to resurrect a couple of days later at the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Centre in the guise of her new public persona, Justine. This new artistic alter ego fittingly (the 1980s so-called ‘yuppie era’ was literally right around the corner) posed as an entrepreneur and the executor of the Colette Is Dead Co.

Justine, however, didn’t confine herself to the role of an entrepreneur but also took centre stage as the lead singer of the band Justine & The Victorian Punks. Furthermore, she diversified into interior design, fashion, and modelling whilst also creating various products (like the Colette doll perfume).

In 1979 Colette (aka Justine) designed the ‘deadly feminine’ line (inspired by the Austrian shade and silk parachute fabrics worn in her performances) for Fiorucci, won an award as ‘Fashion Innovator’ and had her Beautiful Dreamer LP selected by the Village Voice as ‘the strangest record of the year’.

That same year she also, perhaps more importantly, presented a multi media spectacle –fashion art performance Ripping myself Off– in a well-known boutique in SoHo, New York, where she presented clothes inspired by her image and artworks, like the ‘I’m a Work of Art’ T-shirt Dress (Ripping Myself Off). Canada Choate (New York-based writer whose work considers the intersection of critical theory, art history, and popular culture) writes (in ‘Colette Lumiere’, ARTFORUM, 2021/2022):

Declaring herself a ‘work of art’ in her window installation and performance Ripping Myself Off, 1978, Lumiere (then going by Justine) satirized both the masculine tradition of painting and the then-ascendant postmodern critique of woman as image, epitomized in the writing of film theorist Laura Mulvey or in Barbara Kruger’s poetic agitprop. Yet instead of removing her likeness from circulation, the artist employed a strategy she called ‘reverse pop’ so that she could alter consumer culture from the inside out. Examples featured in this show included photographic documentation of her performances as the lead singer of Justine and the Victorian Punks, an ensemble that produced ‘Beautiful Dreamer’ (1979), a single recorded in collaboration with Peter Gordon’s Love of Life Orchestra that sets Lumiere’s naive rendition of the nineteenth-century parlor song and the tinkle of a music box against Gordon’s thumping disco groove. In addition, the gallery contained numerous racks of clothing in the artist’s signature style—experiments in gathered satin that led to her 1979 collaboration with the trendsetting downtown New York boutique Fiorucci.

In her review of the 2021-2022 Company Gallery exhibition, Notes on Baroque Living: Colette and Her Living Environment, 1972-1983, Johanna Fateman (New York-based writer and contributing editor for ARTFORUM who regularly writes art reviews for the New Yorker and 4Columns) also acknowledges the impact that Justine’s ‘satirical commodification of a constructed self’ had at the time (in ‘Colette Lumiere. Crinkles, pleats, and ruche-like flowers: an exhibition revisits the artist’s world’, 4Columns, 12 October 2021):

A garment from 1978–79, titled ‘I’m a Work of Art’ T-shirt Dress (Ripping Myself Off), emblazoned with her band’s song lyrics, tips into the realm of merch. The purposeful blurring of categories and the satirical commodification of a constructed self were key themes of punk, as was a ragged, fetish-y appropriation of period costuming (Vivienne Westwood’s iconic 1981 Pirate Collection was on the horizon). But the total commitment, obsessive craft aspect, and site specificity of Lumiere’s magnum opus sets her apart.

That Colette’s work, not least her diversified output from the late 1970s, would lay the foundations for a lasting and palpable influence on later generations of internationally acclaimed female performers was touched upon by, once again, Canada Choate, in ‘Colette Lumiere’, ARTFORUM, 2021/2022:

Forty years out, a contemporary audience hyperfamiliar with the mammoth success of pop stars such as Madonna and Lady Gaga might underestimate Lumiere’s influence on new generations of female artists, who shrug off critics’ accusations of vanity and seductiveness. Lumiere, however—despite her near erasure from the art-historical record—has always been clear-eyed about the impression she left on both high art and pop culture.

Interestingly enough, Colette herself was asked, as far back as in a 1978 interview with Night magazine, if she had any predictions for the following year, to which she simply replied: ‘More Colette rip-offs.’

Provenance

Company Gallery, New York, NY, U.S.A., Notes on Baroque Living: Colette and Her Living Environment, 1972 - 1983, 20 November 2021-12 February 2022.

CF HILL, Stockholm, New York is for Lovers. Curated by Sophie Mörner, 11 May-12 August 2023.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired from the above).

Copyright Firestorm Foundation