Pun Chaos Pun Couture
Punk: Chaos to Couture by Andrew Bolton, with Richard Hell, John Lydon, and Jon Savage (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013)
Those Fascinating Paper Dolls: An Illustrated Handbook for Collectors by Marian B. Howard (New York: Dover Publications, 1981)
Raw Creation: Outsider Art and Beyond by John Maizels, with an introduction by Roger Cardinal (London: Phaidon Press, 1996)
The Marcel Marceau Counting Book by George Mendoza, photographed by Milton H. Greene (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1971)
Lettie's family paper dolls--from collection of Kate Doordan Klavan
Wallpaper samples from Columbia Wallpaper Co., 1927
Dolls: Victoria & Albert Museum (London: Her Majesty's Stationery office, 1969)
"Destroy"
"Destruction"
"Deconstruction"
These images are distorted by the reflective glare of the plastic sleeves holding them. This "book" is in the form of a portfolio.
Another wonderful old artist's portfolio, picked off a UCSB junk heap, houses this companion piece to Owls of Old Time.
This one is huge, almost big enough to contain a full leaf of Kate Doordan Klavan's wallpaper samples, but not quite, so I had to do a little cutting. Mostly, though, I could depend on the crumbling edge of the page to bring me the right proportion.
It was obvious to me that I had at last found a good use of a book called Punk Chaos Punk Couture. This deluxe volume was published by the Fashion Institute associated with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They wanted to explore the crossing over of punk style in the music world and punk style on the fashion runway.
These two "looks" thrill me not at all. My impulse is to say these people need some wallpaper in their lives. And paper dolls.
So that is where I put them to make a mockery of themselves.
I reused words from the garish Met book to turn "punk" into "pun."
This portfolio held twenty leaves.
I had this book of Marcel Marceau putting on twenty different hats, and the numbers gave me the equation.
No scanner within my means is big enough to grasp the whole page, so I decided to leave the pages in plastic, which brings out a reflective distortion.
Which I like.
