I'm baaAck!
After a couple of months on the lam from blogging, moksha has resurfaced in the big apple and really, what could be a bigger impetus for getting back her much-needed groove?

Day One - while it probably would have been more practical if I had spent the day buying amenities like, I don't know....toilet paper and soap? - instead I spent most of the day at that bastion of art and art pilfering (did I say that?), the Met.

In four hours, I barely got through the Egyptian galleries (that is a whole other story - I used to think that mummies were rare...), but my comments here are reserved for Anglo Mania, a wacky and deliciously irreverent costume/diorama show which transcended the confines of curatorial "creativity" - a feat that was made all the more incredible to recognize while standing in such a traditionally austere institution.

Basically - the show mused upon the construction of "Englishness" through the "traditions" and "transgressions" of its clothing history. "Tradition" in this case stood for clothing that ranged from the 18th to end of 19th century, and "transgressions" (which took their cues from "traditions" but overturned them in the process) that were played out mainly in the past twenty years and were predominantly represented by designers Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen and John Galliano. I should note here that this tradition/transgression thing ultimately seemed a little forced - who's to say that the "tradition" specimans were not transgressions in their own time? Or maybe there was on a comment here on the shifting meaning of these era-centric 'uniforms' - in 100 years, the trangression examples will be "tradition"...

Anyway - the real transgression, in my opinion, was in the layout of the show. These period rooms that normally house the Brit. classical art section of the museum were so wonderfully rearranged and acted upon by wild-haired mannequins, the effect was a deconstruction of the traditional museum space and a forging of something new. Picture a grand non-working fireplace arranged in a museum to display, among other things, period type fireplace implements and untouchable gilded mantle decorations - now picture that same mantle with a translucent-skinned mannequin with blue hair and Galliano newspaper print and tartan long underware sprawled over it in the place of gilt decor. It upended the whole concept of the "period room" and the diorama which are so often formulaic when it comes to costume display.

In this juxtapositon of old and new, tradition and transgression, it was equally fascinating to hear the comments of visitors. Some outright poo pooed the whole thing, unwilling to suspend belief for a moment that Burberry waders, mohawk head dresses made from tampons, and Elizabethean-inspired jewelry containing semen deserved a place in the Met's hallowed sanctum. Others were constantly trying to identify the contemporary pieces from the old ones in efforts to determine, as one woman said, the "original" from the derivative, I suppose. There were a lot of sniffs and some bored expressions - if the clothing codes were too familiar, it seems, they lost some respect among those who go to the museum to be reminded of how much they don't know, rather than to rethink what they do.

But still others were, like me, blown away by the spectacle and sheer theatricality of the "scenes", overarching in melodrama and yet so right for the opulent interiors that surrounded them. I particularly liked the way the class system in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries were constructed, featuring interplays and conversations across time and space among "gentlemen/prep school types" and amongst "coachmen/punks". [photo above]

Enough for now - but suffice to say the way this exhibition tore down conventions of chronology, and diorama display, forcing us to pay attention to the cinematic elements of the galleries which we usually take to be natural and normal constructions, will stay with me for a long time. Hopefully other curators will follow.

Guess what? I'm in NYC and it's awesome.