Not enough hair, obviously
HAIR ART IS FIGHTING THE FRINGE, GOING BANG AND KILLING EVERY BORING FUCKER IN SIGHT.
Once upon a time, art hung on walls and people grew hair. Art did not grow from people’s heads and hair was not guffawed over in great galleries. Until, in 1917, some clever-dick called Duchamp stuck an upturned urinal in a gallery, called it ‘art’ and the world’s perspective started to change.
Hair – An Objet d'Art?
Modernism perceives hair as a new blank canvas, a bendable new rule of thumb to screw up, scribble on, bastardize and transcend the bodily realm. With the help of old-fashioned stylists, fashion has created haute coiffure of the new wave, or in plain text, cool hair art.
Galliano, McQueen, Viktor & Rolf and Vivienne Westwood are just a few designers extending fashion theatrics beyond the cut of cloth. Hair is fabric. Fabric is fashion. Fashion is art.
Ergo hair is art.
McQueen’s Spring/Summer parade Plato's Atlantis moulded hair into riveting horn-high ridges and pathological plaits, creeping towards Avatar on the Richter scale of alienation. And we’re not talking about any of that goth shit with purple extensions and pigtails. Hair was painstakingly braided into artful helmets with ornithological frizzy tuffs. Much savvier.
Moving onto Galliano... Consider him the Jackson Pollock of the catwalk and there you have it; a multitudinous masterpiece of colorific hair: spray-painted, dusted, dyed and painted. Topped with jewels, an orgy of feathers, chains, masks and fascinators, braids, rolls, Elizabethan beehives and crimp-cuts and surely that’s enough to satiate.
But is it art?
No. It’s hair art. There’s a difference.
Claus Oldenburg augmented junk into Goliath pop-art sculptures. Charlie Le Mindu is a pint-sized wig-maker who creates bouffants bigger than his own body mass. Comparison noted.
Spinning hirsute yarns into jumbo lip hats, teetering scaffolding and ridged-horns twice the size of McQueen’s, Le Mindu smiled “Anything you can do, I can do better.” Oui. The French wig revolutionist’s LFW debut show (2008, Blow PR) was the first of its kind to put hair first, fashion behind. Hair became fashion, delighting and astounding with incredible ‘works of hair.’ Magazines fight to feature his ‘H-art’ while Lady Gaga demands more of his hairy tour costumes, proving to be a monstrous hit in Hong Kong concerts (SUPERSWEET has experienced the pleasure of his scissors, by the way).
The late great Japanese art director Nagi Noda sculpted subtler works of hair into an Animal Hat collective. Exquisite goats, pigs, stags, dogs, elephants and other fauna blended seamlessly into models’ hair. “Like animal like owner” the saying goes; we liked the fact each model was chosen for her subtle resemblance to the animal.
According to Le Mindu, wigs are due for a massive revival. We haven’t enjoyed a good dose of wig action since the 80s and hair is a bitch to sculpt day-to-day, suffering from shitty back-combing and spray damage. You can buy Charlie’s wigs from his online shop. The Gaga, Florence and the Machine and The Vuitton (frizz Afro) are selling for a mere 100 pound.
In short, hair art is fighting the fringe, going bang and killing every boring fucker in sight. One day, a biologically mutated towering structure of mesh, hair and plutonium will symbolically topple and kill people, like a hairy Titanic on legs. We know one thing for sure - Fashion will divide and de-evolve: Bald-headed Eloi will model couture and butt-naked Morlocks will model coiffure.