l.a.art
As I was perusing the September issue of Vogue, the trend of lace garments were the standouts of the fall collections. Specifically, Hamish Bowles’ editorial spread on Dolce & Gabbana, titled “One Enchanted Evening,” photographed by Peter Lindbergh, calls to attention that this is not the lace of Madonna’s ’80s. No. It is one of the romantic, may I dare say even baroque, aesthetic. From Valentino to Michael Kors, the Bible thick guide to fall’s definition of beauty is not one of lace trim, but of an entire garment made of the porous material. The material itself is historically charged. It began in the 1540s under the innovative care of Venetian needles. Embroiders reversed the technique of drawn threadwork in order to create an openwork embroidery. Over the centuries it became a signifier of great wealth, as well as made the living for many Dutch women who supported their parents. It even caused a war between Louis XIV of France and Colbert and the Republic of Venice. It is a gendered medium, in that it was usually the work of women, beginning at a young age
24 l.a. centric oct/nov 2012
LACE ART
(and most of the time in orphanages). However, in the seventeenth century, it was mainly worn by men on the rim of their clothing as a sign of affluence. It did not become feminine until later in the eighteenth century, mainly because there was a lift in the laws forbidding the purchase of lace to the lower social classes. Let us also remember the great social divide of who makes the lace and the ones who wear it. The advent of machine lace in the early nineteenth century made production swift, supplying the high demand for the alluring fabric. The word lace derives from that sentiment. Evolving from the Latin verb lacere, meaning “to entice or ensnare,” the fabric does evoke that seductive, almost teasing nature. In the noun form the word’s origin is also from the Latin laqueus, meaning noose. The medium really is the message here, for the open-weave fabric, very much like a net, is made though the process of fastening and securing knots in various methods, capturing the tactile and visual (given that it has a certain transparency) senses coyly.
The word in the verb form is one of connectivity, as we lace up our shoes, or we tie things together. We can also lace substances with flavor, either enriching them or adulterating them. The word may connect materials, but the conative meaning could not be more of a polemic. The very color of the lace denotes its meaning. For example, we have the virginal white lace of a bride, and the eroticism of black lace. In fact, Alfred Hitchcock notes this in his film Psycho, by placing Janet Leigh’s character in both white and black brassieres to convey her moral disposition at the given point of the film. What I am witnessing in the Los Angeles art scene today is lace as a signifier of historical opulence, modern sexuality, and permeable nature. My obsession with lace as an art medium began in 2008 when I saw the work of Cal Lane. With plasma cut metal in the patterns of various found lace (even some given to her by her patrons), Lane takes the fragility of lace and negates it. Nevertheless, the holey virtue of the lace pattern