"No Anorexia"? "Body Fascism"? or Shock Style mocks Art again?

international | gender and sexuality | opinion/analysis Tuesday September 25, 2007 17:56 by ribbid

This week saw a state wide campaign launched in Italy to stop anorexia nervosa the psychological eating condition which overwhelmingly but not exclusively is suffered by women. There have been many campaigns to stop anorexia since the condition first gained prominence just around post-war period when Europeans generally had enough to eat again. But the campaign launched by Oliviero Toscani of Benetton notoriety could just as easily be accused of body fascism & means something more.

Some day they will isolate the hormone which causes shock & sell it.

Oliviero Toscani perhaps needs a little introduction. He rose to global fame or notoriety with billboard images of an AIDS patient at point of death, Child soldiers & all with the purpose of creating a fashion house brandname - that of Benetton and O12 from 1982 to 2000. There were many who expressed disgust at the expropriation of such shocking images by a fashion house arguing that such issues had nothing do with a the global marketing of a then "above average price" label itself reliant on sweatshop labour for production and precarious labour for retail. There were equally many who applauded what they argued was a fresh approach to issues in the belief that contemporary society could not be served by social movements or networks [since we were still in the woodwork then] & general public awareness had then as now to receive liberal capitalist sponsorship. As such Oliviero Toscani's work occupied an emergent visual and plastic arts niche akin to the Charles Saatchi of Saatch & Saatchi advertising brothers' extensive collection and sponsorship of individuals in the UK.

As Oliviero Toscani launched the magazine / journal "Colors" (each issue in multiple languages attempted a photojournalistic treatment of social concerns ranging from Colombian prisons to African endangered species but all under the prominent packaging and sponsorship of Benetton) Saatchi's favoured artists in the UK were catapulted by dint of his purchasing power and a vacuum in European visual art to a global tour which took in the Royal Academy of Art in London, Berlin and New York.

Saatchi had exhibited this "stable" of artists including Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Jake & Dnio Chapman whose one common feature was "provocation" first at their gallery & then moving to centre stage of the mid Blair years' "cool brittania" project hence the global tour. Their general provocation exemplified by Damien Hirst's cow carcase in formaldehyde, Emin's tent listing all her shags, the Chapman brothers' resin casts of children with lurid attention paid to genitalia.

The now obviously jaded "Sensation" show in my opinion either undermined contemporary art in the UK by favouring such "shock value" over any real communicative ability or consideration of place in the wider flow of history (artistic or political) or perhaps it merely confirmed what was the result of by then obvious lowering standards or even validity of education in the Arts. If Adorno had rued in the mid 20th century that after the Holocaust no poetry, painting or music in the "high" or classical tradition could be expected, it is certainly true that in the early 21st century anyone who can find gallery space can be an artist, anyone who has the gumption or ego take a stage or pamphlet can be a poet.

& sadly without irony that is exactly as it is. A world where Pat Ingoldsby ranks along Milton, any post-modernist repainting of a masters work be it the "Mona lisa" with a spliff or any sculpture if it is big enough - ranks as Art.

# tax deductable.
# either shocks once or is utterly devoid of effect.
# comes in a package of corporate sameness.
# it's been done before but this time your name is on it.

Thus the polemic which has greeted the billboards to be seen throughout Italy this week and the double page spreads of a young woman's emaciated naked body can not be invested with any political or social message, no matter their presumption, pretension or the vapid reactions of a public who somehow have forgotten the last shock. There is no irony to see her body next to the promotion of the latest fashion. There can be no wit in attempting to chart the belated rules applied by Europe's fashion shows as they follow the Madrid Cibele's festival last year & bar any model who has less than a "healthy fat to height body ratio". There is no balancing & fresh reality in the pan-European inclusion of "real women" in Dove soap product adverts, "real" for the simple reason they are not thin, not controlled by fashion, more than "real" for not being obese & still in control..,

Body fascism does not begin with the body alone, nor can it be understood alone in consideration of the representation of the body. It's perhaps like anorexia a symptom of a deeper complex of various deep set issues, falling under many different disciplines; both for its understanding & due obfuscation, a paradox which is an inability to see reality of self or others in real terms- to not be real - in control yet not.

Thus the images as they are reported on and copied in German media, Spanish media, French media & I suppose soon enough English language media are not diffused for any real wish to stop anorexia. Nor are they diffused as some would think more prurient or voyeuristic motives.

I suggest their diffusion is quasi-obligatory and unconscious in this capitalist system which accepts the logic of "Benetton" that regardless of skin colour, wealth, birthplace we may all join in the fun of a Coca Cola advert, that we may all join Mr Gordon Brown's "society of Aspidstra waving Aspiration", that if we are not happy like Bertie Ahern has allowed us to be - we are losers..... who refused to take control of our destinies.

At end, Mr Toscani if not a great artist or communicator of society's ills & woes in the tradition of William Hogart is simply a great businessman who knows how the mass ticks, what they want & what they need. not Art. not Aesthetics simply "style crunching". The numbers follow by themselves.

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Thank you for reading this, I'm iosaf mac diarmada - I may be wrong - I'd like you tell me why. But more than that I'd like you not to try to be "an" artist, poet, painter & most of all, I'd like you all to eat properly every day. don't be afraid.
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coverage from Euro press & industry blogs in a variety of languages - €=$ there is only one..,

http://kickbadhabits.blogspot.com/
http://www.1neurona.com/2007/09/anorexia.html
http://style.popcrunch.com/italian-designer-nolita-no-a...a-ad/
http://www.repubblica.it/2007/09/sezioni/spettacoli_e_c....html
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/leute/0,1518,507597,00.html
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Some wikipedia pages on individuals & their projects mentioned in the text

Oliviero Toscani
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliviero_Toscani
Colors magazine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colors_%28magazine%29
Charles Saatchi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Saatchi
whose wealth derived from the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi who sold Thatcher http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saatchi_%26_Saatchi
Sensations show & the "artists" sponsored
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensation_exhibition

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basic info on Anorexia Nervosa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anorexia_nervosa

Irish support info on eating disorders - there's generally thought to be 3 types -
* too much,
* too little,
* just shite.
http://www.something-fishy.org/treatmentfinder/Eating-D....html
http://www.irishhealth.com/index.html?level=4&id=1149

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oh yes - there is always a sting in the tail. Isabelle Comedienne is the girl in the photo. This is her blog - http://isabellecomedienne.vox.com/
IT is important for us to know that Isabelle, is 26 years old, 1.65 metres tall and weighs 37 kilos. She wants us to know she's in control & is now granting interviews & accepting modelling work
to.......................... stop Anorexia.