these are amazing!

This speaks to the power of transformation. Very creative!

Quite inspiring. Robert Fontenot has taken these fabrics and looked at them in with fresh eyes to transform them in such original ways. A really creative designer/artist.

I admire people with such a creative imagination!! Impressive!
Cheers from shilly buenos Aires! Lowest temprature in years!!

So innovative! I’ve got millions of old scraps lying around…wonder what I can make with them.

Very nice and inspiring and challenging too!

i was a museum textiles major in grad school…

this man is my idol.

I am soooo inspired! Thank you for showing creativity that speaks outside the box..in awe!

the sails and the fabric chosen are absolutely amazing.

Most of the projects on this blog are great and really creative, but I had to cringe with the Claire McCardell dress – did he not know any lucky girl who would have worn that??? Very sad on that one.

I like the creativity of most of the transformations, but some of the dresses were beautiful on their own and it seems like they could have been restored for their purposed use. That black lace dress was georgous!

geen-yus! these are so wonderful and creative.

are you serious? he’s taking gorgeous textiles and making them into crap. a dog bed? a hacky sack? a claire mccardell dress into a witch’s hat?

I almost passed out when I saw what he did to the Japanese jacket (on his blog.) The item was so glorious before the transformation and now it’s a Barbie dress! Really, that’s going a bit too far.

The recycling that began as responsible and planet saving has now become destructive and egotistical.Surely these once loved items could be loved again.Think prom dresses for under monied girls..

I’m all for recycling, but I have to agree with what sarah said “seriously” atleast he could have made something nicer, like a new skirt out of the dress but a witch hat, what purpose does that serve.

What an interesting project. I can see how some people might find it upsetting. We get very attached to how we see things. LACMA was not attached enough to keep them. I like this artist is reclaiming and creating.

This actually makes me pretty sad- It’s a shame he’s cutting up some gorgeous pieces of clothing that has historical significance. I agree with Sarah about the Claire McCardell dress turned into a witch’s hat, and also the Galanos coat turned into an ugly car seat.. I couldn’t bear to look at the blog after that.

I think recycling is great, but there has to be some type of respect and education about the item you are working on.

oh, I love this… but, at the same time, I could never do that to a beautiful piece of clothing. Still… a lot of fun!

This project has nothing to do with LACMA, except that he purchased items that once belonged to them in a public auction. Attaching the museum’s name to the project in this context is erroneous and makes them look bad.

That gorgeous Korean wedding dress into a garment bag…I could cry. There must be endless textiles out there with rips, mildewed areas, other imperfections to be repurposed, but to take these beautiful, museum-quality (literally) examples and tear them apart is really unnecessary. I actually feel sad looking at it.

this is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. how can you applaud this??

I agree that many of the transformations were actually sad. A mexican tablecloth into a rope (rather nooselike actually)? I liked the kimono sleeve he turned into a kite, that was whimsical. But potholders from a beautiful blue felt blanket? Uncreative and de-valuing.

However, thinking of all the clothing my great-grandmother left behind from her concert pianist days, I would love to honor those objects in some way. I certainly don’t share the same proportions, and you can’t lug around vintage unwearable clothing forever.

My first reaction was “Dear God, he’s destroying those works of art!” but upon further thought, I only had that reaction because I happen to place a higher value on clothing than car seats. From an modern art perspective, he’s accomplished quite a bit and has managed to get a lot of people thinking about the ethics of repurposing old materials. I have a feeling a lot of preservationists have the same feeling about all the vintage furniture most of us renovate and reupholster…

I can’t believe he bought these things only to destroy them. These things are museum quality and incredibly rare. Now they’re barbie crap and a trash bin? This is just awful.

I would just love to wear and touch gorgeous fabrics like those! Have you been to the fabric store recently? They do NOT sell material like that. They don’t MAKE material like that. That wool on the coat? AH!! And they looked pristine. I am sure they were stored well. I wish the auction was online and I could buy and love the dress, the skirt, the coats! oohh it kills me. I can’t believe this site was given props.

i once bought a quilt from the 1880′s that had what i thought to be horrid colors……..but an antiqued dealer wanted to buy it from me for 850.00………..but i made backpacks for my triplet nephews who liked the colors, ugh…..great job robert transforming those strange museum textiles into useful items

what did he do????
how can the museum ‘release’ these items, and then have someone tear them up like that?
At least vintage and thrift store shoppers would enjoy the quality of the textiles.
I am appalled!!!

I am an art conservator and can tell you that a lot of thought goes into what is deaccessioned. Although I too cringed at some of the projects, keep in mind that none of these artifacts are one of a kinds, nor does the provenance (history of object like who owned it) implore the museum to keep it in the collection as in the commentary on the dresses, he states that McCardell dresses donated by Nancy Reagan went to the President’s Museum. Museums rely on govt funding which is hard to come by these days and need to get creative in justifying their existence especially as our eco consciousness rises. This project generates publicity. As a crafter, ya the witch hat was hard to take. But all in all, the concept is truly brilliant! I encourage you to give critical feedback to the artist.

I love the idea, but I do think it’s a shame these historical textiles were not used to make objects with more keepsake value.

These are crimes against textiles!

I like the idea of what has been done (& I wish that I knew of a local museum doing the same thing). I’m all for keeping items with historical or unique artistic value as is or restoring them, but, as with many of my old family heirlooms, it is better to reinvent them, than lose them forever, particularly if they are damaged or will only end up in some landfill. I don’t like all of the projects, but I like the concept.

These are great ways to appreciate the old in a new way when they otherwise might sit in a box where no one would see them. I especially love the sail boat.

how could he turn that beautiful plain evening gown into a stupid umbrella!?!? i understand recycling is “trendy” right now but some of these projects were a waste of perfectly good vintage!

Using museum quality textiles in this way is a self serving publicity stunt. He might just as easily used damaged textiles with flaws from lesser or unknown vintage vendors. But then he wouldn’t have made it to this page without his reference to LACMA and the tragic use of irreplaceable textiles.

I appreciate that the artist’s craftsmanship appears very good. The project makes me reconsider the arbitrary value I put on some objects, especially those that are not or no longer serving their intended purpose, but which I still regard with an unwarranted preciousness. Is such behavior merely avarice?

I noticed no one is crying over the pair of large, loose fitting trousers made of “a colorful synthetic fabric printed with a faux Ikat pattern.” Obviously, the LACMA didn’t think these were great treasures for the ages. Shouldn’t everyone be pointing their fingers at them?

From treasure to trash.

So sad for these textile artist and designers who created the original beautiful pieces with skill and thought only to have it turn into a publicity stunt. Great concept – weak outcome.

If they had been reused in a graceful way, I would have been okay with it (as some of them were). But making a Barbie dress and dog bed out of those fabrics? It’s making a throw-away item, which is a waste.

It looks like LACMA posted about the project:

http://lacma.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/raiding-and-recycling-the-collection/

Eh as an artist and a textile fan I’m still quite bummed that some beautiful pieces of clothing and textiles were destroyed. The workmanship of the garments and weaving and textile design is art art as well- and 100% irreplaceable. I wish more people had known about the auction,so more civilians could have bought more things. Ironically, if LACMA had put up an ebay shop I bet they would have made much more selling it al la carte to textile and vintage fans than in bulk.

Thanks so much for turning me on to this project. I’ve been interning at a local museum on a deaccessioning project, and this really gives me a new perspective on the whole thing. Love your site!

Hmm… I wonder if he’s any relation to illustrator Heyd Fontenot.

I think it’s an awesome idea to repurpose these discarded items, but the transformations themselves weren’t that remarkable. I think the best thing that’s come of it so far is the car seat.

Museum auctions are not uncommon, but the textile collectors watch for the opportunity to acquire the textiles. This artist’s “work” was just destructive and unimaginative, basically an attention whore hoping to get a reaction. No one who is seriously interested in textiles, or history would have given this person any notice. It’s a shame that this blog sponsored such travesty.

While I can understand why some people are turned off by the idea, I am with Grace. What good does it do to hang on to objects that no one cares about? Why not re=purpose them if you like? The museum obviously felt they were not worthy of keeping. When my daughter grew up and could not fit in my wedding dress, I cut it up and made various items from it. These things can be handed down to my grandchildren in a way the dress could not. They may not be as beautiful as the dress, but they have meaning. If you believe there is meaning in art whether we agree or not, then it seems to me that this work has value.

I’ve thought about this more and agree with what Laura H. and Shelley said.
But I disagree with his premise that these are “useless items” (his words) simply because they’ve been de-accessioned from an art institution.

It’s very ambiguous whether his intention is to repurpose/recycle these items or if he’s only using them as fodder for his art-making (which is fine, too, but seems disingenuous and cynical). He’s embroidering the accession numbers onto them which adds a very conceptual element. Who wants a barbie outfit with some random number on it? I mean yes, it serves as a reminder of the interesting history of the item, but then that means there’s more to it than recycling/repurposing.

He’s being intentionally provocative. These are things that used to be “carefully collected, catalogued, and cared for” that he’s made into aprons for example, to be splattered with BBQ sauce.

So I’m glad you posted about it because it raises a lot of interesting questions.

Museums often struggle with how to balance donations they receive with the institution’s mission statement and collections policy. In other words, they can’t justify using the limited storage space they have to store items that do not fit within the scope of the collection. This leads some museums to deaccession items that do not add to the collection or that are too similar to other items in the collection. There’s nothing wrong with this as long as donators realize that their prized possessions might be converted to cash – the thing most museums really need.

Just because an item is deaccessioned does not mean it is is not valuable. It merely means the museum does not need the item. I have a late 1960s Chanel couture suit in my collection that was deaccessioned by FIT. Does that make my suit trash? Hardly. It means they had more than enough late 60s Chanel suits to adequately represent her work of that era.

Frankly, I’m getting mixed messages from the blog. If on one hand he is sincerely interested in creating beautiful and useful things, why destroy beautiful and useful things in the process? I haven’t had need of a witch’s hat lately, but I do have several McCardell garments that I treasure.

So is he being delibertely provocative? Only the blogger knows for sure, but I can certainly see why some people have reached that conclusion.

I generally enjoy this blog, but am literally offended at the post about LACMA. This isn’t a person who takes ugly, beat-up and otherwise unwanted items and turns them into something beautiful and useful. The “artist” takes rare, highly sought after pieces of art and destroys them to his whims.

Would you put decoupage over one of VanGogh’s works? Would you chip off an early Roman statue’s head or arm to create a centerpiece? It is the same thing.

Grace –

How can you say you “wouldn’t even dream of walking down that path?” This is the discussion that is being had, and it is the reason so many people are upset about what this guy is doing.

LACMA is not to blame here – they deaccession a piece of art and they make money. It is not their responsibility to ensure the piece is handled after that point in any particular way.

Nor is it entirely cut and dry that what this “artist” is doing is wrong. But, looked at objectively, most of what he’s doing is foolish and wasteful. There is no denying this. Who takes a hand-woven, hand-embroidered, MUSEUM-EXHIBITED textile and turns it into a recycling bin?

The point here is that there are TONS of people who would cherish any of these deaccessioned textile artworks. They are all pieces of history, of cultural anthropology, that took lifetimes of training and probably hundreds of hours to construct. This “recycler” takes these wonderful things and turns them into things that you could expect to find at any thrift store.

It’s like taking a classic ’67 Shelby Cobra, which has been lovingly-maintained for over 40 years, ripping the hood, engine and interiors out, filling it with dirt and flowers and calling it a flower pot. Absolutely indefensible.

My question for you, Grace, is when is someone’s alteration of a pre-existing work of art for the sake of their own art not acceptable? To you, when does that person cross the line from art to destruction? And does this apply to all pre-existing mediums? If it’s okay to cut up pieces of textile art, is it also okay to cut up paintings or chip away at statuary?

Laura

It would really depend on the quality of the resulting piece for me. I happen to be someone who loves and values beautiful home décor objects as much as artwork, so in this case I happen to love many of the pieces ge produced as much as, if not more than, the original.

But I’m sure if I felt the resulting objects were ugly or poorly made than I would be unhappy with the repurposing.

‘art’ is really in the eye of the beholder for me, so whether someone used bits of statuary or fabric it wouldn’t matter for me.

But it’s all quite subjective- I can see both points of view here- I just happen to fall on the side that doesn’t mind this project

Grace

My point is that he could have done any of his silly projects with cheap fabrics on sale at his local fabric store. You are responding aesthetically to the trash bin, but are refusing to acknowledge the sensitivity of the materials used.

If he had reused an old dress of his mother’s, people could complain that it is wasteful because that dress could still have had a lot of use in it for somebody before being “downcycled” into a trash bin. This isn’t the argument I’m making. These deaccessioned artworks are not the same as any old fabric laying around, and it doesn’t matter if you think the new uses to which they are being put are gorgeous or not. Of course you are going to think a trash bin made from an extremely precious bit of textile is gorgeous! It is! I could make backyard pavers out of 100-year-old Tiffany glass tiles and you would swoon. Such a shallow examination of what is going on here misses the point that this is w-a-s-t-e-f-u-l in the extreme.

And I am not on a crusade to convince anybody of anything. I am just explaining my position in as clear a way as possible to attempt to convince you that your opinion here is misguided. This is my second posting regarding this, hardly a “crusade.”

In addition to answering Lauren’s questions above, why don’t you think about the issue this way: if somebody took a quilt that your mother made by hand, a quilt that took months of loving labor, a quilt that you had kept in pristine condition for decades… if somebody took this quilt and cut it up into potholders, would you be as impressed with their creativity?

See the thing that gets me is that there is no respect for the original item or the original artist. We’re not talking about mass-produced machine made things, but some of these were objects that were already crafted by hand with love from an artist.

To clarify my example of the quilt, imagine that you had to sell the quilt, the same as LACMA had to sell these pieces, and then you saw later on some blog that the quilt had been cut up into potholders.

The reason this isn’t a simple issue of artistic subjectivity is that all of the works are being very much downcycled. There is no brilliance involved in taking something that took an immense amount of work to create, and turning it into something that takes you a half-hour to do. That is, objectively, very wasteful.

Seriously? You would find it acceptable to destroy a museum-quality artwork if you liked the resulting home decor piece? I’m sorry, but I find that attitude short-sighted and irresponsible.

Part of the problem with associating value with the original pieces is that for many, fashion has come to be seen as disposable and consumable trend rather than art. If the artist had cut up mass-produced clothing from Target and made functional decor items I would stand and applaud. But the items he has destroyed were never mass-produced. They were carefully created by artists who happen to work in the medium of textiles, and few of these items remain. Fashion collectors know that they are relevant on their own merit, and becoming more and more rare because of just such attitudes. Did the artist who took scissors to the McCardell understand her importance in the fashion pantheon? I’d guess not. So then it comes down to ignorance of fashion’s history, and if one wishes to be an intelligent and thoughtful artist, that would be just inexcusable.

Saying that value is subjective makes it all too easy. We’re talking about the preservation of cultural history. Just because one person or group doesn’t value it doesn’t mean it has no value.

Oh dear – people need to learn to read carefully before they fly off the handle. For starters, everyone referring to the original pieces as “museum quality” has missed the point – they are explicitly NOT museum quality, which is why they have been deaccessioned. Most of them have probably been sitting in archival boxes for years, not enjoyed by anyone. If they had been of actual museum quality they would’ve been donated to other collections, as many of the other deaccessioned pieces were.

Fontenot has several very interesting posts which more thoroughly explain his project, and I suggest you read them before you decide that his motivations are “shallow.” Also note that these objects failed to sell at a previous auction, and were eventually bought as part of three lots, valued collectively at $150 and sold for only $100. Collectors had their chance, not once but twice, and apparently they were uninterested.

Also, many of you seem to have skimmed over the descriptions of the original objects. That blanket that was turned into potholders dates back to 1986, and had machine embroidered edges. For those of you bemoaning “hand crafted originals,” note that the potholders were handmade, embroidered with the original accession number, and had the original machine embroidery redone by hand. By your own argument, these pieces should be considered “superior.”

If you haven’t read the LACMA response linked to earlier in the comments, you should. They seem to take his project as serious and well-thought out, and contextualize it with artists such as Warhol, who did a similarly-minded experiment in the RISD archives. They also used one of his pieces as a banner for a new exhibit, so they clearly have enough respect for the artist to maintain a working relationship with him.

Do I cringe at a couple of his pieces? Absolutely. However, that cringe response tells me something important about the arbitrary value I place on objects and branding, and the way I see objects such as car seats to be lower in a very subjective hierarchy of “things.” Why is a coat more valued than a car seat? Is there some hidden classism working behind the scenes that causes us to belittle one and not the other?

If art is supposed to encourage us to examine our own thoughts and values, then this project is very valuable art. I know that it is going to help me as I try to weed through my own “collections” in preparation for a move, and maybe it will encourage me to re-envision some of the things I have deemed “too precious” to discard, but not precious enough to wear or display.

I think everyone who says the artist should have used regular fabric is missing the point of this project. I’ve read the blog, plus the essay on LACMA’s website and the essay by Tyler Green on Modern Art Notes, and it seems clear to me that this artist isn’t just some guy who’s sitting around trying to find fabric for dog beds.

The project seems to be about museum deaccessioning, and making us think about how objects move into and out of collections. I don’t think any of these objects he’s made are supposed to be used, I think they’re supposed to be displayed like art, and I think that’s why the accession numbers are sewn on to each piece. This is a provocative project that’s making me think a lot more about museums and their collections.

I think that what he did is totally amazing and inventive. I’d like to see more of this happening in the world today!

Hmmm…an artist being provocative and controversial? Imagine that…

Looking at the number and content of the comments generated by his work on just this one site, I’d have to say he’s probably pretty pleased right now.

Catching up here and here we go again…I am appalled at what was carved up (oh sorry, ‘deconstructed’) and into what. …a brilliantly colored Korean coat cut into a kite?!
I would have loved having these textiles either to wear or to simply enjoy…as is. …this is just too much.