Memento Mori

Joan Ainley Search: Recall, Reflect, Remember (c2003)

 They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Laurence Binyon

Loren Beven Circles Red (2007)

I am a fan of military inspired fashion.  I have a copy of Hardy Blechman's (of Maharishi label) DPM: Disruptive Pattern Material, An Encyclopaedia of Camouflage: Nature, Military, Culture,  an encyclopaedic two-volume work on the origins and use of camouflage in natural, military and cultural contexts. His innovative street wear designs, such as the popular 1990s ‘Snopants', bonsai camouflage and dragon embroideries rescue camouflage from its unhappy associations with war and conflict.   

camoufleur: (m) n. camouflager, one who camouflages, one who conceals through disguise. Here are some great DPM inspired items: 

Clockwise from top left: Hermes scarf, TheOutNet python effect blouse,  Marc Jacobs painted scarf,  Marcus Lupfer knitted dress, Alexander McQueen skull and rose tote, Dark Side trainers.

 Thinking about death and loss has reminded me of my favourite memento mori, Gabriel Orozco's  Black Kites. He apparently spent six months drawing the checkerboard of black squares over the skull, slowly tracing its bulges, indentations, convexities, concavities, complexities. This ritual links it with traditions from Mexico's Day of the Dead to Latin Europe: bleaching the skeletons of the dead, decorating them, and then putting them on display in charnel houses. Colourful and creative. 

Alexander McQueen

Adrain Searle, reviewing Black Kites says this: 

"As well as a thing of bamboo, string and cloth, a kite is of course also a bird, a scavenger, which in modern times gathers over rubbish dumps, places of human waste and spoilage. It makes one ask over what ruins and dung heaps the artist is hovering for spoils. To fly a kite is also to float an idea, to let a thought doodle in the empty air. Isn't that also what artists do for much of the time?"

Damien Hirst's diamond encrusted For the Love of God suggests a more classical way of viewing the memento mori.  Roman fatalism entices to enjoy here and now in the face of inevitable death. Remembrance Day may be celebrated more solemnly, but it too is a memento mori and reminds that those who died in conflict did so for our future.

 Gabriel Orozco Black Kites (1997) & Damien Hirst For the Love of God (2007)