Cottage Industry: Andrea Zittel's Smockshop

This week I'm been posting about Cottage Industry at the Baltimore Contemporary. Today: Andrea Zittel.

While at times Cottage Industry isn't much to look at, it's a show that you can't help taking home with you. Whether it's Lisa Anne Auerbach's tracts or Andrea Zittel's smockshop, installation after installation encourages visitors to have art-ish what-if moments. (Most have online homes, which makes it extra-easy to follow-up on what interests you.)

Everything Andrea Zittel does gives me what-if moments. (More on this later today.) Zittel is a game-changer, an artist who mixes visual art with performance with interior design with architecture with activism with proprietorship to arrive at something completely unique. Her latest project, smockshop, is here. Zittel is uncommonly good at describing what she's doing without going all artist-statementy, so here's here explanation of smockshop:

A smock is a simple double wraparound garment designed by Andrea Zittel. These versatile garments are both attractive and utilitarian - each garment is one of a kind, and is sewn by an artist who reinterprets the original design based on their individual skill sets, tastes and interests.

The smockshop generates income for artists who's work is either non-commercial, or not yet self sustaining.

It's Project Runway-meets-Michael's and 19th-century New England-meets-21st-century Brooklyn. (And, with recent dress prices over $300 it's also artisan-upscale in a way that recalls the Whole Foods cheese counter.)

As something to look at in a kunsthalle such as the Baltimore Contemporary, it ain't much: A couple of dresses on dress forms in front of a painted wall and a 'smockshop' sign. [above] It's so stripped down that it makes Ikea's presentation style look over-the-top.

Which is part of the point: The idea is to bring utilitarianism back to retail, to reject a culture that values luxury and status more than people. Zittel's project is intensely communitarian, a kind of conceptual collectivism built around dresses. [That's a Maude Benton adaptation at left.]

(This in itself is notable: Most recent high-profile collectives are male-centric and are notoriously menacing: Think Jim Jones or Warren Jeffs. By making a dress the project's object-of-choice Zittel is putting women at the center of the enterprise. And by allowing her collaborators to riff on her design in any way they like, she's encouraging individuality in a way that male collectivists such as Jeffs don't.) 

Like most of Zittel's projects, smockshop is a little bit environmentalist (sewing creates no carbon emissions), a little bit all-for-one-and-one-for-all, a little bit clever and a little bit passive-aggressive: While Zittel allows artist-sewers to play with her basic template, most of Zittel's projects, dictate certain ways of living onto their 'users.' It's not performance art and it's not a 'happening' or a 'task,' but it is a way of melding performance with a life lived. In a show full of hyphen-artists, maybe Zittel is an artist-puppet-master.