Art or consumption? To this day, the colorfully printed raincoats by Frankfurt-based artist Thomas Bayrle in the exhibition “German Pop” continue to walk a fine line.
The mid-sixties: space travel, the student movement, feminism, sexual liberation. The Beach Boys rule the American charts. In Germany it's the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, idolized by the relatively new, incredibly Western species of teenager, above all of the female sort. Even the fashion worn by fans of the new pop music is being revolutionized--wherever one looks one sees bright colors, materials such as plastic, the epitome of capitalist throw-away society, and of course miniskirts and minidresses.
Bayrle's coats are always coats, never paintings
The art of this period returns to the figurative and addresses everyday life--directly, in all of its banality, and in color. Works of art take up motifs that are so prevalent in supermarkets or on television that one hardly notices them anymore: typewriters, cars, women, ice cream, mug shots. The overriding subject is more or less directly consumption. The consumption of food as well as of women, the news, or art. It is not without reason that Pop Art makes use of motifs, strategies, and techniques taken from advertising and mass production.
In 1968, the artist Thomas Bayrle had the fashion studio Lukowsky & Ohanian in Frankfurt design models for see-through raincoats made out of plastic, on which he printed continuous patterns consisting of cows, shoes, and cups in loud colors. Unlike Warhol's "Souper Dress," a paper model printed with Campbell's soup cans, in this case Bayrle not only uses consumer goods as motifs for artworks, he produces the works as merchandise. But what kind of art is it if one hangs it in a closet instead of on the wall and presents it by putting it on? Jasper Johns's famous paintings of targets pose a similar problem, because they are at once motif--paintings of targets--and object--simply targets. Without further ado, one could use these paintings as targets. However, Bayrle's coats are always coats, never paintings or reproductions of such, and they are definitely meant to be worn. Yet several of them hang in museums.
Are department stores really turning into museums?
The artist further blurs the boundary between art, fashion, and consumption not only by distributing the coats via galleries but also selling them for forty-five deutschmarks apiece at the capitalist consumer palace Kaufhof. Thus what distinguishes this coat, which is not a handcrafted unicum despite the fact that it bears the artist's signature, from other mechanically manufactured coats in a department store that bear the signature or the label of a manufacturer or a designer? In terms of wearing comfort probably nothing--except that you put on a warm sweater under the latter, while the models for Bayrle's Pop Art coats do not wear anything underneath.
But the questions one asks oneself are different. While after a successful shopping trip you might ask yourself if you really need all of this, picked up a bargain, or whether the items are fair ware, when buying a Bayrle coat one calls established art practices into question. It is not only a matter of whether it is art when Bayrle has plastic printed with colorful motifs and coats manufactured out of it, but also a matter of where art is sold and consumed. So is a Bayrle coat hanging in a museum or sold in a gallery more a work of art, and one offered for sale at Kaufhof more a consumer product? To what extent do institutions such as museums shape our appreciation of art? It no longer confuses us when raincoats are presented at museums that one looks at, like other works of art, from a distance but never touches or even attempts to try on. Is it true, as Andy Warhol predicted in the sixties, that department stores are really turning into museums, and museums into department stores?