“How I’d Sink American Vogue” is a project that Scott King developed for a show at New York gallery PS1 last year. Creative Review notes:
His 12 artworks featuring fictional proposals for Vogue covers ruthlessly lampoon the fatuous froth of the glossy. Take January, The Angry Issue: its main feature – 769 Things That Make Scarlett Johansson Angry At Injustice. Inside, we are promised advice on”how to dress angry”, a report on”whatever happened to New Orleans”and”how Bono saved Africa”.
Carrying on the list obsession is the May issue with 635 Poor People Upside Down [above], plus Karl Lagerfeld on cancer and the lost diaries of Oswald Mosely.
I have very mixed reactions to this. On the one hand, I dislike Vogue very deeply, because to meet it represents a powerful instrument of commodification and othering of women. On the other hand, however, King is making fun of women and “women’s stuff” in a way that strikes me as somewhat misogynist. Check it out and see what you think.
–Ann Bartow
I’m willing to give this project the benefit of the doubt and read it as critiquing the misogynistic construction of “women’s stuff” that rags like Vogue perpetuate, and not as mocking “women’s stuff” per se. As such, I find these pieces hilarious and brilliant.
Hmmm. I’m waffling. The “Kirsten Dunst Says Bombs Kill” cover pushes me in the other direction. Well, it’s making us think, anyway!