J.Crew's Mens Catalog Gets Press Of Its Own

"Thanks!" to Diane who let us know about the Men's October catalog being featured in a New York Times article (click here).

J.Crew Gets Artsier
By Roberta Smith
September 25, 2009

You never know when contemporary art is going to insinuate itself into a normally art-free zone. Last summer the blissfully mindless sanctuary of the J.Crew catalog was breached by photographs of the tall, suave painter Alex Katz in his studio, modeling J.Crew clothes.

Now the October J.Crew catalog has gone even further. Its menswear section includes pictures of seven New York artists wearing J.Crew shirts, sweaters and jackets and occasionally entire outfits, also in their studios, nearly all looking fabulously relaxed and rumpled.

Several generations are represented. At the young, relatively unknown end of the spectrum are the abstract painters Julien Smith and Chris Dorland. The mid-career slot is occupied by Ryan McGinness and Glenn Ligon. For artists of a certain age, we have the photographer Stephen Shore, the painter Billy Sullivan and the Conceptual pioneer Vito Acconci.

The biggest surprise is Mr. Acconci, a poet who became one of the stars of the late 1960s- early ‘70s Post-Minimalist underground, a generation that is generally revered in part because – except for Richard Serra and Brice Marden – most of them supposedly didn’t make much money.

The irony is that much of Mr. Acconci’s early work consists of dark, furtive photographs of him doing one weird, intensely personal thing or another, say, burning the hair off his chest and tucking his penis between his legs in an attempt to become a woman. In his famous 1971 performance titled “Seedbed,” he spent hours masturbating under the floor at the Sonnabend Gallery in Soho.

Now Mr. Acconci, looking unusually scrubbed and combed, is shown in jeans and a mini-check shirt, crouched down by a table, squinting at a macquette as if he were imagining the siting of the full scale sculpture.

There’s always a weird rush when you see people you know from one context suddenly pop up in another, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And it is becoming increasingly natural. All kinds of visual artists have appeared in Gap ads over the years. Artists have modeled clothes in magazine fashion spreads. Jasper Johns has played the Cowardly Lion in a reenactment of “The Wizard of Oz” in Vanity Fair. Furthermore, the last leader of the intact U.S.S.R. has lent his presence, comfortably cosseted in the back of a limousine, to ads for Louis Vuitton. After that, nothing should surprise.

Clearly we’ve come a long way since the early 1990s, when an emerging artist named Matthew Barney was excoriated for, among other things, having a J.Crew connection in his past. As a young nobody in the late 1980s, he had helped put himself through Yale working as a J.Crew model.

Artists are more a part of society than they were even in Mr. Barney’s youth, and this is generally a good thing, especially for society. They are increasingly accepted as semi-ordinary people with potentially extraordinary contributions to make to our lives. Such acceptance has minor side effects, including appearances in J.Crew catalogs — not for money, but for fun, and probably a little publicity.

It would really be something if the creative types making these appearances weren’t only men. To depart from the anonymous, impossibly thin, female ingénues who populate J.Crew catalogs might help change more than just the way we see artists.

To view J.Crew's behind-the-scenes of their "open studio", click here. It's always great to see J.Crew bring in actors, artists, and the like to feature in their catalogs. From Lauren Hutton to Liya Kebede to Alex Katz. It makes visual browsing of the pages more interesting!

What are your thoughts on the article? Do you think it's a good marketing technique to use various artists, actors, and the like in the catalogs? Is there someone you think J.Crew should get in their next catalog? :)

Side Note: On a related topic, "thanks!" to Aud who shared another {very funny} link from Jezebel about J.Crew's latest October catalog (click here to read the "October At J. Crew: Pretty, Preppy, Preposterous" post). The line of "Yet another J.Crew catalog has materialized in the mailbox, bringing cozy visions of for fall. That is: If you're thin. And small-breasted. And don't mind looking a wee bit wacky at times." is too funny! And you have to read the comments- some of them are hysterical!!! ;)