The histories of window dressing and fine art are closely interwoven. Alongside Jean Tinguely, numerous artists have provided important impulses in the field of shop window design. On the other hand, the shop window repeatedly appears as a motif in works of art or serves as a stage for performances and actions. Political and social developments can also be seen in shop windows, as they have characterised the western cityscape since the late 19th century and are a reflection of changing social conditions and the changing use of public space. As the first museum exhibition, Fresh Window. Art & Shop Windows is dedicated to the interweaving of art and shop window design and spans the arc from the rise of the department stores’ at the turn of the century to today’s exclusive luxury boutiques. The complexity of the theme will be presented at Museum Tinguely from 4 December 2024 to 11 May 2025 with contributions from around 40 artists from the 20th and 21st centuries, offering the opportunity to discover a much lesser-known side to artists such as Jean Tinguely, Sari Dienes, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol. With artistic interventions in shop windows in Basel, the project by students from the Institute of Art Gender Nature at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design Basel will also be brought into the urban space from 14 January to 2 March 2025 and can also be experienced outside the museum.
Image above: Martina Morger, Lèche Vitrines (Video Still), 2020, HD Video, 16:9, 17 Min © Martina Morger, Video Still: Lukas Zerbst, Courtesy the artist.
The shop window as a place for artistic experiments
The multi-layered and playful exploration of the theme is already expressed in the title Fresh Window, which refers to Marcel Duchamp’s work Fresh Widow (1920). The work is representative of an important chapter of the exhibition, which thematises the function of the window as a connecting, blending and separating membrane that attracts or rejects voveurism and the desire associated with it. As an architecturally functional space, the shop window also builds a bridge to museum forms of presentation – from picture frames to stages for performance and action art.
The artists also thematise the shop window as a social mirror.
Social and gender relations, gentrification and western consumer culture as well as criticism of capitalism can be scrutinised here, as can an examination of the shop window as a stage for political, social and urban change. The shop window is a place for interaction, dialogue and encounters. Many artists have not only earned their living by designing shop windows, but have also used them as a field of experimentation to try out new connections between art and the public. In view of the fact that city centres are increasingly struggling with vacancies due to increasing digitalisation and the rise of online and mail-order retail, the topic also has a current social relevance.
The shop window – art meets commerce
When the shop window became a central instrument of modern consumer culture at the end of the 19th century, artists soon began to explore the new phenomenon. After Marcel Duchamp had already reduced the function and levels of meaning of the window to absurdity in 1920 with his work Fresh Widow, he designed a shop window in New York for the first time in 1945 to mark the publication of a book by André Breton. At this time, Jean Tinguely was finishing his apprenticeship at the School of Arts and Crafts and was already working as a professional window dresser in Basel. His decorations, which were often made of wire, already echo his later artistic signature.
In 1950s New York, art director Gene Moore of the department stores’ Bonwit Teller and the jewellery shop Tiffany & Co. played an important role in promoting the talent of young, as yet unknown artists. For example, he selected works by Sari Dienes or Susan Weil for his window displays or commissioned Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns or Andy Warhol with elaborate decorations before they gained a foothold in the art world. Some of these shop windows are documented in the exhibition by photographs or reconstructed true to the originals and can thus be rediscovered for the first time in around 70 years.
Conversely, the shop window has been taken up as a motif by artists in numerous paintings, installations, sculptures, video works and photo series. Richard Estes, Peter Blake and Ion Grigorescu thematised the colourful, opulent world of capitalism in the 1960s and 1970s. The seductive function of shop windows becomes clear in Martina Morgan’s performance Lèche Vitrines (2020), which literally translates the French term ‘window shopping’. With the curtained windows in his Store Fronts (1964-68), Christo played with the aspect of voyeurism and the sculptural quality of the shop window. The scenographic mastery of traditional decorative craftsmanship is demonstrated in the Street Vitrines (2020) by Atelier E.B alias Beca Lipscombe and Lucy McKenzie or in the video work Did you know you have a broken glass in the window? (2020) by Anna Franceschini.
The shop window as a social mirror
The role of the shop window as a mirror of society, which at the same time decisively shapes the cityscape, is also thematised by the artists presented in the exhibition. Eugene Atget in Paris and Berenice Abbott in New York documented the fronts of various shops as early as the beginning of the 20th century. Iren Stehlis’ photographs, which she took in Prague from the 1970s to the 1990s, show that political changes can also be traced through shop window decorations. Martha Rosler depicts the gentrification of her home neighbourhood in New York in her photo series Greenpoint: New Fronts (2015 to present). In her Greenpoint Project (2011), she also portrayed the people behind the panes of glass. In doing so, she shows the significance that shops can have in a social fabric – an aspect that is also relevant in Tschabalala Self’s series Bodega Run (2015 to date). In textile, neon and photographic works, she explores the history and culture of the bodegas where the various communities of New York come together to shop. Sayre Gomez’s photorealistic paintings and Gregory Crewdson’s cinematic, atmospheric photographs refer to the increasing number of empty shops and abandoned shop windows today.
The shop window as a stage
Performance and action artists also use shop windows with their highly visible displays in prominent locations as a stage to negotiate socio-political and social issues. In 1969, Tinguely set his crockery-smashing machine Rotozaza III in motion in the shop window of the Loeb department stores’ in Bern, criticising the excessive consumption of the Western world in a way that was both radical and playful. Vlasta Delimar and María Teresa Hincapié used the shop window to draw attention to traditional role models for women. In her 1976 performance Role Exchange, Marina Abramovic swapped places with a prostitute in the window of an Amsterdam brothel, questioning not only the value attributed to various activities, but also the moral connotations of the shop window. In 1976, Lynn Hershman Leeson used the shop windows of the Bonwit Teller department stores’ to portray the city of New York in a multimedia installation. In 1980, Sherrie Rabinowitz and Kit Galloway used cutting-edge technology to enable passers-by in front of a shop window in New York to enter into dialogue with walkers in Los Angeles via a form of video telephony. Their work Hole in Space shows the positive mediating role the shop window can play.
The exhibition is curated by Adrian Dannatt, freelance curator and art critic, Tabea Panizzi, curator at Museum Tinguely, and Andres Pardey, deputy director at Museum Tinguely. Assistance: Melanie Keller.
Shop windows in the city – Students dedicate themselves to the shop window
Combining urban space with forms of projection and desire that create the imaginary, former students of the Institute of Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW will perform and transform shop windows in the historic centre of Basel. They will extend the Fresh Window exhibition at Museum Tinguely by bringing the investigation of how artists enter into dialogue with and appropriate the structures and architecture of shops to the streets of Basel. There they will present new works created for the occasion that activate and bring to life the theme of the exhibition. With dioramas, panoramas, environments and installations combining coloured glass, light shows and animations, these shop window projects will bring animals, plants, objects, phrases, performances and more into the shop windows of Basel, transforming them into an open-air exhibition accessible to all passers-by.
Catalogue: The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue (German/English) with contributions by Theo Carnegy-Tan, Adrian Dannatt, Natasha Degen, Blake Gopnik, Melanie Keller, Tabea Panizzi, Andres Pardey and Alys Williams, published by Verlag für moderne Kunst, ISBN: 978-3-99153-142-5 (German)/978-3-99153-143-2 (English), 38€/42 CHF.
Curator’s Tour with Adrian Dannatt, Tabea Panizzi, Andres Pardey, 5 December 2024, 7 pm, free admission, in English.
WHEN?
Vernissage: Tuesday, 3. December 2024, 6.30 pm
Vernissage Shop window in the city: Tuesday, 14. January 2025, 6.30 pm
Exhibition dates: Wednesday, 04. December 2024 – Sunday, 11. May 2025
WHERE?
Museum Tinguely
Paul Sacher- Anlage 1
4002 Basel
Schweiz
