The Graphic Body

The "S" emblem inscribed on Superman's chest and cape functions as a simplified statement of his identity. Almost every superhero carries a similarly expressive bodily marking. Spider-Man, created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, sports a webbed costume with an insectan ideogram on the front and back. Just as Superman's costume proclaims him a super man, Spider-Man's costume proclaims him a spider man.

Many designers are attracted to Superman's "S" emblem, if only as an exercise in iconoclasm. Bernhard Willhelm, in collaboration with the artist Carsten Fock, produced interpretations of the insignia that suggested the hurried handiwork of a graffitist. While Jean-Charles de Castelbajac's treatment of the talisman is more traditional, that of Rossella Jardini for Moschino is typically mischievous. Both designers reference the moment when Clark Kent turns into Superman by ripping off his clothes to reveal his "S" emblem. Jardini, however, has substituted the letter "S" with the letter "M," the design house's logo, and transformed the pentagon into a heart shape, a symbol closely associated with the Moschino label, a wry comment on the cultural currency of the branded body. J.J. Hudson, whose label Noki was established as a critique of mass-produced fashions by creating customized clothing from recycled fashion brands, provided a similar statement with his "Spider-Man" ensemble. Featuring a large black spider symbol on the bodice and an actual depiction of Spider-Man on the facemask, Hudson extended his critique of depersonalized commodities to incorporate the superhero.

So strongly is the spider symbol associated with Spider-Man that even when designers employ it without any direct or deliberate reference to the superhero, he cannot help but be invoked, as in the ensembles by Jun Takahashi for Undercover. The same holds true for decorative webbing, whether rendered by Jean Paul Gaultier with all the skills of the haute couture, or spun from the imaginations of John Galliano, Giorgio Armani, and Julien Macdonald. In the way it clings to the body like a second skin, Macdonald's ensemble recalls the black Spider-Man costume worn by Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 3 (2007), the negative of his traditional red-and-blue costume. Designed by James Acheson, it was based on the "alien" costume first worn by Spider-Man on the cover of The Amazing Spider-Man No. 252, May 1984. While the film version differed from its comic-book prototype in the color of the spider symbol and the addition of webbing, it retained its strong graphic appeal. In fact, Acheson, by adding a webbed pattern to his design, actually enhanced the semiotic potency of the original.

Art and the Comic Book

Superheroes have exerted a material impact on popular culture for seventy years. They have served us in countless mediums, including film, radio, theater, television, and, most recently, video games. Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, and Wonder Woman are among the most widely known fictional characters of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Yet the medium from which they sprang—the four-color six-by-nine-inch comic book—is still held by many to be a low form of artistic and literary expression. Despite—or rather due to—their populist origins, superhero comics have provided the context and subject for "high art" in America. Pop Art's appropriation of the style of comics made both critics and viewers reconsider the graphic vocabulary of comic books as an independent art form. When Andy Warhol co-opted the figure of Superman, he treated the image with the same irony and respect he granted other mass-produced commodities. Like his Campbell's soup cans and the multiply reproduced photographs of Marilyn Monroe, Warhol's superhero imagery emphasizes that the main virtue of the superhero is an indelible and instantly recognizable iconic power—a quality identified and exploited by the designers represented in the exhibition.

Costume Designer Quotes