Alexander McQueen's "No. 13 Finale"
February 4, 2025 5:48 AM   Subscribe

No. 13 Finale is a performance artwork by fashion designer Alexander McQueen... It consists of model Shalom Harlow wearing a white dress, standing on a rotating platform on the show's catwalk and being spray-painted by robots. The piece is regarded as a highlight of McQueen's career and one of the most iconic moments in fashion history.* (h/t to velebita for this inspiring comment)
posted by Lemkin (23 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Art is everything, and the more it's sectioned off as the domain of the rich and powerful, the more stupid it is. Art is knitting a sweater, or making dinner, or playing pickup baskeball. Art is anything enriched with meaning. Professional art can seem like arcane magic when it connects with your heart and mind, but it's not different qualitatively from what you do every day, if you choose to elevate that. Choosing an outfit to go out in is just as valid as arranging for a model to be painted by robots. It's okay for art to be useful and not stupid, and it's okay for art to be not useful and stupid. All art is good art (even bad art is good art). Art is everything.
posted by rikschell at 6:19 AM on February 4 [8 favorites]


In 2014, Project Runway's avant garde challenge the designers were asked to design avant-garde looks that would make an impact from every angle--but the runway was changed to a "rainway", so the dresses had to hold up in the rain. This video shows the best two looks (I think) and the discussion after. The black dress was really cool, but the white dress was really moving and emotional and was a huge risk for the designer, Sean Kelly, who put dyes in the dress so that when the water hit it it would change color. He was terrified that it wouldn't work. But it was really gorgeous and may have been inspired by this McQueen.
posted by ceejaytee at 6:28 AM on February 4 [4 favorites]


Project Runway's avant garde challenge

We haven’t watched in years but sometimes my wife or I will still say in a Nina Garcia accent “This bores me.”
posted by Lemkin at 6:35 AM on February 4 [4 favorites]


That is so chilling.
posted by doctornemo at 7:34 AM on February 4 [2 favorites]


IMO the spray-on dress was much more of an interesting technical challenge. Was this a shocking thing to witness 13 years ago?
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:43 AM on February 4 [2 favorites]


I wasn’t paying attention then, but retrospectively it seems to have blown many minds.
posted by Lemkin at 7:47 AM on February 4


This was fascinating and beautiful. Thank you.
posted by the sobsister at 7:53 AM on February 4 [3 favorites]


So, is this supposed to be a metaphor? A political statement? Robots with spray guns are a fixture of an automobile assembly line… Is the woman an object to be built and sold? Spray guns… Is the woman a wall on the street to be vandalized, painted with someone else’s marker? Guns… Is the woman to be threatened? She sure looks like she’s being threatened. If art is everything, then everything is art, making the concept of “art” meaningless. I just read this as an expression of the creator’s mindset, one clearly containing some very unpleasant aspects.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:44 AM on February 4 [5 favorites]


is this supposed to be a metaphor

I think it’s supposed to be Art. Which can have some very unpleasant aspects.
posted by Lemkin at 8:56 AM on February 4 [4 favorites]


Um.....what njohnson23 said. The model does not look steady on her ballerina feet or look like she's enjoying the experience, nor does the dress look attractive in any way. Maybe if it had been more Jackson Pollocked or something, but nah, just looks like she got tagged on the street.

I WAY prefer the white rain dress from Project Runway. That's awesome.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:57 AM on February 4 [2 favorites]


Shalom Harlow talks about this show as a great experience in the documentary about McQueen (which is excellent) and in this article - models in his shows got do much more in terms of acting and performance than the usual walk on/walk off runway events

Given his traumatic childhood experiences and struggles with depression, it's not surprising that his shows could get pretty dark at times. Also worth noting that he was a rare working-class outsider in his field.

My two favourite McQueen moments:
Finale of 'Joan', F/W 1998
Climax of 'Voss' S/S 2001, inspired by the work of Joel-Peter Witkin.
posted by remembrancer at 9:30 AM on February 4 [7 favorites]


njohnson I think that the list of ideas that this piece brought up in your mind is evidence of how powerful a work of art it is. It's about all of those things, and it's not endorsing them just because it's depicting them. I think that what the greatest works of art do is bring to light things that are happening in the world in a way that you can't look away from. If that's disturbing, it's meant to be. Presenting a piece like this in the world of fashion, where the bodies of women & men are constantly objectified as a matter of course, is forcing everyone to confront the violence that underlies it. Mcqueen loved fashion & it exacted a toll on him just the same.
posted by velebita at 10:16 AM on February 4 [9 favorites]


Maybe if it had been more Jackson Pollocked or something, but nah, just looks like she got tagged on the street.

I'm guessing that you were expressing your own aesthetic preferences, but it's worth raising that Pollock's own work was a source of much debate in terms of whether it represented "artistic worth", and he himself had said that the performance of creating it was integral to its value. Conversely, tagging is absolutely an art form in its own right (i.e., Cornbread). In addition, like other performance artwork (Cut Piece comes to mind) isolating the dress probably doesn't do justice to the piece as a whole.

(Of course, none of that means you have to like the art!)
posted by BlueBlueElectricBlue at 11:47 AM on February 4 [6 favorites]


No. 13 previously.

I'm also on the "bad dress, creepy choreography, unclear message" team. The spray on dress model at least was very composed and maybe having fun with the process.

(Although as I mentioned in the previous comment, McQueens other 1999 show with the LEDs and Tron inspired fashion was really more compelling for me)
posted by autopilot at 12:03 PM on February 4 [1 favorite]


bad dress, creepy choreography, unclear message

David Lynch made art that was creepy and ambiguous, and people didn’t seem to begrudge him. To whatever extent one isn’t “supposed to” do that in fashion and McQueen did it anyway, that only seems to increase his achievement.

Without knowing your criteria of judgment, “bad” doesn’t convey anything.
posted by Lemkin at 12:19 PM on February 4 [2 favorites]


More context - the No.13 finale directly references Rebecca Horn's 1991 piece "High Moon".
posted by remembrancer at 12:45 PM on February 4 [2 favorites]


Yeah, I'm biased. I want more colors and less nonsensical scribble. I love graffiti when it's art and gives me something pretty or interesting to look at, not just "I signed MY NAME REAL BIG ON SOMETHING" and it's in a scribble only your friends can read. Robots spraying mindlessly, feh!
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:09 PM on February 4


Maybe the difference is that David Lynch made things that were nice to look at.
posted by transient at 1:16 PM on February 4


Thanks for posting, Lemkin, this is such a great piece. It's performance, it's fashion, it's art, it's commentary on how clothing is made and who makes it. I can't find the clips right now but there's an amusing silly challenge on RPDR that mimics this, and the queens are mostly baffled by being spray painted into their outfits, then they have to do something...I should go look for that...the best way to process interesting art is to watch drag queens mess with it.
posted by winesong at 2:22 PM on February 4 [2 favorites]


The difference is that David Lynch made things that were nice to look at.

The eternal fight of "art should be nice to look at" vs. "art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable".

I don't want art that gives me a cuddle, maybe once in a while but not as a dominant flavour. Good art to me should be confrontational and challenge the assumptions of those who view it, and should provoke a response. Your ick is a validation of the strength of that art. Women's bodies are constructed and vandalised within fashion, both at the consumer level and at the avant gaurde. A career as a model is precarious and balanced and subject to huge quantities of external pressure and attack. McQueen knew that, and I think it forms the core of this work.
posted by Jilder at 4:35 PM on February 4 [9 favorites]


OMG contemporary conceptual art in "Not Nice To Look At" shocker!
posted by remembrancer at 5:46 AM on February 5 [1 favorite]


I was in my second year of university, working part time for a calligrapher in her materials shop. That performance was big news in the art magazines, including the ones dedicated to letter arts, graffiti, culture, contemporary work, and on and on. It's silly to think that someone saying, today, "ew ugly" makes this an insignificant thing. I'm a science nerd but, thanks to the universe of part time labor I was inhabiting back then, I remember this moment. I also think that this was a time when industrial mechanics were suddenly being elevated as visual elements of sleek, modern style, where previously they'd been greasy, loud, inarticulate lugs in dark parts of factories. See also Björk's "All Is Full Of Love" video, made by Chris Cunningham. McQueen made a few things for Björk, including the dress she's wearing on the cover of Homogenic (the album that includes "All Is Full Of Love"). A lot of worlds intersect in Björk.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 6:36 AM on February 5 [2 favorites]


It's not my cup of tea, but the performance on this is obviously very choreographed. You don't put a soft squishy human in between two industrial arms without being very careful. (even still this was incredibly dangerous for the model)

It is discomfiting and violating and her performance reflects that. If the Hadid spray on dress mentioned previously was a performance of composure, this felt like a performance of survival.
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:29 AM on February 5 [2 favorites]


« Older Hubbert's peak   |   "and they decided to hate us more." Newer »


You are not currently logged in. Log in or create a new account to post comments.