Gazing on invisible men: Introducing the gallery gaze to establish that (in)visibility is in the eye of the beholder at Westminster Menswear Archive

Joshua Bluteau

doi:10.1177/13591835211066821

Gazing on invisible men: Introducing the gallery gaze to establish that (in)visibility is in the eye of the beholder at Westminster Menswear Archive

Joshua Bluteau

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

221 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The Westminster Menswear Archive, housed at the University of Westminster held an exhibition in 2019 entitled ‘Invisible Men’. The purpose of this show was to “shine a light” on men, or more accurately menswear which had been hitherto neglected by scholarship and exhibitions featuring dress (Groves and Sprecher, 2019). This article draws on research conducted at this exhibition to ask anthropological questions as to the nature of menswear both in the gallery space and beyond. Fundamentally this will question the invisible nature of menswear and whether such invisibility really exists. In order to accomplish this, this article will suggest a new theory of the gaze that exists in the gallery or exhibition space – the gallery gaze – and use it to provoke analysis of the ethnographic material presented. This article acknowledges a distinction between intellectual, semiotic and symbolic invisibility but suggests a different approach, arguing for an (in)visibility of progressive degrees.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	192-216
Number of pages	25
Journal	Journal of Material Culture
Volume	27
Issue number	2
Early online date	16 Dec 2021
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/13591835211066821
Publication status	Published - Jun 2022

Bibliographical note

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage)

Keywords

menswear
gaze
fashion
museum anthropology
anthropology of clothing and adornment

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Gender Studies
Anthropology
Cultural Studies

Access to Document

10.1177/13591835211066821Licence: CC BY

PublishedFinal published version, 778 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Gazing on invisible men: Introducing the gallery gaze to establish that (in)visibility is in the eye of the beholder at Westminster Menswear Archive",

abstract = "The Westminster Menswear Archive, housed at the University of Westminster held an exhibition in 2019 entitled {\textquoteleft}Invisible Men{\textquoteright}. The purpose of this show was to “shine a light” on men, or more accurately menswear which had been hitherto neglected by scholarship and exhibitions featuring dress (Groves and Sprecher, 2019). This article draws on research conducted at this exhibition to ask anthropological questions as to the nature of menswear both in the gallery space and beyond. Fundamentally this will question the invisible nature of menswear and whether such invisibility really exists. In order to accomplish this, this article will suggest a new theory of the gaze that exists in the gallery or exhibition space – the gallery gaze – and use it to provoke analysis of the ethnographic material presented. This article acknowledges a distinction between intellectual, semiotic and symbolic invisibility but suggests a different approach, arguing for an (in)visibility of progressive degrees.",

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Gazing on invisible men: Introducing the gallery gaze to establish that (in)visibility is in the eye of the beholder at Westminster Menswear Archive

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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Cite this