Gazing on invisible men

Introducing the gallery gaze to establish that (in)visibility is in the eye of the beholder at Westminster Menswear Archive

Bibliographic Data

ID2391226
AuthorsJoshua M Bluteau (0000-0002-5078-016X, Coventry University Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Coventry, UK, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume27
Issue2
Pages192-216
Publication date2022-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Material Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/13591835211066821
OpenAlexW4200619413
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited32

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

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Ethnography · Exhibition · Gaze · Invisibility · Psychoanalysis · Scholarship · Semiotics · Sociology · Visibility · Visual arts · Anthropology · Computer Science · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Law · Philosophy · Photography and Visual Culture · Psychology · Public Spaces through Art

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