A soul in the scarves

In June, our museum opened an exhibition called Namedropping. David says that what he’s trying to do in this show is figure out what status is and why it is useful, in a deep sense—as part of our evolved biology. Namedropping is a light-hearted look at all that, with a few pauses for self-scrutiny. What follows is from the exhibition. Read more about Namedropping here.

A few years ago, the New Zealand–born, Berlin-based artist Simon Denny bought at auction seventeen silk scarves once owned by Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister, and transformed them into a series of Patagonia puffer vests and sleeping bags. They’re the strangest, most beautiful things. Some of the scarves came from Chanel, or in leopard print, another signed by the prime minister of Thailand (perhaps a diplomatic gift) and a Nicole Miller design emblazoned with money, Forbes magazine covers and slogans such as ‘Forbes capitalist tool’ and ‘No guts, no story’ (Denny suspects he was bidding in competition with another former PM, Teresa May). The vest you can see on display at Mona gleams peacock-feather blue and green thanks to Castel, Paris, with ruby-bright side panels from Burberry (if you look closely, you can see the labels in the bottom right corner).

It’s a play on power dressing. Think of Thatcher’s distinctive style: the silk neck scarves, for instance, but also the skirt suits and pussy bow blouses, evoking prim conservatism, wealth and influence. But it’s also the vest itself. As Denny explains, the Patagonia puffer vest has become the unofficial uniform of Silicon Valley tech bros and finance culture—a bit of a departure for the outdoorsy brand. You might notice the Salesforce logo, one of Silicon Valley’s biggest employers, embroidered beneath the neckline. He’s an artist intensely aware of his own standing—not in the sense that he’s a status hound. I mean that he’s deeply attentive to the context in which he works and places himself. That’s the artworld, of course, but also what he might characterise as an oppressive capitalist system that alienates people from their humanity.

I’m now also thinking of his squashily upholstered sleeping bags, beautifully quilted in Thatcherite silk (which we tried and failed to loan for Namedropping). Sleeping bags are, of course, positively associated with holidays and recreation, bushwalks and family camping trips; but increasingly, they’re also symbols of survival and homelessness, ‘designed for individual insulation’, reads an exhibition press kit. There’s a vicious irony here, stitched into the silk wrapping. Denny encases the kit for sleeping rough, for people who have fallen through society’s cracks, with the uniform of the politician, a lion of neoliberalism, who famously declared ‘there is no such thing as society’. Denny needs Thatcher’s status—her legacy, her political essence—to sharpen his vision, to carry out his precise skewering of the ideals she enshrined in the culture. (Denny’s creations, hollow and eerie, also bring to my mind the ancient Egyptian coffins from Mona’s collection, which aren’t just beautiful boxes but status objects, pleasurable beyond their practical and spiritual utility.)

Left: Remainder 2, 2019, Simon Denny
Margaret Thatcher scarves, Patagonia 850 Down Sleeping Bag 30 F/-1 C - R parts, Ripstop Nylon, down sourced from second-hand San Francisco garments, carbon fibre, glass fibre, wood
Courtesy the artist and Kunstmuseum Basel

Right: Coffin of Ankh-pefy-hery, Egypt, 25th–early 26th Dynasty, c. 730–600 BCE
Wood, linen, gesso, pigment
Private collection

When the vest work was floated by curators for inclusion in the exhibition, excitement flashed around the meeting room—but none of my colleagues, as far as I know, are massive fans of the Iron Lady. We are fans of Denny (Mona did an exhibition with him in 2019), but I don’t think art wankery alone can explain the vest’s capacity to compel and befuddle, to give us pleasure. One possible explanation is essentialism, which is the sense that things and people have an essence, a spirit or soul, that transcends their material state. Whether or not essentialism can provide an accurate description of the world isn’t really the point; it’s more about perception, the way we think about things. For people, this largely amounts to a soul. Even if you’re a non-believer, it’s pretty difficult to not sense that bit of someone that makes them who they are, the hidden kernel of their nature and selfhood. This fits the theory put forward by psychologist Paul Bloom: the pleasure we get from all sorts of stuff like art and the people who matter to us most is deep, derived not from the surface level of things but from what we think about something’s inherent properties and true nature—its essence. Research by Bloom, and others in the field like psychologist Susan Gelman, suggests we can’t help but think this way. Humans appear to be born essentialists.¹

Is this essence we intuit in others part of what makes a human human? My colleague Jane said the very fact that we’re a museum of old and new art, presenting objects from antiquity to now, from many parts of the world, all mixed up together (not to mention presenting musical performances and fancy dinners), is to do with our boss David’s interest in what makes art art. What is art’s essence? Is part of it, perhaps, that certain things—like art, books and other special objects—become meaningful to us as a proxy for the essence of their maker? Do these special things somehow allow us to touch the soul of their creator? Or feel closer to the significant people who once owned, handled, even loved them?

What’s the bit of Maggie Thatcher that our brains, our innate tendency to essentialism, respond to here in this artwork? Is it because the scarves are a proxy for Thatcher’s historical significance, her political status, even celebrity? It’s not just Thatcher but culture’s burnished dream of her. I can’t help but think of Meryl Streep’s hallucinating old woman in the movie version of her life. I can’t help but think of the confusing feelings experienced by many at the sight of bona fide sex symbol Gillian Anderson stalking through The Crown in full Iron Lady regalia. Or is it more literal than that: for the sensual thrill of contact with a body deemed special (regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum) by culture? Do we believe the silk carries traces of hair from Thatcher’s head, or skin cells sloughed from her neck? Firstly, gross. And secondly, I don’t quite buy it, that’s too straightforward a take for what’s going on here. Denny’s art isn’t narrowcasting for diehard Thatcher fans. Obviously, he may net a few rusted-on Tories. But how much does the poison seep down? Poll tax, miners’ strikes, the Falklands, calling Nelson Mandela a terrorist—Thatcher’s associations are potent and to many people, quote unquote, not very nice. Does Denny hope we’ll respond to her essential residue in the scarves, despite any proximate queasiness we may feel? In this exhibition we’re trying to figure out what status is and why we seek it out in a deep, biological sense. Proximate, moral concerns are, in this context, interesting (there’s a lot of talk about what we should do with things made or owned by bad people) but not the point. Those concerns do little to explain why status objects, like the scarf-vest, remain so compelling and hook our attention.

For all this, Denny needs Thatcher. Without her, it’s just a beautiful garment. All glossy surface, no hidden depths. Essentialism not only helps organise reality for us, dividing the special from the ordinary. Essentialism is part of why we look, and keep looking, with ceaseless curiosity.

1. If you're really interested, I write more about this in my essay for the Namedropping catalogue. Or you could also start with Paul Bloom's wonderful book How Pleasure Works: Why We Like What We Like (2010).

Header Image: Power Vest 6, 2020, Simon Denny
Scarf formerly owned by Margaret Thatcher, Patagonia M’s Down Sweater Vest parts, down sourced from second-hand San Francisco garments, Ripstop nylon, Salesforce and Quip embroidered logos, wood, glass, photo paper, cardboard