Catherine M. Stewart

 Invoking Venus

Personal apparel is a fascinatingly diverse and ever changing aspect of human culture and one that can be seen to have links to our common ancestry with all living creatures. Over the centuries clothing design has liberally borrowed from the avian world both directly with the use of plumage as adornment, and indirectly by mimicking their colours, patterns, and textures. Through the juxtaposition of images of bird plumage with fashion items, the parallels in human and animal behavior become apparent, especially with respect to visual display as a means to attract a mate.

The exhibition INVOKING VENUS: Feathers and Fashion took place in 2013 at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum at the University of British Columbia. Accompanying these diptychs and triptychs were four display cases of vintage fashion accessories made with feathers from the collections of fashion historians Claus Jahnke and Ivan Sayers. A historical fashion show of feathered ensembles, with a commentary by Ivan Sayers, opened the exhibition.

(Read full artist’s statement at the end)

Artist’s Statement

This exhibition was, at its core, about the life-affirming force that underlies all of nature – sexual attraction. The Roman poet Lucretius expresses reverence for this powerful force on the first page of his treatise, The Nature of Things (De rerum natura, c.54 BC) in his invocation to Venus. He asserts that she, as the goddess of love (a metaphor for this universal drive), is responsible for the “headlong rush” of birds and beasts to “lustily get new generations of their kind”. Furthermore, he attributes to Venus the birth of new species as she “alone steers the nature of things upon its course”, an assertion that Charles Darwin would confirm with his research on the mechanisms of evolution nineteen centuries later.

But how does this relate to fashion? Personal apparel is a fascinatingly diverse and ever changing aspect of human culture and one that can be seen to have links to our common ancestry with all living creatures. Over the centuries clothing design has liberally borrowed from the avian world both directly with the use of plumage as adornment, and indirectly by mimicking their colours, patterns, and textures. Through the juxtaposition of images of bird plumage with fashion items, the parallels in human and animal behavior become apparent, especially with respect to visual display as a means to attract a mate.

While resplendent wedding apparel is perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of mating display in humans, other examples abound in the ever-changing culture of clothing. Whether a glittering evening gown, a black leather jacket, or a silk tie, our attire can reveal a great deal about ourselves. We delight in wearing garments that are visually appealing and show ourselves in ‘our best light’. Sometimes our ‘plumage’ can be overtly sexual, sometimes subtly understated. Viewing these feather and fabric images side by side brings into question whether dressing for pleasure is solely an act of decorative enhancement that enlivens our day-to-day existence. Could there also be a deeper, unconscious force at work in this universal human activity? Considering the immense success of the worldwide fashion industry, I think we can confidently say that Venus continues to exert her influence seductively and artfully in the evolutionary scheme of things.

After the Beaty Museum exhibition this work was shown at the Elissa Crystall Gallery, Trinity Western University, the Unitarian Church of Vancouver, and the Kootenay Art Gallery.

Review: Maureen Latta on INVOKING VENUS, Galleries West Magazine

Review: Robin Laurence on INVOKING VENUS, The Georgia Straight

Copyright © 2022 Catherine M. Stewart. All rights reserved.