vienna

seasonal sale in its archaic Dionysian dramatisation, as a catharsis of
the visual economy of beauty, would be a valid option. At a time when
the art of the individual window dresser is replaced by a collective
representation of ugliness, representing the ritualised change from
one fashion to the other, amounts to a collective representation of the
sacrifice of beauty.
107 EAST 2ND STREET
“Looking through the glass into the show window is really like looking
at the stage – with this difference: the actors, in art terms, are
speaking plastics in motion, whereas the merchandise is a silent,
static object.” 461
The show window is related to art, but also to theatre. Frederic
Kiesler provides some examples in which he shows images of avantgarde
stage settings of his day so that their artistic principles can
be applied to the creation of backgrounds for the retail theatre. 462
We will point out another relation in order not to loose the relation
to our observation of the seasonal sale window, which takes us back
to our central topic: the relation between theatre and ritual. Richard
Schechner was one of the first to apply ritual knowledge to the art of
theatre as well as theorising it in the field of performance studies:
“Both animal and human ritual actions are very close to theatre.
In theatre, too, behaviour is rearranged, condensed, exaggerated,
and made rhythmic. […] The violence of ritual, like that of theatre,
is simultaneously present and absent, displayed and deferred. The
ritual actions are displayed even as the ‘real events’ are deferred.” 463
But in the reality of the street, there is no substitute for the
ritual sacrifice of the past collection. 464 For Schechner, violence,
461 Kiesler (1929:110).
462 Kiesler (1929:111-113).
463 Schechner (1995:230-231).
464 If we assume that the ritual is the sacrifice of “fashion”, then the seasonal collection would be its substitute.
The
Death
of
Fashion 185