Adelle Lutz (born November 13, 1948) is an American artist, designer and actress, most known for work using unconventional materials and strategies to explore clothing as a communicative medium.Koda, Harold. "View: ReView, Introduction," Adelle Lutz: View: Re: View, Catalogue, London: Judith Clark Costume Gallery, 2002.McCormick, Carlo. "Hidden Dreams Exposed," Paper, September 2002, p. 120–1.James, Caryn. "Film Review; Sad Tourist Trapped In Burma," The New York Times, August 25, 1995. Retrieved February 25, 2019. She first gained attention for the surreal "Urban Camouflage" costumes featured in David Byrne's film True Stories (1986).Conant, Jennet. "A Hat Is a Rose Is a Chicken," Newsweek, November 30, 1987.Newman, Lenore and Jan L. Spak. "Flights of Fantasy," in Designed for Delight: Alternative aspects of twentieth-century decorative arts, Martin Eidelberg (ed.), Montreal: Flammarion, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1997, p. 238–247. Retrieved February 25, 2019.Poynor, Rick. "True Stories: A Film about People Like Us," in Postmodernism: Style and Subversion, 1970-1990, Glenn Adamson and Jane Pavitt (ed.), V & A Publishing, 2011. Retrieved February 22, 2019.Newark, Tim. Camouflage, London: Thames & Hudson, 2007, p. 8. Retrieved February 22, 2019.Stewart, Jude. Patternalia: An Unconventional History of Polka Dots, Stripes, Plaid, Camouflage, & Other Graphic Patterns, Bloomsbury USA, 2015, p. 115. Retrieved February 22, 2019.
She has designed costumes for film director Susan Seidelman,Maslin, Janet. "Film: John Malkovich in 'Making Mr. Right'", The New York Times, April 10, 1987. Retrieved February 25, 2019. theater directors Robert Wilson and JoAnne Akalaitis, and musicians including Byrne, Bono and Michael Stipe.Judith Clark Costume Gallery. Adelle Lutz: View: ReView, Catalogue, London: Judith Clark Costume Gallery, 2002. In the 1990s, she began to shift from costume to sculpture, installation art and eventually, performance. Lutz's art and design have been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT)Dailey, Martha Sherrill and Nina Hyde. "It's Surreal Thing: Scenes from an Exhibition," The Washington Post, December 13, 1987. (New York), the Victoria and Albert Museum and Barbican Art Centre (London), the Montreal Museum of Decorative Arts and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Cleveland), among many venues.Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art. "Adelle Lutz," The Invisible Thread: Buddhist Spirit in Contemporary Art, Catalogue, Staten Island, NY: Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor on Staten Island, 2003.Åman, Jan. Catalogue essay, Adelle Lutz, Under/Covered, Stockholm: Färgfabriken, 2002.Färgfabriken. "Adelle Lutz, Under/Covered," Exhibition materials, Stockholm: Färgfabriken, 2002. In 2002, the Judith Clark Costume Gallery in London presented a career survey.Clark, Judith. "View: ReView, Preview," Adelle Lutz: View: ReView, Catalogue, London: Judith Clark Costume Gallery, 2002.
Her work has also been featured in The New York Times,Smith, Roberta. "Art Review; Caution: Angry Artists at Work," The New York Times, August 27, 2004. Retrieved February 22, 2019. Harper's Magazine,Harper's Magazine. "He's Back!!! Packaging Christ's Second Coming," Harper's, April 1989. Newsweek, Village Voice,LaRocca, Amy. "Divine Work," The Village Voice, July 14, 2003. Vanity Fair and PaperHastreiter, Kim. "Outlaw Fashion," Paper, September 2002. and in books on fashion, costume and public art, including Fashion and Surrealism (1987),Martin, Richard. Fashion and Surrealism, New York: Rizzoli, 1987. Designed for Delight (1997),Eidelberg, Martin (ed). Designed for Delight: Alternative aspects of twentieth-century decorative arts, Montreal: Flammarion, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1997. Retrieved February 25, 2019. Twenty Years of Style: The World According to Paper (2004),Hastreiter, Kim and David Hershkovits (eds). 20 Years of Style: The World According to Paper, New York: Harper Design, 2004. Retrieved February 25, 2019. and Because Dreaming is Best Done in Public: Creative Time in Public Spaces (2012).Pasternak, Ann (ed). Because Dreaming is Best Done in Public: Creative Time in Public Spaces, New York: Creative Time, 2012. Her work Ponytail Boot (2002) is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection.Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ponytail Boot, Adelle Lutz, Collection. Retrieved February 25, 2019.
Life Lutz was born in Lakewood, Ohio, in 1948. Her parents were Mona Miwako Furuki, a native of Japan who studied couture, and Walter Lutz, an American businessman in international trade; they met in occupied Japan on Christmas Day 1945, while Walter served with the United States Army.Lambert, Bruce. "Bettina L. Chow, 41, Acclaimed as a Model and Jewelry Designer", The New York Times, January 27, 1992. Retrieved February 25, 2019.Spindler, Amy M. "Tina Chow, the collector," The New York Times, September 21, 1993. Retrieved February 22, 2019. Their collection of over 4,000 Asian bamboo works and objects is part of the Denver Art Museum's collection and was exhibited in the museum's Walter + Mona Lutz Gallery, which Adelle co-designed.Denver Art Museum, "Depth & Detail: Carved Bamboo from China, Japan & Korea," August 25, 2013–Nov 19, 2017. Retrieved March 19, 2019.
As a teenager, Lutz moved with her family to Tokyo, where she attended International Christian University and with her sister, jewelry designer Tina Chow, modeled for the cosmetics company Shiseido, among other firms, between 1967 and 1972.Mok, Laramie. "Who was Tina Chow, and how this style icon still shapes the fashion scene," South China Morning Post, January 24, 2018. Retrieved February 25, 2019.
Lutz was working with theater director Robert Wilson, when she met David Byrne in 1982; the three collaborated on The Knee Plays section of Wilson's opera, the CIVIL warS.Hoban, Phoebe. "Head Trip," New York Magazine, September 8, 1986, p. 40. She and Byrne married in 1987 and their daughter, Malu Abeni Valentine Lutz Byrne, was born in 1989.Pener, Degen. "Egos & Ids; At Barneys, There's Arising Such a Clatter," The New York Times, November 15, 1992. Retrieved February 25, 2019.Sella, Marshall. "Same as He Ever Was," The New York Times Magazine, April 29, 2001. Retrieved February 22, 2019. Byrne's former bandmate Chris Frantz claims that Byrne left Lutz in 2002 immediately following the ceremony inducting his band Talking Heads into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Lutz has lived in Los Angeles since 2008. Her first grandchild was born in August 2018.
Work
Writers and critics have sometimes struggled with Lutz's creative identity, situating her, in Met curator Harold Koda's words, "in a netherworld of fashion and art." Carlo McCormick summed up Lutz's eclectic, collaborative output as "uncannily eccentric work" that "has danced along the periphery of fashion, theater, performance art, music and film for decades" before shifting to individual art in the late 1990s. Writers generally note her affinities to the unexpected juxtapositions and deadpan humor of Dada and Surrealism, a Pop-like appreciation of everyday, consumerist objects and culture, and a consistent engagement with concepts and materials related to the body and dress. In the catalogue to her 2002 retrospective, Koda concluded, "despite her apparent whimsy and good humor, like the Dadaists, Lutz is consistently, if subtly, subversive."
Costume design Lutz has created costuming for film, performance, theater, display, and as artwork. Between 1983 and 1986, she designed costumes for the Talking Heads videos "Burning Down the House", "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)", "Road to Nowhere", and "Love For Sale", before attracting widespread attention for the "Urban Camouflage" clothing featured in the fashion show segment of David Byrne's True Stories (1986).The Criterion Collection. "The 'Very Unusual' Fashion Show at the Heart of True Stories," The Criterion Collection, November 28, 2018. Retrieved February 22, 2019. The surreal garments (e.g., Astroturf Family or Fir Coat) mimicked conventional, often low-brow materials (wood paneling, brick, plastic greenery) and explored the idea of camouflage as a metaphor for conformity to manicured, middle-class suburban life. Curator Judith Clark described them as "dead-pan jokes" that viewers get immediately without being disturbed by their "strangeness"; other writers suggest that the pieces reflect on the obliteration of self in contemporary society. Subsequent to the film, the costumes were featured in an Annie Leibovitz photo shoot in Vanity FairLeibovitz, Annie. Photo feature,Vanity Fair, October 1986. and shows at FIT ("Fashion and Surrealism", 1987), the Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts, Lusanne (2002),Musée de design et d'arts appliqués contemporains. Cache-Cache Camouflage, Lusanne: Musée de design et d'arts appliqués contemporains, 2002. and Imperial War Museum, London (2007);Erickson, Mark St. John. "Modern Art Pokes Fun at Modernism," Daily Press, January 17, 1999. Retrieved February 22, 2019.Culture24. " Camouflage Explored at the Imperial War Museum London," Culture 24, March 22, 2007. Retrieved February 22, 2019. they also appear in books, such as Paternalia (2015) and Disruptive Pattern Material (2004),Blechman, Hardy. DPM - Disruptive Pattern Material, London: Francis Lincoln, 2004. Retrieved February 25, 2019. among others.
In the decade that followed, Lutz worked on diverse projects. She designed a contemporary wardrobe for Jesus for a tongue-in-cheek, 1987 Harper's Magazine feature that commissioned professionals in various fields to create components for a fictional, second-coming of Jesus of Nazareth "American Tour". Her Christmas 1992 window design for Barneys displaying unconventionally dressed reindeer women (e.g., a four-armed "Deliah Donner", playing a trumpet, tambourine, cymbals and drum and sporting a Women's Action Coalition button) were twice written up in The New York Times.Hagen, Charles. "In the Windows, Witty Tableaux for the Season," The New York Times, December 4, 1992. Retrieved February 25, 2019.Pener, Degen. "Egos & Ids; At Barneys, There's Arising Such a Clatter," The New York Times, November 15, 1992. Retrieved February 25, 2019. In 1997, Lutz created Muscle Suit (1997) for David Byrne's "Feelings" concert tour, a costume whose entire surface displayed an anatomical illustration of human musculature. She also produced concert costumes for Michael Stipe for the R.E.M. "Green" tour (1997).
Lutz has frequently created costume designs for experimental theater directors. She worked on The Knee Plays segment of Robert Wilson's opera, the CIVIL warS (1984),American Repertory Theater. "Adelle Lutz," Biography. Retrieved February 25, 2019. JoAnne Akalaitis's productions of Leon Lena (and Lenz) (Guthrie Theatre, 1988) and Dream Play (Juilliard School Theatre, 1996), and David Gordon's The Firebugs (Guthrie Theatre, 1995) and Punch and Judy Get Divorced (American Music Theatre Festival, 1996).Guthrie Theater. Leon, Lena (and Lenz), Credits, Videorecording of performance, Minneapolis, MN: The New York Public Library's Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at the Guthrie Theater, 1987. Retrieved February 27, 2019.American Repertory Theater. "Punch and Judy Get Divorced," Program, 1996. Retrieved February 25, 2019. Her film costuming credits include Checking Out (dir. David Leland, 1989) and the Paul Auster-directed films Lulu on the Bridge (1997) and The Inner Life of Martin Frost (2007).American Film Institute. Checking Out, AFI Catalogue of Feature Films. Retrieved February 25, 2019.Levy, Emanuel. Lulu on the Bridge, Variety, May 14, 1998. Retrieved February 22, 2019.Titze, Anne-Katrin. "Meant to be: Interview with Paul Auster," Eye on Film. Retrieved February 22, 2019. Her wedding costumes for Susan Seidelman's Making Mr. Right (1987) were praised in Janet Maslin's New York Times review of the film.
Costume art and sculpture