Suits: The Clothes Make the Man Book

"[The] impudent Pimpernels of post-conceptual performance art." -Dave Hickey The Art Guys have done it again! In a project exploring the connection between fashion, art, and commerce that only these irrepressible mavericks could have conceived, the two Houston-based artists spent a year crisscrossing the country wearing suits by designer Todd Oldham on which they had sold advertising space to 56 American companies. Suits captures-through photographs, essays, and an interview with The Art Guys-the story of their often hilarious experiences in their guise as human billboards. As readers discovered in The Art Guys' first Abrams book, Think Twice-the catalogue of their 1995 exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston-their unique brand of subversive humor is a springboard for insightful observations about society and behavior. In Suits, the duo have found a fresh, fun, outlandish way to make us think about our material culture as we never have before. The ART GUYS are JACK MASSING and MICHAEL GALBRETH, artists who teamed up while students at the University of Houston in 1983. Their work has been shown all over the country in museums, galleries, and other spaces. The Art Guys live and work in Houston. TODD OLDHAM is a well-known contemporary fashion designer. DAVE HICKEY is associate professor of art criticism and theory at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. SHAILA DEWAN is a former art critic for the Houston Press. She has recently joined the staff of The New York Times. 168 photographs, 140 in full color, 83/8 x 107/8"Read More