Deborah Turbeville
West 14th St., New York City, Calvin Klein, 1976
Collage of one silver gelatin print, one mechanical print, one polaroid, attached to paper mount with adhesive, t-pins and paper clips
Paper size: 35 x 47 cm
Unique
Signed recto
Deborah Turbeville / MUUS Collection
Provenance
MUUS CollectionLiterature
Deborah Turbeville was commissioned by Calvin Klein to make a movie commercial for their new line of shoes, which Klein produced in collaboration with Andrew Geller. The film was shot in Larry’s family’s apartment (Turbeville’s agent), on the top floor of a building on 14th Street and 5th Avenue in New York. Deborah filmed for three days, producing an incredibly eccentric, surreal, commercial in which white mice emerged from the shoes, in the unfinished .The project was exhibited in a gymnasium on the West Side, projected onto the wall of the gym. However, the ambient light in the room made the projection too difficult to see, and the heat in the gym made viewers uncomfortable. Everyone was in shock and the commercial never went ahead: this episode is emblematic of Turbeville’s true nature of enfant terrible, experimenter and a real trailblazer in the fashion industry of the time.