HELMUT LANG — Selective Memory Series: The Helmut Lang Purple Book, Purple Institute / HL-ART, 2007

Published as a special supplement to Purple Fashion No. 7, Summer 2007, by Purple Institute and HL-ART, Paris and New York. An intimate publication assembled from Helmut Lang’s personal archive: letters, notes, invitations, drawings, photographs and fragments of correspondence exchanged with artists, photographers, collaborators and friends. Among those represented are Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer, Juergen Teller and Bruce Weber.

Rather than present a conventional chronology, the book reproduces the archive as a field of partial evidence. A handwritten message sits beside an exhibition invitation; a private photograph becomes a printed page; a computer contact sheet reveals the filing system from which the material was selected. Memory appears through what was retained, scanned, enlarged and placed back into circulation.

The publication appeared two years after Lang departed his namesake fashion house to concentrate on his art practice. It belongs to the moment when material previously understood through fashion, publicity and collaboration began to be reorganised explicitly as artistic work.

Lang had long worked across clothing, architecture, advertising, photography and artist collaboration without treating them as entirely separate disciplines. Here, that expanded field is reduced to paper. The people surrounding the work become part of the work: professional exchange, friendship, inscription and memory held within the same editorial structure.

Originally distributed with Purple Fashion, the book moves between magazine supplement, personal archive and artist’s publication. The MAK later incorporated excerpts from the Selective Memory Series into its presentation of the Helmut Lang Archive, recognising the project as part of Lang’s continuing examination of storage, memory and display.

21.5 × 28 cm. 80 pages. Saddle-stitched softcover; black-and-white and colour reproductions; text in English. Condition: good. Light rubbing, handling marks and age toning to the wrappers, with minor creasing, edge wear and corner softening. Small pressure marks and faint surface impressions visible to the covers. Internally complete and generally clean.

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