It’s midnight, Saturday, and I’m on a red-eye flight to Paris. My potato is in my lap. My potato belongs to the renowned Steakhouse Family. They weigh a magnificent one and a third pounds, and they completely fill my two hands cupped together. My potato is named J.R. and their pronouns are they/them, as potatoes have no gender. A potato from rural Idaho and a human being from New York City might seem an incongruous pair, but these things do happen. As Shakespeare wrote: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
I found J.R. at my local grocery store. It was love at first sight, what the French call “coup de foudre”. They were unwashed and raw, but I didn’t care about that at all. I took them from a pile where they sat silently among others of their kind and gently placed them in a small, soft brown paper bag. As we walked home I lifted the open bag close to my mouth and whispered into it. My god, the aroma! It reminded me of the best of America. It smelled like open-mindedness.
“What do they call you?” I said. There was no reply, so I decided their name would be “Jumbo Russet”. It had meaning and dignity, and was also a marker of identity. J.R. was already an icon. As a trademarked, legally registered Idaho Potato, J.R. happens to be at the top levels of potato hierarchy. As I scrunched the top of the bag, I added that I’d call them “J.R.” for short and a little burst of laughter rose from inside the bag. I clutched it tightly to my chest.
When we got home I put them in a cute little basket on the kitchen counter. They had little bits of dirt stuck on their skin, and even now dots of rich loam fall to my lap as I tighten the seat belt. I did neglect to find out whether J.R. is organic or not, and my only excuse is that I was just so into their look. The instant I saw them, I imagined the soil they were dug from, how it would cling to the tires of a grass-green John Deere tractor, the smiley-face yellow wheel caps shining in the morning mist of a freshly-tilled field, and how a smudge of their soil would look on the ivory sole of a Red Wing work boot. Of how J.R. would look on a sizzle plate next to a perfectly-grilled Tomahawk Ribeye, with a nest of emerald-green creamed spinach and a dreamy thick slice of ripe plush tomato cuddled up next to them.
J.R. is the consummate example of an American potato: Big, sure of themselves, not too fancy and with no airs about them, carrying the DNA of summer-time church fairs where overcooked burgers turn black on the grill; sticky bags of flattened buns sit next to masses of no-name condiments on the table just waiting to be useful; the sun-warmed orange, lime-green and brown soda monolithic in their enormous plastic bottles. It would not, could not be the same without the Potato Chip tribe falling all over themselves in their crumpled shiny bags.
But this is no church fair, this is a plane headed for Paris, and J.R. is complaining to me that they don’t like how the seatbelt feels against their skin. Again, I think, there’s something odd about J.R.’s voice. When we got to my apartment on the first day they said “Hey, can you get me out of this paper bag?” and I swear to god their voice sounded like a combination of all my ex-husbands’ voices mixed together and I stopped right there in the hallway, because I sure didn’t want any of those guys in my apartment. But then J.R.said “Pretty please with sugar on top and everything you like,” in a different voice, and I really liked the sound of that voice, so I decided they had to be okay.
They still have that voice for the most part, the one I liked. I can’t describe it, but it sounds utterly delicious! As the plane begins its take-off I loosen our seat belt slightly and tell them not to worry, because in a few short hours we’ll be at our destination. Me and J.R., we’re going to Paris Haute Couture Week.
The term “Haute Couture” is Parisian in origin. Directly translated it means “high dressmaking”. Characterized by custom-made garments specifically fitted to individual clients, couture is designed and made with the idea of clothing as Art in mind, rather than clothing as common garments that fulfill the basic human need of “having something to wear”. Paris Haute Couture Week runway shows take place twice each year, with designers showing their Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter collections. The schedule for Haute Couture Week is controlled and managed by the Federation de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, or FHCM.
For clothing to have the right to be called haute couture it must meet specific legal criteria. The clothing must be made to order for a private client; there must be one or more personal fittings for each piece designed; the design house must employ 15 or more full time staff; the design house must have an atelier employing 20 or more full-time technical people; the design house must present a collection of 50 or more original designs to the public twice each year.
The couturiers of the FHCM will have their shows added to the schedule of the Official Calendar for Paris Haute Couture Week. These “weeks” in real time only cover the span of four days—a shorter “week” than the nine days that comprise Paris Fashion Week. Paris Fashion Week is for designers showing “ready-to-wear” fashion. Paris Haute Couture Week is for Haute Couturiers to do their thing. Some design houses create both ready-to-wear and couture collections, and will show at Paris Fashion Week and at Paris Haute Couture Week.
All of this screams of exclusivity, of course. The fact is, that Couture is Art—and of course where Art goes, Money follows.
When J.R. and I arrived at our hotel Sunday around noon, I placed them on a small table in front of the French doors that opened onto a view of the rooftops of Paris, with their distinctive shapes, the saturated Parisian light holding all of it in a glorious frame. We napped for a few hours and when we woke up we were still tired, but had to get ready for our first show later that evening. I put on an outfit not quite as good as my other fits because the show wasn’t listed on the official schedule, the designer being an influencer with enough money to arrange for a show of their collection off-schedule the day before Couture Week officially begins. For lack of a better term we’ll call them an “Emerging Designer”. J.R. isn’t dressing, they’re going buck-naked. The show’s in the 16th arrondissement out at the edge of Paris, so I call an Uber.
At the show, the PR people dressed all in black and in their moment of fabulously high power hand us little slips of paper. We wander around the room, searching for the seats that match the numbers scrawled on the slips. We’re seated in the front row which is good because of the implication that we’re better than those who sit in the seats behind us. It’s also bad, because all this planned magic could fall apart with one uncouth slouch, one wrong movement of our foot (or for that matter, wearing the wrong shoes), one glance that would betray the slightest discomfort. Our cores are fully engaged. We are all athletes. My eyes wander, looking for anyone like me, anyone old, which to some people means over 30 but for me means over 70 because I want to see the really old people and when I find them—and each year it’s the same ones—I stare obsessively, wondering whether they’re wearing a brace to be able to sit on these torture implement benches and chairs for such a long time, then asking myself then telling myself, no, that they must be taking some pretty strong pain pills. I want to know what the pills are. Maybe I want some.
Half an hour past the scheduled starting time—which we’ve spent squirming on the hard benches in the tall-ceilinged, unheated Parisian room—the show starts. Music resounds, heavy on the bass, as models all thin as a blade of grass mince carefully down a stairway from the balcony at the far side of the room. The first model wears a frilly dress completely covered in bookbag straps. The dress makes a statement. “Cute,” I think, but then I look closely at the mask draped across the models’ eyes. I’m quite sure it’s a sanitary pad, a Kotex. I’m not the least bit shocked by this, I mean, Balenciaga is producing leather bags that look like real black plastic trash bags that sell for $2000 a pop. Any thing can be anything in art and fashion, but I’m disappointed. I think drearily to myself “This really is too easy a gesture, this flex toward some kind of cultural commentary,” and I shift a bit on the hard seat.
I’m stuck, unable to move the slightest bit between the people on both sides squishing me. I’m trying to find a way to be comfortable, but it’s impossible. I’m gripping the naked J.R. tightly with one hand, holding my adorable handbag perched in the approved style on my lap with the other hand when I realize the masks across the models’ eyes aren’t sanitary pads, but rather thick gatherings of lace tinted a light blue. My mistake, and now I regret the lost sense of meaning I at first imagined existed. Anyone can tie a bunch of lace across their face, but the sanitary pad idea was actually brilliant!
I can’t wait to get back to the hotel and go to sleep. As we exit the venue through the crowd J.R. murmurs “We came all this way for this?”
I feel the same way but it’s my job to keep their spirits up. It’s not every day a potato gets to go to Couture Week. “Listen,” I say back to them. “It really starts tomorrow. It’s a lot, so get ready for it. We’ve got at least ten shows each day to go to, plus presentations, fine jewelry and parfumier showings, handbag and shoe collection presentations, designer atelier visits and random cocktail parties all over Paris.”
Before I met J.R. I thought I knew a lot about potatoes. I knew they originated in Peru and that they had a history going back 8,000 years. I knew that—at this point in time—potatoes are generally thought of as being from “everywhere” in the world with no one singular place that could claim to “own” them, geographically or culturally (although Ireland and and potatoes are often linked because of the Irish Potato Famine that literally reshaped the world). I knew potatoes came in a wide variety of types, that they’re easy to grow, and that they produce large harvests. Potatoes are a food of subsistence in developing countries and a food of sustenance across the globe.
I told J.R. a bit about their family’s historic relationship with Paris before we left New York for Couture Week. A guy named Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, a French pharmacist, had been a prisoner-of-war during the Seven Years War (1756-1763). Parmentier managed to avoid the starvation that killed other prisoners by doing one simple thing: Eating the potatoes his Prussian captors fed him. Potatoes were considered unfit for human consumption at that time in France and were most commonly used as hog feed. It was even rumored that eating potatoes could cause leprosy in humans.
Parmentier did not contract leprosy, and when returned to France after the war he wrote an essay on potato flour as a substitute for wheat flour. Sacrilege? Perhaps. But potatoes were now the center of Parmentier’s life and work. His obsession led him to host a series of elegant potato-focused dinner parties for French politicians, royalty, and celebrities of the day. Multi-course dinners, some with twenty different potato-based dishes, were served to his illustrious guests. Benjamin Franklin was a guest at one of Parmentier’s dinners in 1778. Today, if you see “Parmentier” on a French menu, you can be sure the dish contains potatoes.
It’s Monday, the first official day of Haute Couture Week, and as usual the season opens with Schiaparelli at the Petit Palais. Maison Schiaparelli was founded in 1927 by Elsa Schiaparelli, whose circle included Dadaist and Surrealist artists as well as her wealthy family’s connections. Schiaparelli is possibly best-known for her avant-garde designs, for her feuds with Coco Chanel, and for the “Lobster Dress” she created with Salvatore Dali for the American socialite Wallis Simpson, whose shocking romantic dalliance with King Edward VIII led not only to their marriage but to his abdication of the throne in 1936.
“Schiapparelli actually made a potato brooch a few years ago,” I told J.R. as we approached the venue. “It was made of ceramic and had a bunch of tiny diamonds stuck all over it.” I thought I heard them sigh after I said this, but it could have been the wind.
A crowd was outside the Petit Palais as we arrived. Photographers bundled in heavy coats were packed two and three deep on each side of the walk from the curb at Avenue Winston-Churchill to the immensely high stairs of the Petit Palais. A car pulls up to the curb, a chauffeur jumps out to open a door. A roar rises from the crowd as someone cautiously sticks a leg out the door toward the curb. The photographers call out to the arriving guests to stand here, stand there, turn, just a minute, just a minute, look here! The wind vortex outside the venue attacks any mere mortals in the crowd, but people exiting the big black SUVs are well shielded by circles of bodyguards who don’t allow even the wind to get through.
Some of the women surrounded by bodyguards are wearing only underwear. It’s very expensive underwear, of course, with lots of glittering jewels sewn into it. It’s 9 degrees Fahrenheit at the moment, but that doesn’t seem to worry the pretty-much-naked women. The jewels must keep them warm as they gesture to their bodyguards to stand far enough back to be invisible in the photos. Disappear, they say with their hands, but not so far away that you can’t protect me. The photographers are now totally blissed out and ready to show their love. They run at the woman in rough packs, jostling for position, screaming at the top of their lungs.
The women set their necks in place and pose, moving slightly first one way then the other, throwing intense sexual glances through the air at nobody.
I hold J.R. first in one hand, then the other. They are uncomfortable, they don’t like the many high steps of the Petit Palais which lead up to the set of black and gold wrought iron doors so tall and vast they almost touch the closer edges of the cosmos, or perhaps even Heaven. They don’t like the desperate wind tunnel, they don’t like the people’s frenzied faces. I hold J.R. up to my cheek, briefly. “I get it,” I whisper. “Let’s go look at the bridge, at Pont Alexandre. It’s right over there. We can see the sky, we can see boats, we can look at the Seine.” I tuck J.R. inside my coat and pull it tightly around me.
Moira’s probably my biggest reason for going to Couture Week. I lived in Paris a long time ago with my little dog Wolfie, so long ago that nobody spoke English as a second language as they do now. So long ago that it was normal to get “un demi”, or half a baguette, at the boulangerie each day, and always the lady would bustle out from behind the counter to give Wolfie his own chunk of bread for free, while clucking “Ohlala il est beau!!!” So long ago that the public toilettes were entered by giving a coin to the woman at the door. Inside, the facilities provided were just a kind of open pit in the ground.
Now I only go to Paris with Moira, and only during Couture Week, and only because I like to spend time with Moira and maybe to see Paris again, simply because Paris is Paris. Moira’s stunning, with her porcelain skin, turquoise eyes, long hair which is a different color each season. I knew her father more than thirty years ago. I watched Moira grow up, and when her father mysteriously disappeared (never to be seen again) we spent even more time together. She’s a well-known astrological advisor whose uber-wealthy clients rely on her to tell them what to wear for good fortune; a maximalist who knows exactly what she’s doing when she dresses, as she chooses pieces from Junya Watanabe, Simone Rocha, or Miu Miu, to pair with vintage pillbox hats, rhinestone sneakers, stockings pattered all over with cats, then finishing the look with assorted jewelry—silver, gold, cameos and rubies all mixed together with Victorian mourning rings and pendants set with the woven hair of the beloved dead—and plastic or wooden strands of beads. Most people can’t dress like this without looking odd, or even ridiculous, but Moira always looks amazing.
I also like to go to Couture Week because I sometimes like to play dress-up, and it’s helpful that I speak a little French in an accent that sounds Parisian (which the real Parisians totally respect). More importantly, I can understand what they’re saying when they’re speaking it. This matters if I take my potato to Couture Week because Parisians have perfected the art of insult.
When I decided to take J.R. with me to Couture Week, there were things to decide. Left Bank or Right Bank, parks or streets. Restaurants—or maybe not. Sitting in a restaurant might upset J.R. Already they’ll be seeing hordes of starving people with no time to eat running through the streets of Paris while trying to maintain the perfection of their appearance. The objective is to look impossibly cool and incredibly beautiful. If you can’t do beautiful, then do ugly, as intensely as you can.
Outfits are choreographed months ahead. Hair, makeup, accessories, all require study, research, planning, shopping around, buying, styling, and final tweaking. It takes a lot of time. If you’re a regular person in the world, you do all this yourself. If you’re wealthy, you just pay someone to do the labor for you.
What Parmentier was to potatoes, Rose Bertin and Charles Frederick Worth were to couture. At the same time Parmentier was creating multi-course potato dinners for the royal and the wealthy, Rose Bertin was creating dresses for Marie-Antoinette, the Austrian consort to Louis XVI. Marie-Antoinette was the last Queen of France before the fall of the monarchy. Clothing consumption had risen sharply among all classes in the late 18th century. The upper classes wanted to clearly distinguish themselves from the middle classes and Rose Bertin, apprenticed to a fashion merchant at nine years old, was Marie-Antoinette’s favorite dressmaker from 1770-1792. Her designs relied heavily on excess and luxury. King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette also wore potato blossoms, which were gifted to them by Parmentier. The King placed the blossoms in his buttonhole, the Queen wore the blossoms in her hair.
While Rose Bertin has been called “The Mother of Haute Couture”, the “Father of Haute Couture” arrived later, in the time of Napoleon III (1848-1870). Charles Frederick Worth, a penniless English immigrant, rose to become the favorite dressmaker of Empress Eugenie, (Napoleon III’s Empress), eventually becoming “Official Dressmaker to the Court”. Eugenie adored fashion, and was known to change her dresses several times a day. The press called her the “Queen of Fashion”; “Imperatrice de la Mode”; “Countess of Crinoline”; and “Goddess of the Bustles”.
Unlike haute couture–whose path climbed the dizzying heights to become Art—potatoes have no interest in being part of the Art world. Instead, they just sit around waiting to be eaten.
A note on Eras: You are in your era. I am in my era. Rose Bertin was the mother of haute couture until her era ended with a Revolution (“Off with her head!”). Charles Frederick Worth, the father of haute couture, was in his era but was not in the Napoleonic era although he served Napoleon, because there are actually three Napoleons and only the Bonaparte one had an era. In American life today when we say Napoleon we are generally speaking of a French pastry.
Tuesday’s a busy day with ten shows on the schedule, three of them “must-see’s”: An emerging designer at the architecturally important brutalist-style French Communist Party Headquarters; Dior at the culturally important Musée Rodin; and Jean-Paul Gaultier at the uber cool-factor brand’s headquarters on Rue St. Martin.
J.R. is sulking because I told them I was going to take a French potato with me today. Most of their argument is focused on the idea of “Make American Potatoes Great Again” but I don’t want to hear it anymore. The potato I’ve chosen is called “La Bonnotte”, which happens to be the most expensive potato in the world at $300 per pound. They’re limited edition, flavored by the sand and seawater that exist solely on the one small island where they’re grown. What a life, what a terroir!
La Bonotte is the perfect potato to carry at Couture Week but they’re only available for ten days in May on the tiny island itself. But then again, I’ve heard that La Bonotte doesn’t look any different than a regular run-of-the-mill potato. You can’t really understand their true value by just looking at them. If I can’t get the real thing, maybe I’ll get a fake, a dupe that looks like the real thing. Who will know? I go on the dark web and find some procurers who promise to meet me in Pigalle with the goods.
I tell J.R. they can go to shows with me the following day but they should be ready for it. They already went to one show naked. We’re not doing that again. Enough is enough. In order to do this right, I’ll have to roast them, split them open, top them with butter from Brittany, creme fraiche from Normandy, and Osetra caviar from Prunier. I quote Chanel to them: “In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different.” I am met with silence. J.R. refuses to respond. I see a tiny spot where they’re starting to sprout. I ask them if they’re feeling okay, is there anything I can do to help? Nothing. They just sit there, potato-like. As I start to walk away I think I hear something.
“What?” I turn around. “What did you say?”
They’re quoting Chanel to me. “Elegance is refusal,” they say.
I place a silk scarf carefully over J.R. so they’ll know I still care, then rush out to meet my suppliers in Pigalle, where a quick hand-off is done in front of Le Moulin Rouge. The day becomes a blur. We’re early to the emerging designer at the Communist Headquarters. We’re on time for Dior, which doesn’t matter since they start late. We’re very late to the Jean-Paul Gaultier show, it’s getting dark outside and as we rush toward the entrance it’s blocked by a crowd of fifty or more people tightly packed around the door. This crowd, always exuberant, has a passionate love for the designer.
Gaultier’s known even beyond the fashion world as the guy who designed the iconic Cone Bra that Madonna wore on her “Blonde Ambition” tour. We have to get in. I hold my fake expensive La Bonotte potato high in the air and start yelling in French that we have to get through. It’s not easy at first, there’s a lot of very tall drag queens in the crowd and I happen to be pretty short. It’s like I’m yelling into their waists, it seems like, but like all the drag queens I’ve ever known they’re sweet and kind, and they let us through.
Gaultier, himself, personally retired following his 50th anniversary haute couture show in 2020, but the brand continues on with guest designers. The guest designer this season brings a more traditional look to the runway. No cone bras. Not a lot of color. Exquisite tailoring, check. Evening dress, check. Office-to-cocktails, check.
As we shuffle down the stairs in the large crowd after the show, I take a look in the mirror that runs along the silk-wallpapered wall. I’m wearing a red tulle midi skirt, a navy blue silk blouse with ruffles on the front, a graphic print men’s tie and a tall white faux fur Cossack hat. A small Moschino cross-body bag with a green haired troll printed on the front finishes the look, and more than anything I seem to resemble a demented Nutcracker Doll. I see someone I know walking right next to me. Who are they? I can’t remember. This woman, she’s beautiful, her face actually looks radiant, lit by a permanent spotlight. Who is it?
As we part at the bottom of the stairs, I realize it’s Catherine Deneuve. I wish I hadn’t worn this ridiculous hat.
Couture Week is, at its core, a fairy tale mirror that reflects us all. Or at least, anyone who cares to look. In this mirror we’re either “in” or we’re “out”, as Heidi Klum has repeatedly told us from the TV screen. We’ve either been perfected by money and style, or not. We could be Snow White, or the Evil Queen. We could be a shiny red apple or a drab dun-colored potato.
To show approval of someone’s look, say “Slay”. Say simply “slay”, never “You slay”. For important occasions when you want to show respect for a fashion girlie’s fit, you should say “Who is this Diva?” to them. Instead of saying “Schiaparelli” you can say “Schiap”. Same for Giambattista Valli—don’t use all those syllables. Instead say “Giamba”.
If you’re eager to show who you are by the handbag you carry, here is a list of status bags in order of hierarchy, from lowest to highest: Gucci Marmont; Louis Vuitton Classic Monogram; Bottega Veneta Intreccio; Chanel Classic Flap in Black; Hermes Mini Kelly; Hermes Himalaya Birkin. Prices on these bags run from $3000 to $300,000.
If you’re eager to show who you are by the potato you carry, that’s something else entirely.
By the third day regular time had become a rubbery thing, it felt as if I’d been in Paris forever and would be in Paris for the rest of all time. This always happens. A certain fluidity takes over my mind and body, and things start getting slightly weird. I tripped on a step entering a Ukrainian designer’s showroom and went flying with my full weight into the wall display ten feet in front of me, stopping myself with the palms of my hands and if I remember right the top of my head. It made a horrible crashing noise and for a moment I thought the wall was going to collapse. I looked around as if nothing had happened. Nobody said anything, either. Later, someone said to me that the Ukrainians were used to noises that sounded like bombs going off. Then I wandered directly into the front of a very tall gendarme in a crowd, randomly leaned against him and looked up into his eyes and loudly stage- whispered “Au revoir” as if I was in a French wartime movie. Then, after walking down a hall in an atelier that was lined with red velvet ceiling-to-floor curtains I told the designer I felt like I was in Twin Peaks in the Red Room at the Lodge and said “Remember the weird little man?” and he brought his hands up near his face, curled them into a contorted gesture while happily giggling and saying “Yes, that is me!”
On the last day of Couture Week, our final show is in a park, once again at the far edges of the city. It’s impossible to guess how many times we’ve traveled back and forth across Paris to get to all the different venues. It’s still freezing out, we almost decide not to go, but then we do. They put us all on big charter buses with darkened interiors and drive us to the park. Everyone’s exhausted to the point of not even being able to appear friendly to each other anymore. We’re all zombies.
What will I wear? What will I eat? Who will I be? Who will you be? Who will we be? Am I chic? Do I live in the lap of luxury? Do I, can I, must I respect people of inherited wealth who’ve decided to wear that wealth on their backs while posing for the thrilled photographers with an assumed air of naïveté that doesn’t quite work because of the superciliousness beneath it?
“I thought you liked Paris Couture Week,” J.R. muttered at me as I packed our bags. It was our last day in Paris. I’d moved J.R. to the table next to the bed because they’d said the sun coming through the glass French doors was making them feel like sprouting. “I thought you liked trying to be impossibly chic, incredibly beautiful. I thought you even liked the snobbishness and the air of mild depression of the Parisians. Isn’t that why you learned to speak French, so you could seem like you belonged?”
“Stupid potato,” I said. “Your terroir is rural Idaho. How could you possibly understand?”
I regretted saying that to J.R. because it was soon obvious they wouldn’t last much longer. Wrinkles, sprouts, shrinkage, it all happened over the next two weeks. We were back in Brooklyn, luckily, when it became fully obvious. Paris Haute Couture Week was over, and J.R. had been feted by some, ignored by others, but all in all they’d enjoyed the trip. We started talking about what arrangements they wanted at the end, and it turned out that J.R. was a perfect classicist. Nothing but a smash, skin on, would do. Extra butter, a touch of heavy cream. I made the comment that J.R.’s family might consider oven-baking a more appropriate route to take, as J.R. was, after all, a Steakhouse potato.
“You know what Karl Lagerfeld said, don’t you?” J.R. said in that voice I loved. “He said sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants.” I frowned, but they continued their thought.
“Baking. Baking a potato in an oven is so basic. Sheetpans are ugly. An oven is a box. No. A baked potato is sweatpants.”
I had to admit, J.R. had style. I brought a pot of water to a perfect rolling boil, a beautiful thing. The steam rose, my hands wanted to pull away from the rising heat but J.R. shouted. I’d never heard them shout before, it was impressive. “Do it! Drop me!”
As they plunged into the water, displacing it to make room for their own weight and shape, I heard them giggle. An “Au revoir!” bubbled up toward me.
“Au revoir, my friend,” I whispered.
Yes, I tend to whisper when I talk to J.R.
The fact is that I am an unreliable narrator. At the exact moment I first held J.R. in my hands I had an epiphany that affected our entire relationship. I was startled by J.R. ‘s texture, the velvety softness of their skin that belied the sense of power this iconic American potato held within itself. I didn’t want to let this essential iconography out of my hands, literally.
J.R. was important. And not only were they important, they were Art. I know I said that potatoes had no desire to be art, but nonetheless they are Art. A naive sort of art, an art that was unknowing, an art that didn’t posture. A whole future flashed through my mind. I would take J.R. to Paris Haute Couture Week. I would cradle them in my two hands, carry them here and there, hold them out to people I met and say “This is J.R.,” and the people would respond however they would respond. I’d place J.R. in auspicious settings all over Paris and take photos with a real DSLR camera to document them. It would be a performance piece, and I’d call it “Small Potatoes”.
I’d be like Sophie Calle! Can you imagine? This would be something important, a moment in time taken and twisted into a pre-designed shape, yet still open to affect by its environment. The environment, of course, Paris Haute Couture Week, makes people hungry in various ways. Well, you know, we live in a time of Bread and Circuses, at least we do in the USA, and Paris Couture Week is the essence of spectacle and a potato is a potato is a potato.
The experience would be a documented meta-celebration of the cerebral-as-potato. Images of Artforum flashed through my mind. I saw gently-lit gallery spaces where I’d carry my potato around as I drank cheap white wine. Should I, in the piece, reference the sad poignancy of Van Gogh’s “The Potato Eaters”? Should I wear Louise Bourgeois’s “Confrontation” costume from 1978, where something looking like potatoes and breasts stuck out from the front of the dress? Or maybe I should wear Agnes Varda’s potato costume from 2000. Where Louise Bourgeois’ potato costume displayed a threatening, perhaps rampaging femininity, Agnes Varda’s costume was an in-your-face display of aging femininity. The wrinkling skin, the loss of sexual stance, the experience of walking down the street while becoming increasingly invisible to the world. I’m not sure. The two different dresses are a kind of before and after. Varda wraps her potato in the idea of “gleaning”, which is a form of today’s more upscale, aspirational “foraging”. Bourgeois’ potato was feral, wild. Vardas’ potato was discarded, yet still possibly valuable, capable of sustenance and life-giving nurture. Barely valuable, maybe. Valuable on a cusp, valuable at will, liminally valuable.
But J.R. was not female, nor were they male, they were non-binary. In what way were they threatening? Whatever threat there might be, it wouldn’t be gender-based. In what way did they demonstrate the losses that aging brings? That, too, would not be gender-based. It would probably be looks-based, which of course is everywhere in our instagram-lived world.
None of this happened, the performance piece. Yet all of it was behind what did happen, which makes things different. But J.R. would not be contorted into becoming Art. So what did I learn? That’s always our question, right?
Do I even know?
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