Visionaire editor Cecilia Dean and zingmagazine editor Devon Dikeou share something in common that has entirely transfigured the magazine industry, catapulting the medium into the realm of art or, at least, objet d art.  Equally humble and ironically enough, neither dares to give herself enough credit. 

Hanna Arendt once said that “art works are clearly superior to all other things; since they stay longer in the world than anything else.”  Clearly, what separates an everyday object like a magazine from a piece of art is its ephemerality.  Magazines are commercial by nature, intended to advertise products and ideas that serve to perpetuate consumerism in both broad and niche-based markets.  Art magazines are no exception.  Artforum, like so many others, is supported financially by affluent gallery owners and designer fashion labels, paying thousands of dollars to promote their upcoming exhibitions or next season’s line.  Magazines – unlike newspapers, journals and books – are almost inevitably influenced, sometimes even controlled, by the advertisers who support them.  There are, of course, the exceptions of literary magazines and academic journals, neither of which would be properly characterized by the term “magazine” other than the fact that they’re filed a few shelves down from Vogue.

The zine revolution – which in recent history has consisted of small photocopied publications crafted by one or a few people and distributed personally or through subcultural networks – has really been the only alternative to the commercial magazine industry.  Much ink has been spilled about zine culture, as an archetype of all that is young, politicized and uncensored.  While it is clear that a solid alternative exists, what has been neglected is another kind of revolution that has inadvertently affected the magazine industry at large.  This is the transformation of magazine into art.

“zingmagazine projects are projects that would not be in other magazines,” claims Ms. Dikeou, who began zing in the spring of 1995.  As a visual artist, she was already incorporating images with text, making art that was interactive with “literary influences.”  Playing with the idea of the word “curator,” Ms. Dikeou envisaged a non-limiting, inclusive publication that would bring together people from all disciplines to create and curate projects unlike what they might do for mass distribution periodicals.  Intuitively fascinated by the combination of image and text, Ms. Dikeou expanded her interests by combining the alternative and/or previously unseen talent of visual artists, writers, architects, scientists, fashion designers, graphic designers, poets and so on.  The projects designed for zing were expected to be “a new exploration for that person, that they wouldn’t do somewhere else.”

A perfect example of these explorations would be work that fashion designers organization for returning fashion interest (orfi) did for issues eight, twelve and thirteen.  Instead of developing a typical fashion “story,” they incorporated some looks into a graphic design spread, which expressed their interest in the graphic image.  They also published a supplementary book (with issue thirteen under zingmagazine press) entitled “Angel Meadow” in conjunction with their spring/summer line for 2001.  orfi combined literature, poetry, and a variety of images – symbols, patches, logos, photographs, sketches, computerized structures – bringing to life the influences behind their overall project, which were clearly more than fashion-oriented.

“I can’t compete with Vogue.  I can’t compete with Vanity Fair. I don’t want to compete with Vogue.  So yes, give them something that is fashionable. Yes, [zing] talks about issues of fashion, but untraditional in the ways that fashion stories are told.”

Zing invented – and put a trademark on – the idea of “the curated section.”  Today the phrase has become vernacular.  Other small press art and design magazines like New York City based Index and San Francisco’s surface*, to name a few, have also adopted the idea.  Common today, in magazines of this genre, are pull out supplements or multi-page addendums providing in-depth, creatively flexible, commercial and logo free content.  zing has gone farther than most, providing CD recordings, small books and showing video installations of work by their contributors. 

Ms. Dikeou admits that zing is less likely to be thrown away, which may at first seem like an irrelevant coincidence, but actually the likelihood that it is kept changes the nature of the media.  Zing is and has always been a perfectly bound periodical, heavy like a book with high-quality, high-resolution images and expensive paper. Other magazines with a similar level of craftsmanship are kept and collected; National Geographic, for instance, has historically been collected as a “source” or reference.  It is clear that zing is being kept as something other than artifact or reference, and perhaps herein lies the key to its inimitability.

The non-linear character of each curated section demonstrates the liberty with which each artist goes about his or her projects.  There is no “style guide,” Ms. Dikeou explains.  The only restrictions are those that the medium imposes.  Extraordinarily, zing has come to represent how few restrictions actually exist when both contributor and editor are willing to take risks.  Ms. Dikeou has developed a website, which epitomizes her interest in multi-media – zingtv, zingchat, zingradio – all of which provide expanded opportunities for artists to exhibit their work.  Each issue is archived so that the ephemerality of virtual space does not entirely devour older projects. Originally, Ms. Dikeou had envisioned an online forum that would unite contributors from each issue to discuss each other’s work and ideas, although this venture has yet to be materialized. So then, to imagine zing exclusively as a magazine would be inaccurate.  Multi-media platform for the arts?  Periodical, collective art exhibition? It’s difficult to define.

Without advertising, none of these projects would transpire.  Ms. Dikeou has been living in SoHo for several years and has developed relationships with various galleries, restaurants, boutiques and so on, all of whom have supported her magazine.  She enjoys representing the locale and actually encourages the idea that each advertisement can be a little art project of its own.  The curated section is not littered with ads, however, which is an aesthetic decision that other magazines are imitating.  Additionally, zing is not supported by any huge corporations and Ms. Dikeou would like it to remain that way.

So then, how is zing making art – when it is linked to the commercial, reproduced and in some cases virtual?  Devon Dikeou might be hesitant to use to word “art,” but actually the word has come to mean something new more than 500 years after the invention of the printing press, and 112 years since the invention of the camera.  Museums now display books, posters, photographs and other kinds of reproduced/reproducible artworks that one hundred years ago would have caused somewhat of a fuss.  Throughout the course of the twentieth century and with the inventions of an array of new technologies, however, the uniqueness of an artwork is less crucial to its validity.  Perhaps zing will be archived in a museum several years from now as an imaginative cultural product representative of a certain place and time.  Perhaps that is why it’s worth saving or why we can call it art.

“All different forums are imperative for a good society, and I think they all exist already and we’re just another one.”  The forums that Visionaire editor Cecelia Dean is referring to are those within which a designer usually operates: runway, editorial, commercial campaign and so on.  Visionaire may be against the inclusion of advertisements and the restraints they might impose, but not because they’re so naïve to think the commercial world is inherently evil.  They see themselves as a creative forum co-existing with other creative and commercial forums, not as some kind alternative. Visionaire is the most revolutionary magazine on the market yet, paradoxically, claim they have nothing to revolt against. 

Visionaire was created in 1991 by Cecilia Dean, Stephen Gan and James Kaliardos.  They were all involved in the fashion, art and publishing worlds in one way or another, and wanted to “give a forum to works that no one ever saw.”  They invited photographers, artists, architects, designers and other talented people to create an unbound, mixed-media publication that was highly exclusive and artistically uncompromising.  Their intent was not to provide something new to an otherwise corporate-controlled industry, but rather something else.  Ms. Dean is convinced that creative venues have always existed, but are generally less publicized.  “There have always been creative outlets. I think Visionaire just became bigger than a lot of the other independent magazines out there to explore new ideas.  It’s all out there.”

No two issues of Visionaire are alike.  They generally encompass a theme that is imagined by the editors and then executed by contributing artists. Ms. Dean firmly believes in letting “the artists do whatever ever they want to do,” and does not “‘art-direct’ them.”  Each issue is entitled something simple: Hype!, The Orient, Fantasy, Where? and most recently, Paris, their thirty-forth issue.  Often the content is enveloped in some clever fashion, an example being issue thirty-three, which they describe as “encased in a brushed gold metal box, with a wearable pony skin Òcache-colÓ wrapping the unbound illustrations.”  The content itself is also remarkable. The twenty-forth issue designed by Tom Ford for Gucci used “fully transparent and panoramic pages [that] were created to be viewed on a flexible Luminagraphics light panel.”  Issue eighteen, which was encased in a custom designed Louis Vuitton portfolio, was the landmark issue for Visionaire. “Working with Louis Vuitton…gave us this big stamp of approval by the establishment and people starting looking at us in a very different way.  They started taking us more much seriously.  I think a lot of people think it was our first issue.”

The first issue it was not.  February 2001 marks the ten-year anniversary of Visionaire.  They are celebrating appropriately with a retrospective at F.I.T. (Feb. 9 – Apr. 21) demonstrating their close relationship to fashion as well as their artistic contribution to the magazine industry. “Ten years ago,” notes Ms. Dean, “I think the fashion and art worlds were completely separate; they had nothing to do with each other; like water and oil.  Through the years, those worlds have collided radically.  When we started Visionaire, the whole concept was ‘great images’ whether they were fashion images or art.  It didn’t matter which because we didn’t have this big agenda to sell merchandise, never had to deal with advertisers.  So it was all about the image.”

Visionaire’s concentration on great images has allowed them to work with high caliber photographers like Nan Goldin, Mario Testino, Jurgen Teller, Ellen Von Unwerth, Steven Meisel, Nick Knight, Peter Lindbergh and Cindy Sherman.  Fashion houses including Hermés, Gucci, Fendi, and Christian Dior have collaborated with them.  Artists (just to name a few) David Byrne, David Bowie, John Galliano, Stella McCartney, Gus Van Sant, Gary Hume, Alexander Mc Queen and Alex Katz have also contributed.  The list goes on and on. 

Clearly, artists like the above mentioned have been involved with other publications in the past, but nothing as DIY as Visionaire.  Instead of being interviewed and promoted, artists actually engage in the product itself.  Much of the design and conceptualizing actually takes place outside of New York, where the Visionaire office is located.  So how do they do they pull it off?

To begin with, Visionaire’s retail price is almost absurd – that is, if one considers it to be a magazine and nothing more.  Issues are priced between $175 and $450, depending on production costs.  This allows their product to be limited and commercial-free.  The downside is, of course, that “the majority of the world will never even know of its existence.”  Few can afford to buy Visionaire, let alone be fortunate enough to come across it in the few cities where it can be purchased. 

Cecilia Dean is perfectly aware of the consequences.  “I don’t think the mainstream has tapped into Visionaire at all.  I still think of ourselves as very small, very exclusive and elitist to a certain extent.  Not that we don’t want to be mainstream.  I think a housewife in Iowa would totally dig Visionaire, but just doesn’t know about it and have the inclination to spend the amount of money that we charge for it.”

Art has always been exclusive to those with disposable incomes.  It is a luxury, just as Visionaire – now a desirable collector’s item – is also a luxury.  But is it properly described as art?  Ms. Dean insists that her staff isn’t “sitting around thinking we’re creating works of art.  We just do what we like to do.  It’s just a limited edition publication for a lot of people.”  Even if there are 3,000 copies of each issue of Visionaire – more or less – it still seems like a bigger stretch calling it a magazine than calling it art.  Not since the Russian avant-garde has publication design been so experimental, so paradigmatic of the electrifying fusion between various artistic disciplines. Visionaire has come to represent, even if unintentionally, the superiority of things that “stay longer in the world than anything else.” 

In addition, Visionaire has influenced small press commercial magazines to experiment with their own formats, materials and (occasionally) increase the price in the name of a higher quality product.  The magazine formula is transforming.  Would Cecilia Dean take any credit?  Much like Devon Dikeou, of course not.  Regardless, there is something to be said for their gusto, valor and modesty.  Both editors deserve appreciation for the significant new dimensions they’ve contributed to the art/publication world at large.

Visit their websites for further information and store locations at:
www.visionaireworld.com
www.zingmagazine.com

- Kate Sennert