Mark Newport: New Works
This tired pop-culture trope is at the heart of an exhibit by Mark Newport currently on display at the Chicago Cultural Center. Newport, an Arizona textiles professor who has knitted nine superhero costumes and added his own embroidery to seven comic-book covers, explained his motivations in an interview with the Sun-Times: “Knitting, beading and embroidery are traditionally thought of as somehow being female. Superheroes are [predominantly] male. In combining the two, I’m playing with gender expectations.”
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This is straightforward enough, and firmly in the tradition of male artists like Tom Friedman, who use supposedly feminine aesthetics–fine motor control, an interest in handicrafts and domestic objects–to make their careers as art-star studs. But if you know much about comics, you know that superhero stories often play with gender expectations already. Certainly some are about manly men doing manly things with rippling muscles, high-tech weaponry, and preposterously proportioned females. But the genre has been around for 70 years now, and it has produced lots of other kinds of stories as well. Many of the classic DC superhero tales from the 50s, 60s, and 70s are fantasies of disempowerment and imperfect physiques. A well-known issue of The Flash features our speedster, the victim of a sinister ray, rapidly putting on pounds until he’s too fat to run. One of the greatest Mike Sekowsky Justice League covers shows Green Arrow turned into a hideous dwarf and Green Lantern stretched out like Gumby. Better known than these, perhaps, are Marvel’s early Spider-Man stories. Borrowing from his experience in romance titles, Stan Lee made Peter Parker an icon of hopeless yearning–frustrated in love, despised at school, misunderstood, alienated, and miserable in both his identities. Steve Ditko’s art was moody, his figures hunched and skinny. Spider-Man was about as emblematic of virile masculinity as Jimmy Corrigan.
Newport’s knitted superhero suits are much more successful than his covers. They’re almost detailed and accurate enough to be intended for real superheroes, and yet they’re cute enough to be purchased for real children. Many of them end in footies, and most are fastened with large, comfy-looking buttons. Batman’s mask is practically a winter hat with decorative fluffy ears; the Rawhide Kid’s gloves are attached to his sleeves with string, so he won’t lose them. Mr. Fantastic’s costume is ten feet tall, to accommodate his ability to stretch, but the arms are normal size and against the enormous torso they look like they belong on a toddler’s sweater. At least Newport has made some effort to accommodate Reed Richards’s abilities–Aquaman is not so lucky. His outfit is definitely not going to be of any use in the water. Iron Man’s woolen armor is even more impractical, though the control knobs on his chest are faithfully represented by two puffs of yarn.
