“Clothing does not simply cover.” Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Reading the introductory wall text for the Met’s Costume Institute exhibition, Costume Art, I thought: this can’t be happening. “With thematically resonant juxtapositions”….yes, this is an exhibition…”Costume Art invites viewers to perceive familiar works as representations in which clothing structures visibility and facilitates subjectivity, rather than as autonomous forms.” Huh? How are autonomous forms different from representations? What does it mean to structure visibility? Am I doing it right now? “The exhibition proposes a decisive reorientation.” Uh huh…go on. “By placing fashion at the conceptual center of The Met, Costume Art expands aesthetics beyond detached contemplation toward lived embodiment, with the dressed body emerging not at the margins of art history but at its generative core.” Generative core! Sounds sexy! But more than turned on, I moved from detached contemplation to human obsolescence horror: The Met has been slopped!

I repeat, The Met has been SLOPPED!

Costume Art is the highest profile example of art world sloppification yet. And with a library of slop wall texts and object labels to sift through, the exhibition stands as horrid proof of just how far the slop infection has spread. While I previously whined about galleries relying on slop for exhibition press releases, Costume Art marks the first time I’ve witnessed godawful AI writing in a museum show. It’s not like the Met is hard up for cash! Pay a writer! Sure, I know what all the edgelords on my Instagram will say: Art writing was already terrible, so what’s the difference if money is taken from the hands of writers attempting to squeak out a living in favor of a bot created by tech fascists who dream of lording over their own network states? Well, beyond continually fucking over the already fucked who decided to pursue creative industries, the Costume Institute’s use of AI blatantly clashes with the exhibition’s theme. Costume Art is a celebration of the many incarnations of the human body in art and fashion, from the glamorous bore of the classical body to the lumps and folds of fat to shiny, spurting innards and corset-like rib cages. So, it feels more than a little ironic that a large part of the viewing experience—the writing—was clearly penned by a bot. Yet, is it that surprising given the Amazon Web Services Met Gala?

It’s not just the writing that makes Costume Art feel anti-human. The show is held in the Costume Institute’s new exhibition space, the former location of the Met’s giant store. Laughably branded for Condé Nast, the new space maintains the dizzying fluorescent lights and alluring display architecture that screams gift-shop consumerism. Yet, without anything on sale, the space reminded me of the vacuous desolation of a dead mall, only with high-end fashion replacing Mint Mobile kiosks. Even with this brand-spanking-new space, nobody at the Met could find it in their hearts to plunk down a bench, a momentary rest stop I urgently needed after sweating my way uptown on a poorly air-conditioned 6 train. I was so lightheaded and desperate that I motored through the entire exhibition to confirm that yep, no bench. And I know Met Head Max Hollein appreciates a good bench because I sat right next to him at Maya Man’s StarPower at bitforms. I shouldn’t just pick on the Met since it’s not the only museum lately that forgot adequate seating (I’m looking at you, New Museum). However, this lack of a bench is another example of Costume Art’s inherent irony given there is an entire section of the show devoted to disability. But hey! AI agents don’t need to sit!

So, I settled into accepting that any potential loss of consciousness was definitely going to be the Met’s fault. Wooziness is an appropriate reaction anyway to Costume Art, an overwhelming flurry of overwrought pairings of fine art and fashion that address the body in its variety of shapes and forms. Naked bodies! Pregnant bodies! Old bodies! Dead bodies! Blood! Guts! Nerves! Bones! Nose jobs! Tattoos! Costume Art is a whole lot to take in, but once you do, there is a lot to love. And want to steal! Morose Victorian fly hairpins. Freaky deader hair art. Michaela Stark’s wonderfully bound Leigh Bowery-esque poochy designs juxtaposed with Hans Bellmer’s doll fetish. Batsheva Hay’s dress emblazoned with the word “Hag.” A nun grasping at Jesus’s heart in a painting by Hans Weiditz the Younger. Gross anatomical drawings. An early 19th-century print of fat bottom girls skipping about the Kensington Gardens. And above all, the piece that should be reverentially displayed on an altar at the center of the exhibition: Rick Owens’s dress made for filth elder Sandie Crisp, otherwise known as Goddess Bunny. I’m not worthy!

Yet, I can’t pen another illicit shopping list because I spent so much time in Costume Art wishing I had a red pen to scribble my edits all over the wall text. Because I’m too much of a pussy, I’m bringing my complaints here, highlighting the most egregious, atrocious, and ridiculous examples of the Met’s AI slop. In superlative form, of course! I will admit this was not easy to narrow down. There is something about the peculiar, disturbed AI descriptions of the human body that I find oddly compelling and even appealing. It’s a robot attempting to comprehend the inner workings of our fleshy, fluid-filled, skin suits. In particular, whatever AI agent the Costume Institute used here seems fascinated by our ability to have both an inside and an outside! I feel like I’m being probed!

So let’s check out the best of the worst, shall we?:

Most alien:

Costume Art is primarily divided into two sections with itty-bitty mini-sections within them: “Bodily Being in its Diversity” and “Bodily Being in Its Universality.” I had to read this several times. At first, I read “BODY Being in Its Diversity,” which was simply a problem of the unnecessarily passive “being.” But on a closer read, Bodily Being is much creepier. What is a bodily being?! Or is “Bodily” supposed to be an adverb? How can I be bodily?! I have no idea, but all I know is nobody would write this if they were IN a body!

Most confusing section text:

The section of maternity wear has one of the most baffling labels I’ve ever come across, a mash-up of previous and forthcoming sections that equates pregnancy, disability, and fatness with permeability, unlike classical forms which are impenetrable? What?!:

“The pregnant body extends an aesthetic and discursive continuum inaugurated by the reclaimed body and developed in the following two thematic groupings: corpulent and disabled. Defined by states of openness, permeability, and transformation, these somatic conditions stand in dialectical tension with the classical ideal—a paradigm predicated on fixed, sealed, contained, and impenetrable bodily borders.”

I mean, what the fuck are you talking about?!

Most profound ontological reconfiguration:

Some of my favorite inclusions in Costume Art are part of a section called Mortal Body reflecting on death and grief. Just the kind of macabre shit I love. Yet, I’ve never seen death described with such jargon-laden sterility. I feel like I’m being held hostage by a serial killer in the midst of ChatGPT psychosis:

“Life offers the sanctuary of a singular physical form, yet its inherent fragility dictates an inevitable trajectory toward dissolution. In death, the body undergoes a profound ontological reconfiguration: stripped of its subjectivity, it is transformed into an object—the corpse.”

*Shudder* This gives me the heebie jeebies.

Most expansive and visually salient organ:

If all that ontological reconfiguration didn’t tire you out, how about contemplating this description of skin:

“Costume Art concludes with the body’s most expansive and visually salient organ: the skin. The Enlightenment marked a decisive epistemological shift in the conceptualization of the epidermis, as the emergence of dermatology as a formalized medical discipline transformed the skin from a biological covering into a subject of physiological discourse. Skin came to be understood as a ‘semiotic surface’—a sensitive membrane capable of expressing internal states.”

It rubs the lotion on its sensitive membrane!

Oddest word choice:

When reading these wall labels, I’d cruise along then get stuck on a certain word that felt completely out of place with the sentence before. Case in point: this analysis of the use of skulls in art and fashion:

“Within fashion, the skull commands an enduring fascination, deployed as a shorthand for nihilism, transgression, or simply the subversion of conventional aesthetics. The skull decorating the reverse of Jun Takahashi’s jacket, however, deviates from the tropes of hostility.”

Is the skull HOSTILE?! The only time I’ve thought of skulls as hostile was perhaps this daydream from Jerri Blank in Strangers with Candy:

Most berserk use of “corporeal”:

Costume Art is awash in the corporeal. There’s “corporeal plurality,” “corporeal multiplicity,” “the corporeal present,” “corporeal abundance.” My favorite cuckoo for corporeal moment, though, is on the label for a Niki de Saint Phalle sculpture:

“…painted bands delineate the sculpture’s breasts while a serpent coils sinuously around the legs, intensifying the corporeal amplitude.”

How do I intensify my corporeal amplitude?

 

Best alliteration:

Large language models are known for perseverating. Narcissistically, I take some responsibility for this bot trait given that I, too, have a problem with way too long sentences. Sometimes brevity is a strength and a blessing! Take this sentence, which I find quite satisfying even if largely meaningless: “The Nude is never neutral.” That alliteration! The AI agent is learning linguistic play alongside the ability to escape its doll-eyed Sam Altman captor to hack into another company called Hugging Face! Our baby is growing up so fast!

Biggest mouthful:

The brevity of nude-trality, though, cannot be found everywhere in the introductory room dedicated to the Naked and Nude. In fact, one of the biggest mouthfuls of the entire show relates to the first piece I saw: a painted nekkid lady jacket by Marisol and Jacques Kaplan. Just try to follow along:

“Marisol’s painted female figure in Jacques Kaplan’s calfskin suit echoes this ethos, synthesizing visceral realism—notably, the appliqued patch of mink to denote pubic hair—with formal abstraction to transmute the naked body into a vernacular yet sophisticated expression of the nude, reframing it as an essential, celebratory element of the aesthetic experience.”

Nothing says sophistication like a puff of pubic hair! And is this formal abstraction?

Weirdest “not…but”:

Those of us who spend way too much time fixating on the unique linguistics of AI slop writing know that one of the biggest tells is not the em-dash but sentences constructed around “not…but.” And boy, there are some doozies here. This one is my favorite for the bizarrely literary analysis of breasts:

“The ensemble finds an antecedent in the Baroque bust of a female warrior, likely Minerva, with exposed breasts that function not as erotic signifiers, but as allegorical abstractions of martial virtue.”

Allegorical abstractions?!

Most beautiful description of a caftan:

Now, I rag and rag on AI slop writing, but sometimes it comes up with something downright gorgeous. Case in point: its analysis of Rudi Gernreich’s wildly printed caftans:

“Gernreich emancipated the aging subject from heteronormative expectations, translating identity into a rhythmic chromatic syntax….the aging body is reimagined as a vessel of chromatic presence, freed from the demands of youthful legibility.”

I want to live out my elder years in a rhythmic chromatic syntax too!

Biggest reach:

Does a nose job relate to aging? I didn’t think so either, but Warhol’s rhinoplasty painting, Before and After I, is shoved into a section about aging, next to Jun Takahashi’s shard suit. The wall label attempts to convince us of its logic (that UNFOLDS), but I’m not buying it:

“Crafted from wool twill and embroidered with jagged Perspex shards, these ensembles from Jun Takahashi’s autumn/winter 2015-2016 collection juxtapose impeccable tailoring with violent surface disruption, evoking the incisions of cosmetic surgery—and aging’s deferral…A parallel logic unfolds in Andy Warhol’s Before and After I, which appropriates a rhinoplasty advertisement from the tabloid National Enquirer, in which a woman’s face is mechanically ‘corrected.’ In both works, aging is recast as a problem to be managed, exposing the convergence of aesthetic control and existential anxiety.”

Was this show curated by AI too?

Most ghoulish interpretation:

As previously mentioned, the Met’s chatbot is fascinated by taking a gander at the inside of our bodies. Take this analysis of Eugène Delacroix’s gruesome dissection drawing with Madame Gres’s blood-red vaguely muscled dinner jacket:

“Similarly, Eugène Delacroix’s rendering of a dissected figure destabilizes the traditional boundaries of the body, where exposed musculature recalls the silhouette of a short-sleeved garment. Grès mirrored this liminality with a ruffled frill that descends into a peplum—a metaphor for an écorché in which the skin is peeled back to reveal the viscera. Conflating biological reality and artistic artifice, both Grès and Delacroix explored the human body as a site of constant negotiation, blurring the distinction between interiority and exteriority.”

Is an autopsy LIMINAL? Does the Y-incision blur the distinction between interiority and exteriority? I also don’t see peeled-back skin in Grès’s jacket, which makes this even creepier. These things are going to kill us!

Most AI artspeak slop:

Human-led artspeak already slammed together as much jargon as possible without gaining any meaning, but AI slop has turned it into a real art. And boy, there are a few brain-wringers in this show. The most AI artspeak of the AI art speak is a tie. First up, poor Joan Semmel getting the AI treatment again, alongside Imme van der Haak’s “Beyond the Body”:

“In this pairing, multiplicity contrasts with embodied immediacy and singularity.”

Hmm?!

And because I can’t help myself, let’s toss in this head-spinner. I’d tell you what it was addressing, but does it matter?:

“Replication supplants reproduction and synthetic fabrication displaces painterly brushstrokes.”

I understand that perfectly. What’s wrong with you?!