Whether analyzing dress in portraiture or understanding how artists’ personal styles can be extensions of creative vision, art and fashion are inextricably linked. Here are five key texts to unlock important sartorial and artistic bonds.
This article appears under the title “Syllabus: Art and Fashion” in the Winter 2023 issue, p. 34.
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Merchants of Style: Art and Fashion After Warhol
If you wonder how we got to the point of so many new artist-designer collaborations, Natasha Degen’s recent history is a great place to start. As the professor and chair of art market studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Degen examines fashion and art through a business lens, and suggests that Andy Warhol and the advent of Pop art are what led to contemporary art’s unabashed union with commerce. In the introduction, Merchants of Style traces the rise of couturiers whose genius was likened to that of artists, as well as those in Surrealist circles who collaborated across disciplines. It moves from there to a post-Warhol age in which elite consumption forever changed, and luxury conglomerates are inclined to open their own art museums and foundations.
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Legendary Artists and the Clothes They Wore
Artists’ own garments and the ways they can be tools for artistic expression come into focus in this 2019 book by fashion journalist Terry Newman. In addition to breaking down the signature looks of more than 40 artists, Newman explores alternative angles including sartorial choices in self-portraiture and the influence of artists on fashion itself. The book covers art fashion icons such as Salvador Dalí and Yayoi Kusama, and offers profiles of unexpected figures including Elizabeth Peyton, William Merritt Chase, and Tamara de Lempicka.
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Reading Fashion in Art
In this essential primer for understanding how knowledge of dress can aid critical analysis of art, Ingrid E. Mida encourages a slow approach to viewing art and offers a checklist-based methodology for observation, reflection, and interpretation of fashion in paintings, drawings, photographs, and more. Every stylistic choice in an artwork—posture, hairstyle, variety of textile, and so on—can be a clue to better understand and appreciate matters such as beauty norms of certain periods, the impact of globalization, or the politics of representation. Mida provides case studies and revelatory examples of such analysis, ranging from Vigée Le Brun’s portrait of Marie Antoinette to a photograph of Marcel Duchamp dressed as his female alter ego to Mickalene Thomas’s contemporary take on Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass.
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Exhibiting Fashion: Before and After 1971
We’ve all heard about milestones like the Met’s renowned Alexander McQueen retrospective, but what are the precursors to today’s blockbuster fashion exhibitions? In 2014 two British scholar-curators, Judith Clark and Amy de la Haye, chronicled seminal shows in one of the most comprehensive and important tomes on the subject. The authors regard the Victoria and Albert Museum’s 1971 “Fashion: An Anthology by Cecil Beaton” as a turning point, owing to elaborate scenography that established the spectacle-like potential of displaying fashion. They also provide an inventory of international fashion exhibitions since 1971 that shows the emergence of regional themes as well as monographic shows and technology-driven installations.
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Garmenting: Costume as Contemporary Art
Image Credit: W.Lee One of the most revelatory fashion exhibitions in recent years was “Garmenting: Costume as Contemporary Art,” an exploration of clothing as an artistic medium at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design. After an introduction looking at examples of garmenting back to the 17th century, the 2022 show’s catalogue focuses on 35 international artists who have used clothing in sculpture, installations, and videos to examine issues of functionality, gender, performance, activism, and cultural difference. Garmenting as an art phenomenon arose in the 1960s, around pioneering figures such as Louise Bourgeois, and grew to prominence in the ’90s thanks to the likes of Nick Cave and Yinka Shonibare. Today, artists including Zoë Buckman, Raúl de Nieves, and Saya Woolfalk are among the makers expanding the possibilities of material-based art.