Fashion in European Art: Dress and Identity, Politics and the Body, 1775-1925

Description

Fashion reveals not only who we are, but whom we aspire to be. From 1775 to 1925, artists in Europe were especially attuned to the gaps between appearance and reality, participating in and often critiquing the making of the self and the image. Reading their portrayals of modern life with an eye to fashion and dress reveals a world of complex calculations and subtle signals. Fashion in European Art explores the significance of historical dress over this period of upheaval, as well as the lived experience of dress and its representation. Drawing on visual sources that extend from paintings and photographs to fashion plates, caricatures and advertisements, the expert contributors consider how artists and their sitters engaged with the fashion and culture of their times. They explore the politics of dress, its inspirations and the reactions it provoked, as well as the many meanings of fashion in European art, revealing its importance in understanding modernity itself.

Justine De Young is Assistant Professor of the History of Art at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York. Her research focuses on nineteenth and twentieth-century art and literature, visual and material culture, modernism and fashion. She has written widely on art and fashion, notably for the 2012-3 exhibition, 'Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity'.

This is an exciting book, excellent in its scope and rigour, immaculately edited and richly imaginative. It proposes a new approach to fashion research concerning dress, art and the body. * Peter McNeil, University of Technology Sydney, Australia * Accessible and intelligent, these lively essays take us from snapshots to a much larger and complicated picture of fashion's enduring and multitudinal impact on material and visual culture. * Gloria Groom, The Art Institute of Chicago, USA *