Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Gag me with a Pre-Raphaelite Spoon

Readers, I’ve sold out. I used to have a big snobby bias against Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and I’ve just submitted an exhibit proposal that includes one. Here is how it went down:

[FYI, I am going to attempt hyperlinks in this post. It might end in disaster]


My dislike of the Pre-Raphaelite movement stems from the fact that I associate it with cheesy dorm room posters. You know, this stuff. As a stuck-up art history student, I felt like this was art for people who wanted to seem artsy, but didn’t actually have any taste. Sort of like how most people buy Salvador Dali posters because they think it makes them look deep and subversive in some way. Look, Dali is great, but the melting clocks were painted in 1931. If you love Dali, fine. But don’t buy the poster to prove you have unusual, quirky taste. Unless your college roommate is actually Queen Victoria, no one is going to be impressed by your discovery of this little-known movement called “surrealism.” Today we literally have sharks rotting in tanks of formaldehyde that are considered passé. At least Dali was an innovator in his day. But were the Pre-Raphaelites ever actually a thing? Weren’t they kind of the 19th century equivalents of Thomas Kinkade?


Well last semester I gained some respect. It turns out the Pre-Raphaelites were closely associated with the Arts & Crafts and Aesthetic movements. All of them disliked the Victorian ideal of beauty that prized delicate features and a body distorted by stiff corsets and giant skirts. They all dreamed of returning to a pre-industrial past and a more “natural” standard of beauty. You know that one lady who shows up in all their paintings?



Her name is Jane Morris, and by mainstream beauty ideals she was sort of weird looking. But the Pre-Raphaelites loved her bold features, thick wavy hair, and relaxed, un-corseted body. Jane, and other women associated with the movement, wore flowy, comfortable dresses that respected the natural form of the body (not just in paintings, but in every day life too). At the time they were regarded as bohemian weirdos, but in retrospect they were actually laying the foundation for the fashion revolution that would occur in the early 20th century.


So hats off to you, Pre-Raphaelites. I still think your art is sort of cheesy, but I also appreciate not strapping myself into a girdle every morning. Well done.


Oh, and about my museum assignment. In my museum theory course we are creating a theoretical exhibit. I am doing an exhibit of famous works of art in which clothing is key to the meaning or story of the painting. With each work I will also show one historical artifact that adds context. So I chose this Rossetti painting, and will basically tell the story I just told you. So here is your ultra-exclusive preview of an exhibit that will never exist!


Dante Rossetti

La Pia de 'Tolomei

1868-80

Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas


Crotty & Richards (American Manufacturer)

Corset

c. 1872

Cotton, Metal, Bone

The Metropolitan Museum of Art



Wednesday, March 17, 2010

A Moral Message From Vogue

This is an illustration from a story in a 1920 copy of Vogue:

Caption reads: "Not nearly so alive as now" whispered Lila, the shameless.


I think that casually adding a comma and then "the shameless" to general comments about people is going to be my new thing.


"I should probably finish my presentation about Africa instead of blogging," said Clara, the shameless.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Stick a pH strip in it honey, it's done

Wet Cleaning: A Photo Essay

Artifact before. Note: wet cleaning will not change the fact that artifact is cheap and ugly

Step 1: Pour the wrong thing into the bath.

OMG it is getting wet! Unroll it slowly so as not to shock the fibers!!!!


Must…not…think about food…dinner waiting for me in locker…so…exhausted


Why didn’t I get to wash Bambi?


Waiting for the non-soap surfactant to do its thing

Filthy water

Ha ha! We really aren't getting a dinner break, are we?

Dramatic Final Result! Amazing! Breath Ta...ah screw it. I need a beer.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Required Reading

This week, as I was delicately vacuuming a textile one inch at a time, I tried to think of a way to work textile vacuuming into a blog post. I thought about it for a long time (I was vacuuming for about an hour) but didn’t come up with anything. Later, when I was stitching support gauze to a rip in said textile, it occurred to me that my reading list for the semester might be a better topic. So now I’m using vacuuming as a segue into that! Boom!


[were you aware that segue was spelled like that? I certainly wasn’t]


On the first day of 20th Century Fashion our professor handed out three long lists of recommended and required reading. These aren’t books that we have to buy or things we’ll be directly tested on, but she considers them crucial to building a foundation of knowledge. Most of the books are primary sources, so we are hearing the story directly from the people who lived it. The number on the required list works out to about one book per week. That sounded intimidating a first, but I’ve been reading on the train and so am right on track (see what I did there? train? track? eh? eh?). Here is what I’ve learned so far:



Book #1: Cecil Beaton The Glass of Fashion


This is a weird, elegantly written book. Beaton describes fashion as “the whole art of living,” and so writes about people who live fashionably through clothing, deportment, home décor, or just existing. His depictions cover several decades and really give you a feeling of each era. This quote sums up his whole message:


"No one is exempt from the fashionable expression of his age. No one, indeed, but a fool could fail to be aware, for better of worse, of the picture of life offered through the various popular media. Oddly, the works of popular culture are often even more moving than those serious artistic efforts which will outlast them. That which is eternal, a Michelangelo statue or a Mozart opera, goes far beyond the nostalgia of the moment. Only in shoes or feathers or films, do we find the whole expression of a movement in time that was a particular moment of our lives and is now gone forever."


Book #2: Paul Poiret King of Fashion: The Autobiography of Paul Poiret


Paul Poiret is one of those names that meant nothing to me six months ago, but whom I have since learned is kind of a big deal. He was one of the designers who invented modern fashion for women (he helped us get rid of the corset, ladies!) and was hugely influential in 1910s. And boy, does he know it. Sure, there is a narrative to the autobiography (his early years as an apprentice to an umbrella maker! affairs with married patrons! throwing exotic “Arabian” themed parties!) but the real story here is Paul Poiret’s gigantic ego. He name-drops famous people who apparently wouldn’t have existed without his nurturing influence. He lists all of the things he did that caused sensations and/or changed the world forever. He even has a long section in which he visit America and tries to impart a few grains of knowledge to that sad country. Here is just a taste:


“I have been the hearth of many things, or rather, I should say, the fire that has lit up many hearths.”


Unfortunately for him [spoiler alert!] he wrote the book after some terrible business decisions led to his complete ruin. His last years were spent in poverty.


Book #3: Elizabeth Hawes Fashion is Spinach


Elizabeth Hawes is the only writer, so far, that I would enjoy having lunch with. Hawes was a New York designer who started her career in Paris. She was writing during the 1930s and was terribly frustrated by the fashion system of her time. Everyone was obsessed with Paris couture, and all the ready-to-wear companies only seemed interested in making Paris copies. Hawes envisioned a world in which women would have access to good quality clothes at various price points, and that they could create personal style that was appropriate for their own lives. Her critiques of the industry are perceptive and witty. She is passionate about clothing and good design, but she has a refreshing sense of humor about the whole thing.


“Fashion is that horrid little man with an evil eye who tells you that your last winter’s coat may be in perfect physical condition, but you can’t wear it. You can’t wear it because it has a belt and this year ‘we are not showing belts’…Fashion is apt to insist one year that you are nobody if you wear flat heels, and then turn right around and throw thousands of them in your face. Fashion persuades millions of women that comfort and good line are not all they should ask in clothes.”


Book #4: Bettina Ballard In My Fashion


I figured out near the end of the book that Bettina Ballard was eventually a fashion editor for Vogue, but until then I enjoyed the story of her journey up the ladder. However, as the book went on she became less and less relatable. I think it started when she employed a lady’s maid, and really got bad during her description of WWII. Almost on accident she left France before the occupation began (she laments not knowing what that was like) and then takes up a job with the Red Cross during the war. I wasn’t clear what kind of job she actually had, but it somehow gave her a pretty insulated war experience. When she returns to Paris in 1945 she seems surprised to discover that people had had a rough time of it. She meets with an old friend whose husband is thought to still be in a concentration camp, whose son was marched somewhere and shot, and who herself spent time in prison. Ballard feels bad for not suffering during the war and so walks the five miles home in her high heels. Wow Bettina. Way to even the score.


Book #5: Elsa Schiaparelli Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli


Like Paul Poiret, Schiaparelli is a terribly important designer that I had previously never heard of. She is actually self-deprecating and humble at times, but that is sort of negated by the fact that she writes about herself in the third person. You get a pretty good idea of the tone from page 1:


“I merely know Schiap by hearsay. I have only seen her in a mirror…Intensely human, she both despises and loves human beings: those whom she dislikes find themselves looked right through as if they were transparent.”


Also, she named her daughter Gogo. Can you do that to someone?


So if you are interested in becoming a fashion expert like Clara, here are copies of the reading lists (with some scrawled notes). Clara thinks that you can click on the pictures to see enlarged versions.



(Update: mystery of underlining in previous post remains unsolved. Have long ago abandoned hope of figuring out how to create/undo paragraph indenting.)