Another exhibition celebrating male artistic genius through depictions of elite women may sound moderately dull, but Tate Britain's recent exhibition on John Singer Sargent offers a refreshing take a look at this master's skill at painting fashion.
As a fashion historian, at any time when I visit an art exhibition, I'm more prone to leave with a camera stuffed with photos of the topics' clothing than their faces. I’m often impressed by how masterfully the wealthy tones of flowing silk and the sparkling light of jeweled details will be captured.
Fashion in portraiture is usually met with biased ridicule by art critics. Sargent and Fashion have already been described as “Canvases… stuffed with old clothes” and a “Abundance of sweetness“. Unfortunately, there continues to be a misguided and outdated idea amongst art critics that clothing is frivolous and unimportant.
But this exhibition, co-curated by the Tate and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, seeks to alter this antiquated and narrow-minded attitude. Sargent wouldn't be Sargent if he didn't approach fashion the way in which he did. This exhibition urges the visitor to contemplate that using a brush also requires using fabrics, needles and pins.
The importance of fashion was clearly evident within the Victorian fashionistas Sargent painted. They recognized the strong image impact of their selection of clothing.
Margaret Oliphant In 1878 he remarked: “Today there is a class that dresses according to pictures, and when they buy a dress they ask, 'Will it paint?'” Fashion and art were inherently closely linked and the modernity, dynamism and Cultural relevance of fashion is present in every brush stroke.
Sargent, the style stylist
Entering the primary room of the exhibition looks like being welcomed right into a salon by your hostess. A 1907 portrait of Aline de Rothschild, Lady Sassoon, greets visitors as they enter. The sitter's face is draped in a dramatic fantasy of crisp black taffeta, glowing from the swirling darkness of her opera cape. Even in my rigorously chosen fashion historian chic, I managed to feel remarkably underdressed.
Houghton Hall Private Collection
But perhaps it's because I would like Sargent's transformative skills as an art director to raise my look. This exhibition presents Sargent not only as a painter but additionally as a stylist.
He used not only brushes but additionally needles to control fabrics around his subjects and shape them into dizzying shapes. The curators compare Sargent to an art director on a fashion shoot. His images don’t meticulously reflect the style of the time, but are rigorously constructed visions of his own aesthetic agenda.
The cloak Rothschild wears in her portrait is on display nearby. The cloak dates from 1895 and is a decade older than the portrait. It serves as one other reminder that fashion on this context will not be about consistently evolving trends. Even a ten-year-old cloak could grow to be a living moment of modernity through Sargent's fixation and draping.
Over the course of the exhibition, the paintings are reinserted into the broader cultural landscape of the turn of the twentieth century. Satirical drawings that sharply denounce fashion, photographs of the topics at work and leisure, in addition to the clothes and niknaks depicted by Sargent will be present in the exhibition.
The women we don't see
While Sargent's work as an artist and stylist is in every single place, the makers of the style items themselves (often poorer women) remain relatively unknown.
Apart from one short panel Charles Frederick Worth, whose importance in nineteenth century fashion is usually overemphasized, there’s minimal recognition for the hands that cut, pinned and sewed the magnificent creations. The clothes and niknaks shown throughout the exhibition are sometimes marked “manufacturer unknown”.
Tate
An exception to that is the involvement of the curators Adele Meyer. Painted by Sargent in 1896, Meyer was each a trendy fashionista and a pioneer for textile employees' rights.
Meyer was an creator along with Clementina Black Manufacturers of Our Clothes: A Case for Trade Boardswhich was published in 1909. This volume was an investigation into working conditions within the tailoring trade.
The book is displayed next to the painting, but is greatly dwarfed by the glittering sheen of the painting. Overall, this exhibition serves as a reminder, not a resistance, to how the work of clothing makers is overshadowed by the great thing about fashion.
A gently feminist exhibition
The exhibition gently pushes back against power structures in other areas. Traditionally, these paintings are known in art historical circles by the married names of their subjects.
Birmingham Museum of Art
Mary Louisa Cushing is thought only as Mrs. Edward Darley Boit and Mathilde Seligman as Mrs. Leopold Hirsch. In keeping with Victorian etiquette and sensibilities, these women lost their very own names and were swallowed up by their husband's identity.
Radically (though it shouldn't be radical in any respect), the curators linked these official titles of the paintings to the sitters' own maiden names. This is a subtle change that may go unnoticed by trade show attendees unfamiliar with this convention. Still, it’s a very important normalization of those women as individuals and never as property of their husbands.
Ultimately, that is an exhibition that subtly goes in the suitable direction. The opportunity to see the infamous Madam Nevertheless, the exhibition doesn’t say much recent about fashion history. Instead, it's a delicate recognition that Sargent's skill with fashion was fundamental to his success as an artist.
image credit : theconversation.com