Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity
Thu. 06/30 - Sun. 09/22 @ The Art Institute of Chicago (map)
- Event Details
- June 30–September 22, 2013 Regenstein Hall Overview: Were the Impressionists fashionistas? At a time in France when designers like Charles Frederick Worth changed how clothing was made and marketed into the first manifestations of the modern fashion industry, artists were using fashion to communicate modernity as an idea. Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity covers this period between the 1860s and 1880s that saw not only the rise of the department store and the proliferation of fashion magazines but also serious interests among an artistic and literary elite in the ephemeral and constantly innovative qualities of fashion as a means of discovering new visual and verbal expressions. Édouard Manet. Woman Reading , 1879/80. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection. Despite the many exhibitions and studies on the Impressionists, their achievement has never been examined in view of the physical reality of the fashions that they exploited for their own artistic aims. Indeed, one could argue that these artists, along with less experimental painters of modern life, such as Alfred Stevens or James Tissot, responded to the vibrant consumer culture and need to be à la mode. The exhibition includes about 90 major figure paintings by Gustave Caillebotte, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Georges Seurat in addition to fashion portraitists such as Carolus-Duran, Stevens, and Tissot, among others. A judicious selection of contemporary costumes will provide the physical reality for the sartorial nuances of dress and accessories that artists used to convey their modernity as well as that of their subjects. The exhibition also includes photographs, fashion plates, advertisements, and other printed materials from the period that bring to life the period in which Monet and his colleagues created some of their most innovative compositions.
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