Brush Fires: March 2012

Thursday, March 8, 2012

T-Shirts, Togas, or Au Naturel? : The Problem With Clothing In Art

It has been said that the foot is nobler than the shoe, but is the sandle nobler than the flipflop? In renaissance Italy before planes, trains, and automobiles biblical characters were represented wearing fashions from their current time. This is presumably because it never occurred to them that people would have ever dressed any differently. In Rembrandt's dark, jewel-studded biblical narratives he seems to have invented his own fanciful interpretation of Jewish clothing. But why don't these inaccuracies look naive or silly to us?

An interpretation of Bouguereau for a photoshop contest on worth1000.com

One of the snags of our over-scienced post-industrial age is that we now know everything, so we no longer need our imaginations. Another is that we don't make anything ourselves. Our day-glow hats and fanny packs are one size fits all, and will be out of vogue next year. Clothing is designed for the convenience of the manufacturer in worldwide uniformity. Shirts and jackets are emblazoned with company logos and pants are made extra baggy to fit our masses.

"Foreclosure" by Max Ginsburg

I don't mourn modern inventions, because they have afforded me more time and freedom to create. The problem for a visual artist though is that it is difficult to make poetry out of the throw-away objects of mass-production. The options before us are kind of like this:

1. Embrace modern fashion with tongue-in-cheek humor
2. Select less offensive or conspicuous contemporary fashions, or simplify by playing down the uglier aspects of them.
3. Invent your own clothing styles
4. Dress your models in period costumes, most likely mismatching different past eras.
5. No clothes at all. (Easiest, but sometimes yields awkward results.)
6. Sheet.

Best of luck friends.