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.

Rembrandt

Massaccio

William Whitaker

Odd nerdrum

My painting "Iconoclast"

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William Orpen

William Orpen (1878-1931)

There is a foreboding beauty about William Orpen's paintings that rings true for me.  In his figures especially there is a haunting poetry.  They are full of the tensions and struggles of life that make it mysterious, frustrating, and ultimately worth living.  In his brand of naturalism is a mythicized reality that  makes the mundane feel epic.  Of course he did not invent this, but it is a temperament that runs through many of my favorite painters from Caravaggio to Carriere.

Quite an androgynous self-portrait.  I like it.

An obvious reference to Rembrandt's "Hendrijke Wading In a Stream", but a unique take on his motif.  There is a poetic futility in the cascade of sad black hair that throws the eye into complete shadow.

Rembrandt still rocks the mike.

Orpen's female nudes are lumpy. They're always homely, often oddly shaped sometimes even grotesque, but there is an almost aloof modesty in there attitude that give them a tragic saintliness.  Their melancholic sensuality is ultimately endearing and forcefully defies what academics had rigidly defined as beauty.   

He was obviously obsessed with Rembrandt.  This one brings to mind a baker's dozen of Rembrandt's Susannas and Bathshebas.

There is no beauty to me like the human figure disheveled in a state of some kind of hopeless toil.  In art misery can bring comfort and suffering can bring consolation.

I'm speechless here.  It doesn't get more touching than this.

I'm a sucker for wife portraits and things that blow in the wind.

Mighty strange.