Exhibition | Jean Jacques Lequeu (1757–1826)
Opening this December at the Petit Palais:
Jean Jacques Lequeu (1757–1826): Builder of Fantasy / Bâtisseur de fantasmes
Petit Palais, Paris, 11 December 2018 — 31 March 2019
Menil Drawing Institute, Houston, 4 October 2019 — 5 January 2020
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 2020
Curated by Laurent Baridon, Jean-Philippe Garric, Martial Guédron, Corinne Le Bitouzé, and Christophe Leribault
Six months before he died impoverished and forgotten, Jean-Jacques Lequeu donated one of the most singular and fascinating graphic oeuvres of his time to the French National Library. The set of several hundred drawings, presented here in its entirety for the first time, is a testimonial to the solitary and obsessive downward spiral of an exceptional artist that goes well beyond the first steps of an architectural career. Using the precise technical tool represented by the geometric working drawing made in wash, which he filled with handwritten notes, Lequeu scrupulously described the monuments and imaginary factories that filled his imaginary landscapes, rather than carrying out projects. But this initiatory journey, which he made without leaving his studio and enriched with figures and narratives from his library, this pathway that led him from temple to bush, from artificial grotto to palace, from kiosk to subterranean labyrinth, resolved itself as a quest to find himself. To see everything and describe it all—systematically, from the animal to the organic, from fantasy and raw sex to the self portrait—became the mission he assigned to himself.
As a typical representative of the artisanal class, who tried, with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, to rise socially and break free of the world of trades, Lequeu quickly became disenchanted with the new order and the new hierarchies. Lequeu—the child of his century, the century of licentiousness and Anglo-Chinese gardens—nevertheless pursued an entirely free and singular path. Reduced to employment in a subordinate office, ignored by those in place, now far from his roots, but freed of social or academic pressure, he stalked his dreams with the obstinacy of a builder and without compromise.
Curators
Laurent Baridon, Professor at University of Lyon II; Jean-Philippe Garric, Professor at University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne; Martial Guédron, Professor at the University of Strasbourg; Corinne Le Bitouzé, General Curator, Deputy Director of the Department of Prints and Photography at the French National Library; Christophe Leribault, Director of the Petit Palais
Laurent Baridon, et al., Jean-Jacques Lequeu: Batisseur de fantasmes (Paris: Norma, 2018), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-2376660217, $65.
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Note (added 2 January 2018) — The original posting did not include details for the catalogue.
Note (added 23 September 2019) — The posting was updated to include information on the two U.S. venues: the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston and The Morgan Library & Museum in New York.
Rediscovered: Portrait of Saint-Simon-Montbléru
Press release from Art Daily (16 February 2018). . .
Vicente Lopez, Claude-Anne de Rouvroy, Marquis de Saint-Simon-Montbléru, 1815–19 (Washington DC: American Revolution Institute).
The American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati in Washington, D.C., is pleased to announce the discovery of a unique portrait of a French general: Claude-Anne de Rouvroy, Marquis de Saint-Simon-Montbléru (1743–1819), who was instrumental in winning the final great battle of the Revolutionary War. The Institute just acquired the painting from a family in Spain. It is now on display at the headquarters of the American Revolution Institute—the first time the painting has been on view in the United States in its two-hundred-year history.
In the fall of 1781, Saint-Simon commanded some 3500 French soldiers. Arriving from the West Indies, they landed at Jamestown, Virginia and joined the much smaller American army under Lafayette near Williamsburg. Together they kept Cornwallis pinned at Yorktown. Washington and Rochambeau arrived with the main French-American army from the north a few weeks later. Saint-Simon commanded the left wing of the allied army at the Siege of Yorktown, barring the roads toward Williamsburg and preventing the British army under Lord Cornwallis from escaping by land. Saint-Simon was wounded but refused to leave the lines until the British army surrendered. Though shot in the leg, he mounted his horse to take part in the surrender ceremonies. Shortly thereafter, he sailed back to the West Indies with the French navy and never returned to the United States.
Americans quickly forgot about him. Other French leaders—Lafayette and Rochambeau, mainly—are remembered today. Mention Saint-Simon and even people who know a good deal about the American Revolution are likely to ask ‘who’?
“One of the main reasons Americans forgot him is that we didn’t know what he looked like,” says Jack Warren, director of the American Revolution Institute. “There wasn’t a single portrait on public display in the United States—or in Europe either.”
That’s changed. The portrait now on display at the Institute was painted between 1815 and 1818 by Vicente Lopez, the greatest Spanish portrait painter of the early nineteenth century. The painting has been in private hands for two hundred years. It was briefly displayed at the Prado in 1902 but hasn’t been seen in public since. It has been the property of a Spanish family for several decades, but even they forgot who the sitter was. It took a good deal of research to confirm his identity.
An aristocrat, Saint-Simon escaped France during the French Revolution and led a small army loyal to the king in a war against the French revolutionary government in the Pyrenees. He was made a general of the Spanish army, and led Spanish troops against Napoleon. Captured by the French, he was sentenced to death for treason. Napoleon commuted his sentence to life imprisonment, from which he was released when Napoleon fell from power. He lived in Spain for the rest of his life.
The portrait tells his story. The old hero wears the elaborate uniform of a Spanish general, with the blue and white sash and star of the Order of Charles III, the highest Spanish military honor of the time. He also wears a gold and silver medal suspended from a yellow ribbon, presented by King Ferdinand VII to soldiers who suffered imprisonment at the hands of the French. And above them all is the eagle insignia of the Society of the Cincinnati, the private patriotic organization founded by George Washington and his officers to perpetuate the memory of the American Revolution. Saint-Simon was an original member. Some thirty-seven years after the Siege of Yorktown, he remembered it as one of the proudest moments of his life.
“We started searching for a portrait of Saint-Simon a decade ago,” Jack Warren says, “when we were planning an exhibition on the Siege of Yorktown. We couldn’t find one. An old and not very good engraving in a mid-nineteenth-century book suggested that there was a portrait, but it seemed to be irretrievably lost. So much art was destroyed, damaged or displaced in Spain during their civil war in the 1930s, that we concluded that it may have gone missing then. Its identity was lost, so that when the portrait finally surfaced last year it took some research to be certain Saint-Simon was the subject.”
“This is the perfect home for this portrait,” says Warren. “The purpose of the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati is to ensure that Americans understand and appreciate the achievements of the American Revolution—the event that gave us our independence, our republic, our national identity, and the ideals of liberty, equality, natural and civil rights and civic participation that shape our country and the world. The Revolution was the great transforming event of modern history. Men like Saint-Simon who participated in it knew that they had been a part of something extraordinary. It’s our job to share their stories.”
New Book | The Beauty of Time
From Rizzoli:
François Chaille and Dominique Fléchon, The Beauty of Time (Paris: Flammarion, 2018), 280 pages, ISBN: 978-2080203410, $85.
Published in partnership with the prestigious Fondation Internationale de la Haute Horlogerie, this book presents the most beautiful timepieces from the Middle Ages to the present. Lavishly illustrated, The Beauty of Time contains a selection of nearly two hundred wonders—from mechanical and pendulum clocks to pocket and wristwatches. The timepieces are annotated by an expert horology historian and accompanied by a text that elucidates the cultural and artistic contexts in which they were created. As a counterpoint to the timepieces, extensive reproductions of artistic masterpieces provide perspective regarding the technical advances of each period and demonstrate the evolution of aesthetic tastes over time.
François Chaille is passionate about art history, fashion, jewelry, and horology; he has published over a dozen works with Flammarion. A historian and expert on fine watchmaking, Dominique Fléchon is the author of many specialist works, including The Secrets of Vacheron Constantin and The Mastery of Time, both published by Flammarion. Franco Cologni is the author of numerous books, including The Cartier Tank Watch (Flammarion, 2017).
New Book | Imagining Qianlong
From Columbia University Press:
Florian Knothe, Pascal-François Bertrand, Kristel Smentek, and Nicholas Pearce, Imagining Qianlong: Louis XV’s Chinese Emperor Tapestries and Battle Scene Prints at the Imperial Court in Beijing (Hong Kong University Press, 2017), 84 pages, ISBN: 9789881902498, $25 / £20.
This publication accompanies an unprecedented exhibition (on view at Hong Kong University from 15 March until 28 May 2017) highlighting four of the magnificent chinoiserie tapestries of Chinese Emperor Qianlong, woven after designs by François Boucher at the famous Beauvais manufactory between 1758 and 1760. The large and well-preserved textiles form part of the royal French commission by King Louis XV, objects of which were presented to Qianlong in 1766.
These celebrated tapestries are joined by another historic set of culturally related depictions in print—The Battles of the Emperor of China. The engravings were ordered by Qianlong, drawn by Jesuit painters at the Imperial Court in Beijing and then printed in Paris 1769–74. The ‘culture’ of these prints follows King Louis XIV’s influential images of the Histoire du Roi and presents Qianlong as both a war hero and as the undisputed leader of China in the mid-eighteenth century. These depictions date to the exact same time period, one that coincides with the high demand for chinoiserie in France—culminating in the world-famous designs by Boucher—and the Imperial Court of China’s interest in French design and culture. Despite their world-renowned fame, these groups of images previously have not been shown together.
Imagining Qianlong presents one of the rare topics to celebrate the court cultures in both France and China, at a time when the empires idolized each other, and cultural influences and exchanges were highly significant and supported by well-established and prosperous monarchs during an increasingly enlightened eighteenth century.
New Book | The Art of the Peales
Distributed by Yale UP:
Carol Eaton Soltis, The Art of the Peales in the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Adaptations and Innovations (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2017), 344 pages, ISBN: 978 0300229 363, $65.
Active from the late 18th through the early 20th century, the Peale family was America’s first artistic dynasty. This overview of the art of the Peales documents and interprets more than 160 works in a variety of media from the renowned collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. With discussions of both internationally famous masterworks such as Charles Willson Peale’s Staircase Group and lesser-known but equally engaging pictures including Rubens Peale’s Magpie Eating Cake, Carol Eaton Soltis traces the family’s history and reveals how the Peales’ energy, innovation, and entrepreneurship paved the way for generations of American artists.
Rigorously researched and generously illustrated, The Art of the Peales is an essential and wide-ranging study that considers the family’s substantial output and contextualizes their historical legacy. Examining the different ways that the Peales instructed, influenced, supported, and competed with one another, this book is full of new revelations on this extraordinary family that remained a transformative force in America’s cultural life for more than a century.
Carol Eaton Soltis is project associate curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Symposium | Continuing Curiosity: The Art of the Peales
From the Philadelphia Museum of Art:
Continuing Curiosity: The Art of the Peales
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 17 February 2018
On Saturday, 17 February, five Peale scholars share their ongoing research in the context of the Museum’s new publication, The Art of the Peales in the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Adaptations and Innovations. Registration required, $20 (Philadelphia Museum of Art members free). Included in the fee is general museum admission for Friday evening’s ‘Gallery Conversation’ (starting at 5:45pm), which includes an installation discussion with scholars, along with musical programming.
Morning Session | 10:30–12:30
• Welcome and introduction, Carol Soltis (Project Associate Curator, Philadelphia Museum of Art)
• ‘Pealed all Around’: The Making of Curious Revolutionaries at the American Philosophical Society, Amy Noel Ellison (Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow, American Philosophical Society)
• Under My Skin: Raphaelle Peale’s Venus Rising from the Sea-A Deception and the Hidden Mechanisms of Disease, Lauren Lessing (Mirken Director of Academic and Public Programs, Colby College Museum of Art)
Afternoon Session | 1:30–4:30
• Looking ahead with Charles Peale Polk, Linda Simmons (Curator Emerita, The Corcoran Gallery
• Replicating Nature: The Peales and Their Still Lifes, Lance Humphries (Executive Director, Mount Vernon Place Conservancy)
• Hanging Shakespeare: Charles Willson Peale and Benjamin West at PAFA in 1807, Wendy Bellion (Professor, Sewell C. Biggs Chair in American Art History, University of Delaware)
Exhibition | Georges Michel: The Sublime Landscape
Now on view at the Fondation Custodia:
The Sublime Landscape: Georges Michel
Monastère Royal de Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse, 6 October 2017 — 7 January 2018
Fondation Custodia / Collection Frits Lugt, Paris, 27 January — 29 April 2018
Curated by Ger Luijten and Magali Briat-Philippe
Admired by Vincent van Gogh, Georges Michel (1763–1843) is held to be the precursor of plein air painting. He was influenced by the painters of the Dutch Golden Age, earning the nickname of ‘the Ruisdael of Montmartre’. Yet today he is not widely known. The Fondation Custodia, in collaboration with the Monastère royal de Brou, is proposing to unveil the artist whose merits were first remarked by the dealer Paul Durand-Rueil in the nineteenth century. The first one-man exhibition for fifty years of the work of Georges Michel will be held from 27 January to 29 April 2018 at 121 rue de Lille, Paris. About fifty paintings and forty drawings—on loan mainly from French private and public collections—will be on show, and the exhibition will include some recent acquisitions by the Fondation Custodia.
Georges Michel was born in Paris in 1763 and died there in 1843 after a remarkable career, whether in real terms or in a mythical post-mortem reconstruction of the life of this allegedly misunderstood artist. The main body of what we know about him comes from the biography written by Alfred Sensier in 1873, compiled from information recounted to him by the artist’s widow. Michel kept his distance from official art circles and only took part in the Salon between 1791—the date when the exhibition first opened its doors to artists who were not members of the former Académie royale—and 1814. His name was not mentioned thereafter until the sale of his work and the contents of his studio a year before his death.
The exhibition at the Fondation Custodia opens with youthful work by the artist, still betraying the influence of the eighteenth-century French landscape tradition as embodied in the art of Lazare Bruandet (1755-1804) or Jean-Louis Demaine (1752–1829), with whom Michel explored the Ile-de-France in search of subjects for sketching. He remained loyal to Paris and the surrounding countryside, claiming that ‘anyone unable to spend a lifetime painting within a range of four leagues is just a blundering fool searching for a mandrake—he will find only a void’. Saint-Denis, Montmartre or La Chapelle, the Buttes-Chaumont and the banks of the Seine, the countryside to the north of Paris offered a variety of hills and plains, dotted with quarries, mills and scattered dwellings.
Georges Michel’s style developed gradually away from the picturesque, anecdotic landscape that was in vogue between 1770 and 1830, achieving a notable originality. His paintings capture, with sincerity and a hint of the romanticism to come, the rural spots threatened with extinction as the villages around Paris began to be subsumed into the capital during the 1860s.
At a period when the painting of the Northern schools was enjoying a revival in France, Georges Michel, according to his widow, carried out some restoration work on Dutch paintings for the influential Paris dealer Jean-Baptiste Pierre Le Brun (1748–1813) and for the Muséum central des Arts (now the Musée du Louvre), at the behest of its director, Dominique Vivant Denon (1747–1825). Even though no trace of this activity can be found in the archives, Michel’s work is incontrovertibly influenced by the masters of the Dutch Golden Age. The exhibition at the Fondation Custodia—one of whose aims is to study the reception of Dutch art in France—takes this opportunity to compare Michel with the predecessors he so admired—and whose work he sometimes copied. From Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/1629–1682) he borrows compositions enlivened by vast, windswept skies, with sometimes a shaft of brilliant sunlight breaking through the clouds. The masterly chiaroscuro in his paintings, however, has its source in the work of Rembrandt (1606–1669). Philips Koninck (1619–1688), whose work in the eighteenth century was sometimes confused with that of Rembrandt, also evidently inspired Michel with his vast landscapes and limitless skies.
The Fondation Custodia, a home for art on paper in Paris, has recently acquired a large number of sheets by Georges Michel. The last section of the exhibition is devoted to these drawings. Michel’s prolific graphic work is characterised by its wide variety of techniques and subjects. The artist excelled in capturing vibrant views of Paris—in black chalk or, less frequently, pen and ink. The topographical nature of these drawings makes identification of the chosen locations simple: the Louvre, the Tuileries, the Jardin des Plantes, the Barrières de Ledoux.
Curators: Ger Luijten, director of the Fondation Custodia; and Magali Briat-Philippe, conservateur, responsable du service des patrimoines, Monastère royal de Brou.
More information, including a selection of images, is available here»
Magali Briat-Philippe and Ger Luijten, eds., Georges Michel: Le paysage sublime (Paris: Fondation Custodia, 2017), 208 pages, ISBN 978 9078655 268, 29€.
Exhibition | The Object of My Affection
Now on at the The Fitzwilliam:
The Object of My Affection: Stories of Love from the Fitzwilliam Collection
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 30 January — 28 May 2018
Love is very much in the air in this exhibition, which contains objects alive with the range of emotions that it commands: from admiration and affection, joy and passion, longing and despair, to insults, indifference, grief and remembrance. The exhibition showcases the Fitzwilliam Museum’s collection of valentines, which date from the 18th century to the 20th and include a wide variety of sentimental and decorative types as well as comic examples. Alongside the valentines will be an assortment of other objects relating to the theme of love, including posy rings, love tokens, and works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) and James Gillray (1756–1815).
Rebecca Virag, Valentines: Highlights from the Collection at The Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge: The Fitzwilliam, 2018), 120 pages, £10.
It is probably a little known fact that the Fitzwilliam Museum has a large collection of around 1,600 valentines, which range in date from the early eighteenth century to the 1920s. The vast majority were left to the Museum in 1928 by mathematician and Fellow of Trinity College, J.W.L. Glaisher. Two more Cambridge alumni, the Rev. Herbert Bull (Trinity) and Sir Stephen Gaselee (King’s) also gave their much smaller collections of valentines to the Museum in 1917 and 1942. The Bull valentines are particularly fascinating as they are rare survivals of mid-eighteenth century silhouette cut-paper work and are unlike anything collected by either Glaisher or Gaselee. The Glaisher collection alone is one of the largest amassed by a single collector currently in a UK public collection.
The Glaisher valentines have not been seen in public since 1995, some twenty-three years ago, and since then the entire valentine collection has been catalogued, researched, photographed, and re-housed. This selection of highlights has been published to coincide with a new display of some of these extraordinary objects as part of the exhibition The Object of my Affection: Stories of Love from the Fitzwilliam Collection.
The Huntington Acquires Major Collection of Valentines
Press release (12 February 2018) from The Huntington:
Fraktur labyrinth, Pennsylvania-German folk art, inscribed 1824; drawn and hand-colored on paper. 15½” x 15½” framed; designed as an endless knot with classic Pennsylvania-German motifs including hearts, tulips, and compass roses, and offered as a token of affection (The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens).
A spectacular trove of thousands of valentines and related material—some dating as far back as the late 17th century—has been given to The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, the institution announced today. Considered the best private collection of its kind in the world, the Nancy and Henry Rosin Collection of Valentine, Friendship, and Devotional Ephemera contains approximately 12,300 greeting cards, sentimental notes, folk art drawings, and other tokens of affection that trace the evolution of romantic and religious keepsakes made in Europe and North America from 1684 to 1970. The Rosins had given the collection to their son, Bob, who together with his wife, Belle, donated it to The Huntington for safekeeping. “This collection was carefully created by my parents,” he said. “I can’t think of a better place for it to be, given its historical and educational value.”
The Rosin Collection brims with well-preserved paper (and in some cases, vellum or mixed media) materials that range from lacy 18th-century devotional cards, hand-cut by French and German nuns, to elegant Biedermeier-era (1815–1848) greeting cards complete with hand-painted love scenes, gilded embossing, mother-of-pearl ornaments, and silk chiffon. The collection includes cameo-embossed lace paper valentines from England, elaborate three-dimensional and mechanical Victorian paper confections, as well as handmade works of American folk art demonstrating traditional paper-cut techniques (scherenschnitte) and colorful Germanic Fraktur illustrations. Some of the most historically significant items include heartrending Civil War soldiers’ valentines with personal notes detailing the hardship of war and longing for home. The Rosin Collection also contains bitingly satiric ‘vinegar’ valentines, dance cards, memory albums, and watch papers (sentimental notes inserted into pocket watches), among other items relating to the history of love and devotion.
“We are profoundly grateful to Bob and Belle Rosin for this invaluable, and truly beautiful collection that was so carefully developed,” said Sandra L. Brooke, Avery Director of the Library at The Huntington. “It will dramatically enhance our holdings in several areas to which we are committed—especially 19th-century social history and visual culture, and of course, our renowned U.S. Civil War material.”
Nancy Rosin is president of the National Valentine Collectors Association, president emerita of the Ephemera Society of America, and a member of the American Antiquarian Society and The Grolier Club. She says collecting valentines has been her “passionate obsession” for 40 years. “My quest to acquire sentimental expressions of love, especially those celebrating Valentine’s Day—a significant social event that was enjoyed by all strata of society—grew into a desire to share them with the public,” said Rosin. “Bob grew up watching us build this collection piece by piece. I’d long hoped the collection would end up where it would have the most research value and the highest standard of preservation, so it is deeply gratifying to know Bob and Belle have given these works to The Huntington.”
The Huntington’s collection of historical prints and ephemera was begun by its founder, Henry E. Huntington, about 100 years ago, and has since grown to contain hundreds of thousands of items that support public exhibitions and scholars’ research, especially in the areas of British and American cultural history. The Rosin Collection significantly increases the institution’s distinction of being one of the leading archives for ephemera studies.
“This is a collection I’ve been familiar with and admired for many years,” said David Mihaly, Jay T. Last Curator of Graphic Arts and Social History at The Huntington. “It is without a doubt the best in private hands in terms of quality and range within its focus—to say nothing of the sheer wonder and delight the items provide. Pull a string and an ingenious cobweb device lifts to reveal a mouse in a trap; unfold a die-cut valentine and watch a majestic carriage spring to life in 3-D; read a witty poem and realize it’s a hilarious jab at a Victorian-era politician; look closely at a tiny, centuries-old card and see it was delicately perforated with hundreds of tiny pinpricks, and hand painted so expertly. We certainly will enjoy researching and processing this collection—and hope to plan an exhibition in coming years.”
The institution expects to start preserving and cataloguing the Rosin Collection this year, with research access soon to follow.
Exhibition | Pockets to Purses
Next month at FIT:
Pockets to Purses: Fashion + Function
The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, 6–31 March 2018
Organized by Graduate Students in FIT’s Fashion and Textile Studies Program
The Fashion Institute of Technology’s School of Graduate Studies and The Museum at FIT present Pockets to Purses: Fashion + Function. Organized by graduate students in the Fashion and Textile Studies program, the exhibition explores pockets and purses as both fashionable and functional objects by tracing both their history and evolution to accommodate the demands of modern life. Displaying objects from the collection of The Museum at FIT, the exhibition analyzes the interplay between pockets and purses in both men’s and women’s wardrobes from the 18th century to the present. In addition to garments and accessories, the exhibition features photographs, advertisements, and film clips that demonstrate how pockets and purses have been utilized throughout history and the ways that lifestyle changes have affected their design and use.
Reticule of a Man’s Waistcoat, embroidered silk, ca. 1800, France (NY: The Museum at FIT, gift of Thomas Oechsler. 93.132.2).
Pockets to Purses: Fashion + Function begins with 18th-century examples of men’s and women’s pockets. Men’s pockets were built into jackets or waistcoats so that men could carry a variety of objects, including books. Problematically, the lines of a man’s tailored ensemble were often disrupted by bulky items. Alternatively, women’s pockets began as separate accessories that were tied to the body and worn underneath a skirt. These pockets were completely hidden, allowing a woman to carry items while maintaining privacy.
Changing fashions and evolving roles in society led to women carrying their possessions in handheld bags. A reticule—a small handbag typically made with a drawstring closure—displayed in the exhibition illustrates the evolution of pockets into handheld purses. The shape, ornamentation, and pocket flap of this example from circa 1800 indicate that it was fabricated from an 18th-century man’s waistcoat, an example of which can be seen in the rendering on a fashion plate dating from 1778 to 1787. A blue bodice from circa 1878 that features a small watch pocket on the left hip reveals a fashionable approach to practical design. The pocket has embroidered decoration, but the easily accessible location and convenient shape of the pocket are function driven.
A needlepoint bag dating from 1920–30 contains three small cases that demonstrate the prevalence for ensemble dressing that arose during the 1920s. The coordinating containers for cigarettes and face powder testify to a growing acceptance of women smoking and wearing makeup in public. The tension between fashion and function continued into the 20th century. The exhibition includes an ad for Elsa Schiaparelli’s ‘Cash and Carry’ suits, which featured large pockets on the hips for carrying supplies, demonstrating the desire for functionality that prevailed at the outbreak of World War II. After the war, designers deemphasized functionality and began to feature pockets primarily as design elements. A Molyneux dress from 1948 has eight strategically placed pockets on the hips that make the waist appear smaller, a silhouette that dominated postwar fashion.
American designers such as Claire McCardell and Bonnie Cashin incorporated pockets that were as playful as they were practical. A bright green raincoat by Cashin circa 1965 features a pocket designed to look like a shoulder bag—making her raincoat a visual fusion of fashion and function. Made from leather, canvas, and the twist-lock closures that were typical of Cashin’s work, the coat’s large, practical pocket allowed the wearer to go hands-free while keeping her possessions close.
Novelty bags demonstrate the whimsy of fashion, though they also convey wealth and status. A 1950s Lederer purse shaped like a clock has a built-in lipstick compartment and utilizes traditional elegant materials in a novel design. Additionally, Judith Leiber’s 1994 Swarovski crystal-encrusted minaudière in the shape of a tomato was designed to be a display of glamour and imagination. Both examples present the handbag as an objet d’art and show how designers sometimes perform more as artists, focusing on form rather than functionality.
Other iterations of the status bag, specifically those of the late 20th century, are also on display. An Hermès “Kelly” bag from 2000 demonstrates the longevity of the bag’s design, which set standards for the luxury market when it was introduced as a saddle bag in 1892. Alternatively, a Louis Vuitton purse from 2003 shows a trendier kind of status bag. Its colorful take on the traditional Vuitton ‘Speedy’ bag played into passing fashion trends during the early 2000s.
Various menswear items are also included, such as a 1990 sport coat by Jean Paul Gaultier. With layers of cargo pockets, velcro flaps, and heavy-duty zippers, this jacket is a take on the functional pockets in conventional men’s sportswear. Similarly, a bowler hat designed by Rod Keenan in 2006 subverts the traditional bowler by including, at the crown, a pocket made to hold a condom.
The final section of the exhibition focuses on pockets that allude to historical embellishments. Included are a Bill Blass knit dress from fall 1986 and a man’s Versace suit from 1992. Shown alongside a reproduction of an 18th-century man’s embroidered coat, these objects are reminders of the pocket’s fashionable use throughout history.
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