Exhibition | Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear, 1715–2015
From LACMA:
Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear, 1715–2015
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 10 April — 21 August 2016
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, 3 December 2016 — 12 March 2017
Saint Louis Art Museum, 25 May — 17 September 2017
The Macaroni ensemble: Man’s Three-piece Suit, ca. 1770. Sword with Chatelaine, late 18th century. Men’s Pair of Shoe Buckles, late 18th century (LACMA)
Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear, 1715–2015 explores the history of men’s fashionable dress from the eighteenth century to the present and re-examines the all-too-frequent equation of ‘fashion’ with ‘femininity’.
Beginning with the eighteenth century, the male aristocrat wore a three-piece suit conspicuous in make and style, and equally as lavish as the opulent dress of his female counterpart. The nineteenth-century ‘dandy’ made famous a more refined brand of expensive elegance which became the hallmark of Savile Row. The mid-twentieth-century ‘mod’ relished in the colorful and modern styles of Carnaby Street, and the twenty-first century man—in an ultra-chic ‘skinny suit’ by day and a flowered tuxedo by night—redefines today’s concept of masculinity.
Drawing primarily from LACMA’s renowned permanent collection, Reigning Men makes illuminating connections between history and high fashion. The exhibition traces cultural influences over the centuries, examines how elements of the uniform have profoundly shaped fashionable dress, and reveals how cinching and padding the body was, and is, not exclusive to women. The exhibition features 200 looks, and celebrates a rich history of restraint and resplendence.
This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and made possible by Ellen A. Michelson. Additional support is provided by the Wallis Annenberg Director’s Endowment Fund.
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From Prestel:
Sharon Sadako Takeda, Kaye Durland Spilker, and Clarissa Esguerra, with contributions by Tim Blanks and Peter McNeil, Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear, 1715–2015 (New York: Prestel, 2016), 272 page, ISBN: 978–3791355207, $55 / £35.
This fully illustrated book accompanies one of the most comprehensive exhibitions dedicated solely to three centuries of men’s fashion. The fashionable male may be making a comeback, but early fashion trends centered around what men—not women—were wearing. This intriguing book traces the history of men’s fashion since the 18th century, when young Englishmen imitated foreign dress and manners after touring the European continent. This phenomenon is only one of many explored in sections titled ‘Revolution/Evolution’, ‘East/West’, ‘Uniformity’, ‘Body Consciousness’, and ‘The Splendid Man’. In addition to numerous illustrations of extant menswear, the book captures the 19th-century dandy, a more restrained brand of expensive elegance which became the hallmark of Savile Row; the post-WWII mod, who relished the colorful styles of Carnaby Street; and the 21st-century man—ultra-chic in a sleek suit by day, wearing a flowered tuxedo by night. Reigning Men illuminates connections between history and high fashion, traces cultural influences over the centuries, examines how uniforms have profoundly shaped fashionable dress, and reveals that women aren’t the only ones who cinch and pad their bodies.
Sharon Sadako Takeda is Senior Curator and Head of the Costume and Textiles Department at the Los Angles County Museum of Art. Kaye Durland Spilker is Curator, and Clarissa Esguerra is Assistant Curator of the Costume and Textiles Department at the Los Angles County Museum of Art. They are the authors of Fashioning Fashion: European Culture in Detail, 1700–1915 (Prestel, 2010).
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Thomas John Bernard, . . . a theatrical costume designer, worked with the curators and conservators of the Costume and Textiles Department at LACMA to draw these patterns approximating the design of garments in the collection.
PDF documents with annotated patterns are available here»
New Book | Von der Kunst des sozialen Aufstiegs
From ArtBooks.com:
Almut Goldhahn, Von der Kunst des sozialen Aufstiegs: Statusstrategien und Kunstpatronage der venezianischen Papstfamilie Rezzonico (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2016), 408 pages, ISBN: 978-3412503529, $135.
Als Angehörige der ‘nobilità nuova’ hatten es die Rezzonico schwer, sich innerhalb des oligarchischen Systems der Adelsrepublik Venedig zu behaupten. Schon früh orientierten sie sich daher nach Rom, um parallel zur angestrebten Etablierung der Familie in Venedig eine familiäre Verankerung an der Kurie voranzutreiben. Dieses zweigleisige Modell sollte sich schließlich als tragfähig erweisen: 1758 wurde Clemens XIII. Rezzonico zum Papst gewählt. Über einen Zeitraum von 150 Jahren zeichnet das Buch den Aufstieg der Rezzonico von einer venezianischen Kaufmannsfamilie zu einer römischen Papstfamilie nach. Dabei werden die generationen- und systemübergreifenden Etablierungsstrategien der Familie offengelegt und mit ihrer Kunstpatronage abgeglichen, die gezielt zur visuellen Manifestierung ihres sozialen Status eingesetzt wurde. (Studien zur Kunst, 37).
Almut Goldhahn ist Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin in der Photothek des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz – Max Planck Institut.
Rijksmuseum Research Fellowship Programme, 2016–17
The Rijksmuseum Fellowship Programme, 2016–17
Applications due by 13 March 2016
The Rijksmuseum operates a research Fellowship Programme for outstanding candidates working on the art and history of the Low Countries whose principal concern is object-based research. The aim of the programme is to train a new generation of museum professionals: inquisitive object-based specialists who will further develop understanding of art and history for the future. The focus of research should relate to the Rijksmuseum’s collection, and may encompass any of its varied holdings, including Netherlandish paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, prints, drawings, photography and historical artefacts. The purpose of the programme is to enable applicants to base part of their research at the Rijksmuseum, to strengthen the bonds between the universities and the Rijksmuseum, and to encourage the understanding of Netherlandish art and history. The programme offers students and academic scholars access to the museum’s collections, library, conservation laboratories and curatorial expertise.
Please review the eligibility, funding and application requirements by visiting the Rijksmuseum website. For the 2016–2017 academic year, candidates can apply for:
• Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for art historical research
• Johan Huizinga Fellowship for historical research
• Migelien Gerritzen Fellowship for conservation research
• Manfred & Hanna Heiting Fellowship for photo-historical research
The closing date for all applications is 13 March 2016, at 6:00 p.m. (Amsterdam time/CET). No applications will be accepted after this deadline. All applications must be submitted online and in English. Applications or related materials delivered via email, postal mail, or in person will not be accepted. Selection will be made by an international committee in April 2016. The committee consists of eminent scholars in the relevant fields of study from European universities and institutions, and members of the curatorial staff of the Rijksmuseum. Applicants will be notified by 1 May 2016. All Fellowships will start in September 2016. Further information and application forms are available here.
New Book | Louis XIV Outside In
From Ashgate:
Tony Claydon and Charles-Édouard Levillain eds., Louis XIV Outside In: Images of the Sun King Beyond France, 1661–1715, (Farnham: Ashgate), 231 pages, ISBN: 978-1472431264, $125.
Louis XIV—the ‘Sun King’—casts a long shadow over the history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. Yet while he has been the subject of numerous works, much of the scholarship remains firmly rooted within national frameworks and traditions. Thus in France Louis is still chiefly remembered for the splendid baroque culture his reign ushered in, and his political achievements in wielding together a strong centralised French state; whereas in England, the Netherlands and other protestant states, his memory is that of an aggressive military tyrant and persecutor of non-Catholics.
In order to try to break free of such parochial strictures, this volume builds upon the approach of scholars such as Ragnhild Hatton who have attempted to situate Louis’ legacy within broader, pan-European context. But where Hatton focused primarily on geo-political themes, Louis XIV Outside In introduces current interests in cultural history, integrating aspects of artistic, literary and musical themes. In particular it examines the formulation and use of images of Louis XIV abroad, concentrating on Louis’ neighbours in northwest Europe. This broad geographical coverage demonstrates how images of Louis XIV were moulded by the polemical needs of people far from Versailles and distorted from any French originals by the particular political and cultural circumstances of diverse nations. Because the French regime’s ability to control the public image of its leader was very limited, the collection highlights how—at least in the sphere of public presentation—his power was frequently denied, subverted, or appropriated to very different purposes, questioning the limits of his absolutism which has also been such a feature of recent work.
Tony Claydon is Professor of Early Modern History at Bangor University, Wales. He is author of several books including, William III and the Godly Revolution; (with Ian McBride) ed., Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c.1650–c.1850; William III: Profiles in Power; and Europe and the Making of England, 1660–1760.
Charles-Édouard Levillain is Professor of History at the Université Paris VII Denis Diderot, France. A historian of early modern Britain and Europe, he works primarily on Anglo-Dutch politics in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He is author of Vaincre Louis XIV: Angleterre-Hollande-France: Histoire d’une relation tiangulaire (1665–1688) (Champ Vallon, 2010); and Un glaive pour un royaume: La querelle de la milice dans l’Angleterre du XVIIe siècle (Honoré Champion, 2014).
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C O N T E N T S
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Louis XIV Upside Down? Interpreting the Sun King’s Image, Tony Claydon and Charles-Édouard Levillain
1 Image Battles under Louis XIV: Some Reflections, Hendrik Ziegler
2 Francophobia in Late-17th-Century England, Tim Harris
3 ‘We Have Better Materials for Clothes, They, Better Taylors’: The Influence of La Mode on the Clothes of Charles II and James II, Maria Hayward
4 The Court of Louis XIV and the English Public Sphere: Worlds Set Apart?, Stéphane Jettot
5 Popular English Perceptions of Louis XIV’s Way of War, Jamel Ostwald
6 Louis XIV, James II and Ireland, D.W. Hayton
7 Lampooning Louis XIV: Romeyn de Hooghe’s Harlequin Prints, 1688–89, Henk van Nierop
8 Foe and Fatherland: The Image of Louis XIV in Dutch Songs, Donald Haks
9 Amsterdam and the Ambassadors of Louis XIV 1674–85, Elizabeth Edwards
10 Millenarian Portraits of Louis XIV, Lionel Laborie
Index
Call for Papers | Between Revolution and Reaction: French Art
Details of this graduate student colloquium are available at H-ArtHist:
Between Revolution and Reaction: French Art in the European Context, 1750–1830
Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, 1 June 2016
Proposals due by 15 February 2016
Due to political and social Umwälzungen/alterations, between ca. 1750 and 1830 political key notions and aesthetic conceptions of the modern era changed considerably. It therefore seems legitimate to consider the decades around 1800 as an epoch-making turn. The colloquium offers insights into current research concerning French art of this period. It focuses on the dynamics between revolution and reaction as well as on functions of the cultural policy during the French revolutionary period and on the establishment of new artistic pictorial/Zeichen- and symbolic systems.
The half-day colloquium offers six doctoral students the possibility to present their dissertation project in a paper that should not be longer than 10 minutes. Papers and discussions can be in German, French, and English. Speakers residing outside Munich will receive a lump sum of 200,- euro covering travel expenses. Applications containing a short cv and an abstract of the paper (not to exceed 3000 signs in length) must be sent to frz1800@zikg.eu by February 15, 2016.
Organized by Iris Lauterbach and Christine Tauber, Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich
Exhibition | From Poussin to Monet: The Colors of France
Jean-Siméon Chardin, Les Tours de Cartes (Card Tricks), ca.1735, oil on canvas, 31 x 39 cm
(Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, NGI.478)
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Press release (via Art Daily) from the Bucerius Kunst Forum:
From Poussin to Monet: The Colors of France
Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Remagen, 22 March — 6 September 2015
Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg, 10 October 2015 — 17 January 2016
In the seventeenth century, French painting began to set the standards for all of Europe. Values in France during the Enlightenment began to shift toward a bourgeois society where painters were exposed to new themes and new artistic experiments. The French Revolution, the prototype of all struggles for liberation, marked a new era that became deeply entrenched in the development of French painting. The exhibition From Poussin to Monet: The Colors of France focuses on the effect that this dramatic social upheaval had on art.
During Poussin’s time, an argument broke out regarding the role of color in painting. Sensory experience and subjective perception became increasingly important until color was freed entirely by the Impressionists at the end of the nineteenth century. Paul Cézanne viewed nature as an arrangement of planes of color. Paintings no longer told a narrative; instead they gave to see. Color no longer depicted light; it became light. The exhibition demonstrates France’s path to modern art with paintings and drawings by Poussin, Watteau, Chardin, Delacroix, Corot, Courbet, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh and others.
In cooperation with the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, and the Collection Rau for UNICEF at the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck in Remagen, Germany, where the exhibition ran from March 22 to September 6, 2015 under the title Revolution of Image: From Poussin to Monet.
Exhibition | Works from the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm
François Boucher, The Triumph of Venus, 1740, oil on canvas, 130 x 162 cm
(Nationalmuseum, Stockholm)
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Press release (24 December 2015) from The Morgan (with information for the show at the Louvre available here):
Paintings and Drawings from the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (title forthcoming)
Musée du Louvre, Paris, 20 October 2016 — 16 January 2017
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 5 February — 14 May 2017
Seventy-six masterpieces of painting and drawing from the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm will make a rare appearance in New York beginning February 5, 2017 at the Morgan Library & Museum. The Nationalmuseum is Sweden’s largest and most distinguished museum, and it is lending to the Morgan outstanding works by Dürer, Raphael, Rubens, Rembrandt, Antoine Watteau, and François Boucher, among many celebrated artists. It is the first collaboration between the two institutions in almost fifty years.
“We are delighted to host this exhibition of treasures from the Nationalmuseum of Stockholm,” said Colin B. Bailey, director of the Morgan Library & Museum. “The selection of paintings and drawings is of extraordinary quality. Fine examples of work from the Italian, French, and Northern European schools are represented, with a group of sixty master drawings forming the heart of the show. We are deeply grateful to the museum’s director general Berndt Arell and his curatorial staff for making this collaboration possible.”
The exhibition will run through May 14, 2017 and continues a tradition at the Morgan of presenting drawings and other work from some of Europe’s most august institutions. Over the last several years, the Morgan has featured critically acclaimed shows from the Uffizi in Florence, the Louvre, and the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich.
The Nationalmuseum’s core holdings were assembled by Count Carl Gustav Tessin (1696–1770), a diplomat and one of the great art collectors of his day. The son and grandson of architects, Tessin held posts in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, where he came into contact with the leading Parisian artists of the time and commissioned many works from them. By the time he left Paris in 1742, he had amassed a truly impressive collection of paintings and drawings.
Among the fourteen paintings in the exhibition are three commissioned by Tessin and exhibited at the 1740 Parisian Salon. These include Boucher’s Triumph of Venus, Jean-Baptiste Oudry’s Dachshound Pehr with Dead Game and Rifle, and a Portrait of Count Tessin by Jacques-André Joseph Aved, in which the collector is shown among his art, books, and medals. The group of paintings will also include six works by Jean-Siméon Chardin.
The drawings in the exhibition include works by Italian masters such as Domenico Ghirlandaio, Raphael, Giulio Romano, and Annibale Carracci. Northern European artists are represented by Dürer, Hendrik Goltzius, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, and Anthony van Dyck, among others. The French drawings begin with Primaticcio and practitioners of the Fountainebleau school and include works by Jacques Callot and Nicholas Poussin, as well as Count Tessin’s French contemporaries, Boucher, Chardin, and Antoine Watteau.
In the years following his return from France, Tessin encountered financial difficulties and was forced to sell much of his collection, with many of the finest works being acquired by the Swedish royal family. After the Count’s death, Swedish King Gustav III purchased most of his remaining works. Tessin’s holdings thus formed the nucleus of the Royal Museum of Sweden when it was created in 1794. It was later renamed the Nationalmuseum.
New Book | The Forge of Vision: A Visual History of Modern Christianity
From the University of California Press:
David Morgan, The Forge of Vision: A Visual History of Modern Christianity (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2015), 407 pages, ISBN: 978-0520286955, $40 / £28.
Religions teach their adherents how to see and feel at the same time; learning to see is not a disembodied process but one hammered from the forge of human need, social relations, and material practice. David Morgan argues that the history of religions may therefore be studied through the lens of their salient visual themes. The Forge of Vision tells the history of Christianity from the sixteenth century through the present by selecting the visual themes of faith that have profoundly influenced its development. After exploring how distinctive Catholic and Protestant visual cultures emerged in the early modern period, Morgan examines a variety of Christian visual practices, ranging from the imagination, visions of nationhood, the likeness of Jesus, the material life of words, and the role of modern art as a spiritual quest, to the importance of images for education, devotion, worship, and domestic life. An insightful, informed presentation of how Christianity has shaped and continues to shape the modern world, this work is a must-read for scholars and students across fields of religious studies, history, and art history.
David Morgan is Professor of Religious Studies at Duke University, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies. He is the author of The Embodied Eye: Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling and The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice, and coeditor of the journal Material Religion.
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C O N T E N T S
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I Word and Image
1 The Shape of the Holy
2 The Visible Word
II The Traffic of Images
3 Religion as Sacred Economy
4 The Agency of Words
5 Christianity and Nationhood
6 The Likeness of Jesus
7 Modern Art and Christianity
Conclusion
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
2015 Georgian Group Architectural Awards
Richard Samuel Coade, Belmont (Lyme Regis, Dorset), 1785, the home of Eleanor Coade; appropriately the house showcases the eponymous artificial stone she pioneered.
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The 2015 Georgian Group Architectural Awards were announced earlier in December. This year two joint winners share the award for Restoration of a Georgian Interior: the private apartment at Sir John Soane’s Museum and the Soane Tribune at Wotton House. The award for Restoration of a Georgian Building in an Urban Setting recognizes Belmont House in Lyme Regis (hooray for Eleanor Coade and the eponymous artificial stone she pioneered!). –CH
From The Georgian Group:
Belmont House in Lyme Regis is a 1785 maritime villa looking out over the Cobb. John Fowles wrote The French Lieutenant’s Woman here. By the time he died it was in a bad state, the gardens overgrown and the structural condition of the building poor. The Landmark Trust acquired it and took the decision, at once brave and controversial, to restore it to the form known by Mrs Coade, creator of the artificial stone that bears her name. That involved demolishing what was left of the substantial Victorian and later extensions in order to make it a villa in the round. The project has been informed by meticulous building analysis and documentary research and the building is now again a thing of real beauty, a delightful monument to one of the great female entrepreneurs of the Georgian period.
The full list of awards is available here»
Exhibition | Enigmas: The Art of Bada Shanren
Bada Shanren (Zhu Da), Lotus and Ducks (detail), ca. 1696, Qing dynasty; hanging scroll, ink on paper
(Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, F1998.45)
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Press release (18 June 2015) for the exhibition now on view at The Freer:
Enigmas: The Art of Bada Shanren (1626–1705)
Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 20 June 2015 — 3 January 2016
Born a prince of the Ming imperial house, Bada Shanren survived the military conquest of his dynasty and lived as a Buddhist monk for 30 years before emerging into fame as a professional artist. His storied life leaves many questions unanswered, and his masterpieces of painting and calligraphy are renowned in Chinese art for their daring idiosyncratic approaches to style, composition and meaning. On view from June 20, 2015 until January 3, 2016, at the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art, Enigmas: The Art of Bada Shanren (1626–1705) features 43 of the artist’s works, on public display for the first time in more than a decade. Enigmas is the final exhibition of the Freer’s celebrated collection of Chinese paintings before the museum closes for major renovations in 2016.
Bada Shanren (Zhu Da), Two Geese, ca. 1700, Qing dynasty; hanging scroll, ink on paper, 184.1 x 90.6 cm (Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, F1998.47)
“The Freer Gallery of Art owns the largest, most diverse and arguably the most significant collection of Bada Shanren’s art outside China,” said Stephen Allee, associate curator for Chinese painting and calligraphy at the Freer and Sackler Galleries. “The enigmatic quality of Bada Shanren’s work brings one back to his art again and again. Trying to fathom some ambiguous aspect of a painting or calligraphy, one is convinced there is a key to unlocking the mysteries, cracking the code and that maybe this will be the time one stumbles across it. Of course, one never really finds the answer—Bada Shanren is too self-contained an artist for that—but the quest is always rewarding, as each careful viewing invariably yields new pleasures and discoveries.”
Particularly significant among the artist’s surviving works is the album Scripture of the Inner Radiances of the Yellow Court from 1684, which bears his earliest known signature using the name ‘Bada Shanren’. Similarly, Lotus is a rare early album done ca. 1665 while the artist was still a Buddhist monk. Its ingenuity of composition foretells the stylistic developments of his later works.
Bada Shanren developed a unique visual vocabulary full of personal symbolism and artistic gesture, and he frequently included unusual elements and juxtapositions that were deliberately jarring or obscure. Many works possess great graphic power, but the meaning behind them is elusive, leaving viewers puzzled and intrigued. Although outwardly playful at times, some paintings reveal a troubled psychological edge, an innately dark outlook on his own fortunes and the condition of the world at large, that he concealed behind a surface of simplicity and humor.
In Enigmas, visitors have an opportunity to view a broad selection of Bada Shanren’s work from his time as a monk in the 1660s, through his peak professional years in the 1680s and ’90s, to his late period in the early 1700s, when he became a hermit seeking solitude and harmony with the natural order.
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A catalogue from a 2003 exhibition was republished in 2013 by Orchid Press:
Joseph Chang, Bai Qianshen, and Stephen Allee, In Pursuit of Heavenly Harmony: Paintings and Calligraphy by Bada Shanren (Hong Kong: Orchid Press, 2013), 222 pages, ISBN: 978-9745240308, $60.
Bada Shanren, the enigmatic, eccentric monk-painter also known as Zu Da, created a wealth of beautiful and important paintings and calligraphy over the course of his life (1626–1705). A princely descendent of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) imperial house, Bada Shanren developed a distinctive, evolving individual style of painting that had a profound and lasting influence on other calligraphers. Two prominent collector-scholars, Wang Fangyu and Sum Wai, were devoted to the collection and study of Bada Shanren’s oeuvre. Their gift to the Freer Gallery of Art of twenty superb works by Bada Shanren and an extensive research collection of around 1,900 items, together with a further purchase of thirteen works from their collection, have made the Freer the unrivaled center for the exhibition and study of Bada’s art. In the spring of 2003, an exhibition of these works will be on display in the Freer Gallery of Art; this book accompanies the exhibition and will have a life well beyond it, as it documents an important part of the museum’s permanent collection. Text in English, with glossary and detailed descriptions of exhibits in bilingual English/Chinese.
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