Art in its Time: Theories and Practices of Modern Aesthetics

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THE AVANT-GARDE IN FASHION Figure 10.3 John Rowlings, “Uncluttered Sweater Look,” Vogue, January 1, 1945, p. 46, © Vogue, The Condé Nast Publications Inc. some fashion plates for Town and Country in Mondrian’s studio shortly after the artist’s death in 1944; a year later Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue (1931–42) appeared in a Vogue story. Vogue’s copy compares the smooth contour fit of the “sweater look” dress to the lines of the painting, which seems to float beside it as an apparitional equivalent (Figure 10.3). They share a modern, spare version of elegance, setting off jewels on the woman, bars of color in the picture. The Pollocks, in contrast, frame gowns in taffeta and satin; hence the appropriateness of the notes they strike: “intensity of feelings” and connoisseur approval. Beaton’s photographs put a positive spin on the dismissal of Cathedral by Sir Leigh Ashton of the Victoria and Albert Museum, a member of the 1948 163
THE AVANT-GARDE IN FASHION Life panel on modern art, who opined that the painting “would make a most enchanting printed silk.” (Professor Greene of Yale remarked that Cathedral seemed a pleasant design for a necktie.) 26 In Beaton’s images of Pollock’s paintings they both serve a decorative function and represent daring, brilliance, and novelty, something not for everyone. Whatever the suggestion of Vogue’s text, they did not yet represent market success: despite some critical approval and growing exposure Pollock’s works barely sold in 1951. (From that show only Autumn Rhythm found a buyer, Pollock’s friend, artist Alfonso Ossorio.) From the artist’s point of view, and that of his dealer, Beaton’s photographs must have been a welcome boost. But Pollock, who objected to architects’ assignment of painting to the task of decoration, certainly did not accept Beaton’s relegation of his work to providing background and atmosphere. And it must be said that the dresses, undistinguished and retrograde, despite the “New Look” label, are in no way on the same level as the paintings. Beaton’s ingenuity shows in his use of Pollock to give the fashions an excitement and vitality they lack. Fashion By the same gesture that exposed the aesthetic disparity between the paintings and the dresses, however, Beaton accentuated their social kinship. Both art and high fashion are, in the first place, primarily possessions of the upper classes, though both provide areas in which those classes can be challenged by others. Fashion, as Georg Simmel explained in an essay of 1904, “is a product of class distinction.” It both “signifies union with those in the same class, the uniformity of the circle characterized by it, and uno actu, the exclusion of all other groups.” In this, fashion resembles the easel painting, operating like the frame of a picture that “characterizes the work of art inwardly as a coherent, homogeneous, independent entity and at the same time outwardly severs all direct relations with the surrounding space.” 27 In a society like ours, where some class mobility is possible, a system of distinguishing marks like fashion is subject to emulation—a process in which a magazine like Vogue plays an important role, making fashion available to a wider circle than the clients of the couture. But, as Simmel wrote, Just as soon as the lower classes begin to copy their style, thereby crossing the line of demarcation the upper classes have drawn and destroying 26 Davenport and Sargeant, “Life Round Table,” p. 62. Ashton’s opinion was apparently vindicated by the drip-patterned scarf sold by the Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with its 1998–9 Pollock retrospective; similar patterns appeared on dresses illustrated in Vogue already in 1952 and 1953. 27 Georg Simmel, “Fashion,” in idem, On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings, ed. Donald N. Levine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 297. 164
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ART IN ITS TIME Art writing normall
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First published 2003 by Routledge 1
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CONTENTS List of illustrations ix P
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PREFACE In writing this book I have
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1 INTRODUCTION The ten chapters tha
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INTRODUCTION ideology, as I am atte
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INTRODUCTION process as practically
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INTRODUCTION articulation of nonver
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2 SOME MASKS OF MODERNISM The days
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SOME MASKS OF MODERNISM which it di
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SOME MASKS OF MODERNISM chaotic mov
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SOME MASKS OF MODERNISM the faces o
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SOME MASKS OF MODERNISM Figure 2.2
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SOME MASKS OF MODERNISM Figure 2.3
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SOME MASKS OF MODERNISM private str
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SOME MASKS OF MODERNISM the artist
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ART AND MONEY action taken to turn
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ART AND MONEY Diderot’s version o
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ART AND MONEY Luxury and corruption
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ART AND MONEY financed not only by
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ART AND MONEY of Plato with whom th
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ART AND MONEY When a handful of spe
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ART AND MONEY might confuse the hon
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ART AND MONEY complaint about the r
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ART AND MONEY comparison with Kant
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ART AND MONEY experience of the bea
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ART AND MONEY worthy inheritors of
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BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME It is, we mus
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BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME strength. Cri
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BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME In Rousseau
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BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME two centuries
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BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME exemplified b
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BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME Figure 4.1 Jo
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BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME “beautiful
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BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME and political
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BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME The paintings
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BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME In this pictu
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world will be long in freeing itsel
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69 Figure 4.2 Eugène Delacroix, De
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BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME always has a
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the sublime and the beautiful—cal
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THE RATIONALIZATION OF ART “Spiri
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THE RATIONALIZATION OF ART als, wit
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THE RATIONALIZATION OF ART The dist
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THE RATIONALIZATION OF ART members
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THE RATIONALIZATION OF ART image, e
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THE RATIONALIZATION OF ART which de
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6 MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION IN THE AG
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION Almost none
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION models were
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION But we are
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION They repres
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION have alread
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION And they pr
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION It is evide
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION order of be
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION triumph as
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PORK AND PORCELAIN extent not only
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PORK AND PORCELAIN support of the B
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PORK AND PORCELAIN for the distinct
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Page 148 and 149: THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANDY WARHOL Warho
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Page 192 and 193: CLASSLESS TASTE It would be pervers
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Page 196 and 197: Adams, Abigail 48 Adorno, Theodor 5
Page 198: play 41ff Pocock, J. G. A. 28 n. 16
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Art in its Time: Theories and Practices of Modern Aesthetics

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