Fashion in Art/Fashion as Art:

Looking at Two Centuries of European and American Clothing

by Joan Stack, Associate Curator of European and American Art, Museum of Art and Archaeology

In February of 2006, the Museum of Art and Archaeology opens an exciting collaborative exhibition that displays artwork from the Museum’s permanent collection side-by-side with clothing from the Department of Textile and Apparel Management’s Missouri Historic Costume and Textile Collection. The exhibit, Dressing the Part: Art and Fashion in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, explores two hundred years of changing clothing styles, tracking the importance of fashion in the transmission of cultural and social ideas in European and American art.

George Caleb Bingham Portrait of Thomas Withers Nelson

Romare Bearden Conjunction

Instead of trying to represent every fashion movement of the 1800s and 1900s, the exhibit focuses on certain particularly interesting social and cultural trends that are observable in both clothing and in art. The first portion of the show is devoted to fashions from the nineteenth century. Underwear, corsets, bustles, dresses and bonnets are displayed next to paintings, drawings and prints representing people wearing similar garments. Fashion in the 1800s was influenced by the social conditions of the time, and the attire on display reflects these conditions. Viewers will see how dress was connected to the restricted roles of women in society, and how clothing was associated with now forgotten social customs. For example, a number of artworks, objects and outfits displayed relate to the nineteenth-century custom of mourning. Mourning clothes, worn for months and even years at a time, manifested the ever-present awareness of death in this era of high infant mortality and short life expectancy.

During the 1800s, the wearing of particular colors, jewelry and garments indicated that a person was grieving for a dead relative or loved one. A nineteenth-century viewer, for example, would have instantly understood that the sitter in George Caleb Bingham’s Portrait of Thomas Withers Nelson was wearing a mourning pin. By displaying this artwork with objects and outfits associated with mourning..., the Museum allows today’s viewers to understand better the original meaning and context of both the painting and the clothing.

The second portion of the exhibit focuses on women’s working clothes and menswear from the mid 1800s to the turn of the century. Clothing worn by rural laborers is displayed next to pictures of working women by Jean Millet and Auguste Renoir. At the other end of the social spectrum, top hats, vests and suits complement prints and photographs representing men in formal attire by such artists as Honoré Daumier and Erich Salomon. All of these images reflect the important role clothing had (and continues to have) in representing the class and economic status of its wearers. By picturing people wearing such class-indicative outfits, the artists who made these pictures conveyed complex social and political messages.

The third and largest portion of the exhibition is dedicated to fashion in the twentieth century. Changing clothing styles in the last one hundred years reflect developing technology and evolving concepts about race and gender roles. For example, Romare Bearden’s abstract representation of African-inspired clothing in Conjunction echoes the interest among many twentieth-century African Americans in proudly proclaiming and re-claiming their African heritage through their dress. In the exhibit, Bearden’s print is displayed beside authentic African outfits. Such outfits were and are often worn by black Americans as a way of celebrating their African heritage.

People are often unaware of the social statements made by their clothing. By understanding fashion in the context of history, we begin to see how dress affects and reflects a culture’s values and priorities. When artists incorporate fashion into their paintings, drawings, photographs and prints they communicate a variety of social messages to the spectator. Visitors to Dressing the Part: Art and Fashion in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries are encouraged to contemplate these messages and consider the political, cultural and economic factors that have affected fashion design in Europe and America over the last two centuries.

The exhibit opens Saturday, February 11, 2006, and runs through May 21, 2006.

with permission Museum Magazine (Winter 2006: Number 48)