Ornament is the leading magazine celebrating wearable art. Explore jewelry, fashion, beads; contemporary, ancient and ethnographic.
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Impressionists' preoccupation with the effects of artificial light was shared by couturier Charles Frederick Worth, who had a gaslit "salon de lumière" in his atelier, later updated with electrical fixtures, so clients could preview how colors and textiles would look after dark. Just as new technologies and innovative couturiers changed how clothing was made and marketed, artists used fashion to express various aspects of modernity. The Impressionists— along with many other, less experimental artists of their time—rejected prestigious history painting to focus on subjects drawn from modern life. Scenes of modern life required contemporary fashions. The art critic Hippolyte Taine complained that "numbers of portraits in our annual exhibitions are nothing but portraits of costumes." For novelist Honoré de Balzac, however, costume was more than just clothing: "Fashion is the expression of society . . . fashion is, all at once, a science, an art, a custom, a sentiment." Fashion and modernity were one and the same, according to the poet Charles Baudelaire. In his seminal pro-Impressionist essay "Le Peintre de La Vie Modern" ("The Painter of Modern Life"), published in 1863, Baudelaire defined modernity as "the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art of Paris. "I'm not a fashion historian and I didn't want it to be an exhibition of fashion history," says Gloria Groom, curator of nineteenth-century European painting and sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago, who organized the exhibition. "I wanted to look at this period in a variety of ways— photography, architecture, literature, the press—and pull all these things together to give us a clear idea of the context in which Impressionist paintings were made." Technology transformed fashion during the Impressionist period, introducing machine-made lace and embroidery, dress patterns and robes mi-confectionnées: machine-sewn gowns that could be hand-tailored by seamstresses in the new grands magasins, or department stores. Pre-cut lengths of high-tech fabrics woven à disposition de motif made fashion fast and foolproof. The new technique of lithography, which was faster than engraving, allowed fashion illustrators to publish their offerings quickly, accelerating the pace of change. Aniline dyes could outshine nature, or replicate a woman's skin tone with erotic accuracy. They might also lend a garish quality to clothing, as in Pierre-Auguste Renoir's The Couple. Photography both imitated and influenced painting; with its standardized pose and costume, Claude Monet's portrait of Madame Gaudibert may well have been copied from or inspired by a carte de visite. The MADAME LOUIS JOACHIM GAUDIBERT by Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926); 217 x 138.5 centimeters, 1868. Collection: Musée d'Orsay. 33 ORNAMENT 36.2.2012 THE COUPLE by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919); 105 x 75 centimeters, 1868. Collection: Wallraf-Richartz Museum & Fondation Corboud. Opposite page: Installation of "Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity" at the Musée d'Orsay. Photographs courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Musée d'Orsay.