Art & Architecture

When would the first flowering of feminism become important for women? Sometimes it would be passed from mother to daughter, a generational questioning that quietly put down roots. In other cases, strong individuals emerged, whose devotion to the arts or social causes ignited feminine interest. Despite the frivolous silhouette of the bustle, women were increasingly caring about more than their clothes.

Historic revivals of dress styles, including a vogue for medieval and Renaissance garment details, would culminate in the Aesthetic dress of the 1880s. Women read and studied. More women attempted to earn college-level educations, and expressed their desire for further intellectual achievement. While this period doesn’t possess the outlet for angst that would drive feminists almost one hundred years later, the seeds of resolution were being sown.

“His purity was too great, his aspiration too high for this poor, miserable world! His great soul is now only enjoying that for which it was worthy!”

— Queen Victoria after her husband’s death

Victoria was breathlessly in love with her husband, Prince Albert, the Germanic butt of modern-day tobacco can jokes. She was known to describe him as “my all in all.” A sober, conscientious prince, Albert composed formal diplomatic correspondence even on his death bed. Victoria’s grief was boundless when he died from a gastric fever in the spring of 1862. Thus began the saga of the Widow of Windsor as Victoria retreated behind a black wall of mourning dress for the rest of her life. Other women emulated her grief, making black bombazine, paramatta, and crape regular wardrobe staples.

Her widow’s weeds did not prevent her from carrying on the affairs of state, but she was also able to use her mourning as a means of evading other social obligations. Many people rued the fact that the royal court was a victim of this evasion. They looked to Prince Edward, the heir, as a means of bringing liveliness to the nobility. Edward did the best he could to live up to this, using his long tenure as Prince of Wales to carouse and idle his time winningly. He inevitably followed this path in part because of his mother’s unremitting censure. Prince Albert had been forced to travel away from home in order to rescue “Bertie” from the consequences of some youthful high jinx, and he fell ill shortly afterwards with the disease that cost him his life. Victoria, mad with grief, blamed her son for this development, and would never forgive him.

Fashion held an uneasy place in the war years of the North-South conflict in America. The Union and Confederate armies, uninterested in flashy uniforms, chose practical wear, while women remained ensconced in thick petticoats and triangular-shaped gowns. Some fashion textbooks call this the “crinoline period”. Hoops, or the cage crinoline, made women’s dresses billow as they did, and also made mobility more problematic.

Since the North controlled ports and shipping, and therefore received whatever fashion plate publishing there was, women in the South had a harder time keeping up with the modes. Southern ingenuity in refurbishing clothes made skirts and blouses more popular, and reintroduced tight sleeves that had been cut down from the wide sleeves of an earlier fashion cycle.

The beneficial effects of the sewing machine were apparent by the early 1860s. In fact, the number of sewing machines available doubled between 1860 and 1865. Almost all dresses were partly machine-sewn, although they continued to be finished by hand right up to the end of the century. Ready-to-wear developed at a slow pace for women, largely because the fashionable styles that originated after 1860 made achieving a correct fit difficult.

Men were luckier, and a ready-to-wear trade for their garments gained ground after the 1840s.

Paris maintained its lead for fashion as the middle of the nineteenth century approached. No matter that 1848 was The Year of Revolutions, political change was less influential than the widening pervasiveness of the moralistic social atmosphere of the period.

Yet Americans must be the one thanked for that most important of inventions: the sewing machine created by Elias Howe in 1846. Paris, without really realizing it, was also being affected by the growing democracy of this time. Social historians talk about the leveling of classes. More than ever before, people of all economic and social classes began dressing alike. Nevertheless, it was morality, rather than any deeply political strain, that guided what they chose to wear.

Fashions of the Napoleonic era for women had been dashing. However, larger social forces were at work that now placed a disapproving stamp on this look. While the daintily-shod foot could still peep out from under voluminous skirts, necklines rose and the feminine figure was concealed beneath jaunty collars, puffed sleeves, and other additions.

Another indicator can be seen in the hats - frothy and a harbinger of mroe to come during this century. Rackety King George IV was long dead, and his old sea dog brother would sit on the throne for only a few more years.

A new era was coming. It would be marked by a transition from the House of Hanover to the House of Windsor. Yet this change wasn’t endemic to Britain alone. The same reaffirmation of a sterner morality included continental Europe and America. This new zeitgeist took form in the shape of a slender eighteen-year-old. The young Queen Victoria was ready to re-order society into an image of her making.

I first learned about Stanford White in E. L. Doctorow’s book Ragtime. It was the lurid tale of lust and murder regarding Stanford White that remained in my mind until I moved to New York City many years ago. Over a long period of time, I have come to learn Stanford White was much more than the scandal that I first associated with him. Stanford White was a master designer and instrumental in many of the great architectural works of the city.

Without knowing it, I came across the legacy of Stanford White time and time again while living in the city. Slowly I learned many of the great architectural prizes that exist in the city are White's designs. There are Stanford White treasures all over New York and the ones that are gone nonetheless register prominently if only in photographs. For example the long gone great Penn Station was designed by the prestigious architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White. I had been looking at images of Penn Station long before I moved to New York in the early 80’s. Penn Station’s demise in 1963 by no means crushed the spirit and importance of this building. Tragically its structure was destroyed for something inferior, but the old Penn Station’s voice speaks loud and clear from the many photographs that exist.  read more »

At this point, I find myself taking another strategic break. We’re a little over one-third of the way through the nineteenth century. A holiday is coming up, undeniably the most important event of the Christian calendar. But it’s not religion I want to talk about. No, there’s a secular element to this holiday that weighs greatly with me. You see, I am a rabbit owner, and the Easter Bunny lives with me 24/7.

Popular culture has a way of imprinting itself on us. All my life, I’ve looked forward to Easter because of the delight its furry patron creates. How many of you have painted Easter eggs, put together or received an Easter basket replete with phony paper grass, or, best of all, gone on an Easter egg hunt? So important is this event, that the White House for years has sponsored an Easter Egg hunt on its East Lawn.

I got my first pet bunny from Woolworth’s at the age of nine. My mother, who’d raised rabbits for meat as a child during the World War II years, had an offhand attitude, “Oh well, if it doesn’t work out, we can always eat it.” Sure. That rabbit was my best friend and companion for eight years. Minnie Bunny had an endearing habit of jumping up on my bed in the afternoon to watch her favorite television show. As soon as it was over, she’d jump down and go off on her rabbity business.  read more »

In France, a new dandy supplanted previous notions of this masculine mode. Count Alfred d’Orsay was a sensation in London and Paris of the 1820s and 30s. His great physical beauty, dandified dress, and elegant manners had men and women stopping in the streets to stare after him. His private life—he came from an impoverished branch of French aristocracy—proved scandalous when he was “adopted” by a wealthy English Earl and his wife, and no one was exactly sure whose boyfriend he was.

The Count’s dandyism was less restrained than Brummell’s. He favored velvets and coats cut with a dash. Like many members of the cult of celebrity, however, his popularity faded before he was ready to admit this was so. While d’Orsay epitomizes the dandy as popular idol, his fall shows just how ambivalent men felt about dandyism. Young boys across France emulated his modishness, but by the end of the 1830s masculine fashion had moved on.

Men’s clothing would never be what it is today without George “Beau” Brummell (1778-1840). This ingenious man, the father of the modern dandy, was initially a court favorite who fell from grace. He was a walking advertisement for the modish man. Although he took only one dip into literature, his reformation of masculine style was transformative.

One of the things I find most interesting, however, is how few portraits exist of him. The one or two of those that have come down to us are actually suspect likenesses. And this in an age when English printmakers were at their most vicious and satirical…

That Brummell’s influence endured throughout the nineteenth century is the subject of an essay by a Frenchman, Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly. The Anatomy of dandyism kept the Brummell legend alive. The author’s study of masculine dress taste would prove influential indeed.

“Show me the clothes of a country and I can write its history.”

— Anatole France (1844 – 1924)

The start of the nineteenth century has many echoes. Sometimes I can shut my eyes and see them, all the elegant men and women twirling round ballrooms to the lilt of the newly popular waltz. I belong to a generation of young women who grew up on the Regency stories of Georgette Heyer. One encounters in her literature (written mainly in the 1950s) nostalgia for a time “when men were men and women were women.”

Some of this has to do with the fact that the century started out with most of Europe at war. Nowadays we don’t see our wars as having much impact on fashion, save for the growing presence of camouflage fabric. Back in the early 1800s, however, most men enjoyed adopting the look of a cavalry man: boots, trousers and a jacket cut with a dash. The late English historian Arthur Bryant wrote a book on this period, and there was reason behind its title: The Age of elegance, 1812-1822. This was a time when on the eve of the great battle of Waterloo, the Duchess of Richmond held a ball in Brussels, where Wellington danced calmly through the evening until anxious aides brought him word of Napoleon’s massing troops. Even then, he didn’t leave until he bid his hostess a polite farewell. It was also a time when those same ballroom attendees would ride out in their carriage the day after the battle to view the carnage in the fields.

P.S. Heading west again for a week. I’ll pick up on all this around the 11th.

In the seventeenth century, something interesting started to happen with clothing and dress. Men (and women) began to wear clothes that expressed what they believed in or stood for. A prime example of this can be found in Europe with the division between those who dressed in a sober manner and the more gaudy fashions of the upper classes. Whether from religious or social scruples, a rather puritanical mode of dress gained a powerful foothold with the professional and middle classes.

In England, the civil strife of the times took a bloody turn. King Charles I was beheaded by Oliver Cromwell and his Commonwealth followers. Dress played a role in the conflict of the ensuing years. Even the Restoration of Charles II couldn’t erase the indelible mark of the plainly dressed Roundheads. Their clothing was a statement of ideology.

As a consequence, this strain of plain versus elaborate adornment entered Western dress. It would go through countless permutations over the years, until it reached George “Beau” Brummell and became part of the modern men’s wear code. Dressing like a Cavalier would be remembered as something strictly for playtime or posturing. Another intriguing twist of the seventeenth century: while Cavalier men dressed like peacocks, their women more often resembled peahens. Don’t you think this was rather unfair?

We can see, therefore, that fashion originated as a mode for the elite, long before the age of haute couture. This connotation is stamped deeply within our consciousnesses. Would it also explain why we crave fashion so much? Do we see it, as our ancestors did, as a means of social uplift? Fashion now grew ever stronger as society matured. By the time of the Renaissance in Europe, fashion as a means of social control had become a weapon in the arsenal of the ruling classes.

By 1500, the notion of a “well-fashioned” man or woman had come into consideration. The use of clothing to flaunt or proclaim was popular, certainly among the wealthy and titled. Suggestive male clothing features such as the codpiece and tight hose enjoyed a vogue. Some courtiers, influenced by Nicolo Macchiavelli, began to favor black as a color for their clothing, joining judges, scholars, and professional men in the belief that the color gave them a dignified gravity, or substance, in the eyes of society.

Perhaps the worlds of daily reality and art were beginning to merge. To me, portraiture from the 1500s and 1600s shows virile men while women are depicted with a touch of the otherworldly. Does this have to do more with idealization or with the fact that women were kept so firmly in their place back then?

p.s. I’ve been listening to all the conversations about Michelle Obama’s inaugural ball gown, designed by Jason Wu. A majority of people weren’t as happy with it as they expected to be, but also have had a hard time explaining just why they didn’t like it. I think that the gown was simply too young a style for her. She needed a gown with a more dramatic cut that would flatter her tall, lithe figure. Oh well, she still looked lovely…

The transition to the Middle Ages, or the Medieval era, occurred when information—including fashion changes—became better spread by trade and travel. Royal courts exchanged information (and spies) on what rivals were doing and wearing. Monarchs and court favorites were studied for their fashion innovations, in a manner quite similar to the recent media scrutiny of Hilary Clinton’s South Sea pearls during her confirmation hearing. The upper classes dressed to impress and their inferiors scrambled to imitate them when they could. Class status was preserved when better dress could be denied to those of lower class status, giving rise to sumptuary laws for clothing and textiles that only begged to be broken.

The nobility considered themselves the arbiters of fashion, while increasingly finding themselves threatened by the growing merchant and middle classes. Almost as soon as nobles ventured out of their castles in the latest fashions, wealthy merchants’ sons were spurred to copy their dress. Imitators included those in the affluent middle class whose goal was upward social mobility. Even transvestism now had a place in creating mobility between the sexes. Isn’t it fascinating to realize that these patterns of social mimicry became prevalent in the Medieval era, long before the time of Jay Gatsby?

p.s. Although I may be wrapped up in the past right now, I’m still mindful of what day today is. January 20, 2009. Inauguration Day. Have you been following the spate of stories and articles in the media about how the fashion industry is looking to Michelle Obama for salvation? C’mon, get a grip! Instead of looking to one woman, however wonderful and stylish she may be, why doesn’t the fashion business look to what really is the problem? Wretched designs, that’s what! Lose those baby dolls and shrunken scale jackets. We’ll all spend money again if there’s actually something to buy out there!

A few days ago, I remembered that I liked Design Observer—a collective blog that occasionally includes posts from the great Steven Heller. Anyway, there was a post or a link or some other worm hole a few months ago that led to a Flickr page of book covers designed by Alvin Lustig for New Directions in the late 1940’s. Clean, with one or two colors, interesting use of typography or hand lettering, and abstracted shapes, Lustig’s designs are a revelation and respite from the lazy use of the photographic image and rote text layout (a problem then as now).

However, since NYPL, like most libraries, does not extensively collect book jackets, my forays into the stacks were for naught. That is until I ran across Alfred Young Fisher’s The Ghost in the Underblows. A 304 page arch-modernist poem that I won’t or can’t summarize, The Ghost in the Underblows was designed by Lustig and printed at the Ward Ritchie Press in Los Angeles in 1940. Lustig’s design for the title page and the section breaks are quite beautiful given the two-color palette (red and black) he utilized and vastly different from his later work. Each is a small symphony, composed of metal slugs and other odds and ends from the print shop where the positioning and edges of the components become visible on close inspection. Yet moving back the designs resemble a Frank Lloyd Wright window constructed by Malevich.

All of the images from Ghost as well as other information on Lustig are available here, but a close examination with the object provides a real delight.

Chances are, if you spend any time online you've come across Flickr. Flickr is a wonderful site for storing, sharing and building community around photographs. It's similar to online photo services like Kodak Gallery or Shutterfly except with a greater social focus and tools and features reminiscent of Facebook.

About a year ago Flickr launched the Flickr Commons, a project dedicated to sharing and describing the public photo collections of the world's leading cultural heritage institutions. Starting this past January with The Library of Congress, and continuing with places such as The Smithsonian Institution, The Brooklyn Museum, The National Maritime Museum, The National Library of New Zealand, the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands and numerous others, the Commons has grown steadily over the past year into a truly remarkable public photography resource.

We are delighted to be the latest institution to join in this endeavor, with an initial contribution of 1,300 images culled from various areas of our diverse photographic collections.

We think of this as a sort of appetizer course, a sampler of collections accessible in greater breadth and depth on the NYPL Digital Gallery, and on-site in our network of libraries. Lush images of modern dance pioneers; haunting early cyanotypes of algae (the first photographic works to be produced by a woman); majestic geographical surveys taken along the Union Pacific Railroad, iconic Depression-era images taken under the Farm Security Administration's famed photography program; Berenice Abbott's epic documentation of 1930s New York for the Federal Art Project; stunning 19th century vistas of the Egypt and Syria; scenes and portraits of Ellis Island Immigrants, the Statue of Liberty under construction... These and more are now available to view, tag and discuss in the Flickr Commons, and are offered as an invitation to explore further on our own site or in our actual libraries. After this initial road test, we expect to post many more images into the Commons pool.  read more »

Debuting at this years Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade will be a 48-foot tall balloon titled Figure with Heart by the late artist Keith Haring.

The balloon is based on Haring's ink on paper drawing, Untitled (Figure with Heart), 1987 and will be part of the Macy's Parade's Blue Sky Gallery series, which aims to "inject contemporary art into a pop culture phenomenon". (Pop Art In The Sky)

The Blue Sky Gallery series began in 2005 with Humpty Dumpty by Tom Otterness, preceded by “Rabbit” by Jeff Koons in 2007.

To learn more about the artist Keith Haring visit the Library and look through our books in CATNYP, as well as go to the Keith Haring Foundation website at www.haring.com

Also take a walk down to Houston Street and Bowery to look at a recreation of a mural done by Haring in the summer of 1982. All in celebration of what would have been his 50th Birthday. So, Cheers to Keith and a Happy Thanksgiving to all…