Overview

A fascinating consideration of the dynamic relationship between fashion, art, and the modernizing forces of the early nineteenth century Across the visual arts in France and Britain in the 1820s and 1830s a novel concept of fashionability took shape. Driven by a quest for the new and wide-ranging in taste, fashion flourished in the period's expansive print production, while the fine arts negotiated the demand for novelty by, paradoxically, reviving styles from the past. Susan L. Siegfried argues that the intersections between fashion, costume, and art in these pivotal decades embody the fractured conditions of early-nineteenth-century visual culture. The New Taste examines depictions of clothing and hairstyles in fashion plates, paintings, prints, and sculpture by artists including Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Horace Vernet, Achille Devéria, and Bertel Thorvaldsen, alongside texts on clothing and art by writers such as Honoré de Balzac and Thomas Carlyle. Siegfried reveals how both the commercial and the fine arts responded to transformations in social dynamics, colonialism, print technology, textile manufacture, perceptions of the male dandy, and the role of women as consumers. Highlighting a largely overlooked period in art and fashion, this richly illustrated volume offers insights into the social, artistic, and gendered questions that troubled the shift from classicism to realism.

Full Product Details

9780300282177

Table of Contents

Reviews

""Focusing on a liminal moment in the early history of modern fashion, The New Taste changes our understanding of clothing's role in portraiture and makes a significant intervention in the intertwined, intermedial histories of European portraiture, fashion and print culture.""--Carol Armstrong, author of Cezanne's Gravity ""Siegfried offers fascinating new insights into the fashion and art of the early 19th century, which also throw light on today's ideas about fashion and art.""--Valerie Steele, founder/editor, Fashion Theory

“Focusing on a liminal moment in the early history of modern fashion, The New Taste changes our understanding of clothing’s role in portraiture and makes a significant intervention in the intertwined, intermedial histories of European portraiture, fashion and print culture.”—Carol Armstrong, author of Cezanne’s Gravity “Siegfried offers fascinating new insights into the fashion and art of the early 19th century, which also throw light on today’s ideas about fashion and art.”—Valerie Steele, founder/editor, Fashion Theory

Author Information

Susan L. Siegfried is Denise Riley Collegiate Professor Emerita of the History of Art and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan.

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