Georgia O'Keeffe, who loved clothes-she owned some 100 dresses, by her caretaker's estimate, "all alike, except that some are black instead of white"-once likened painting to "a thread that runs through all the reasons for all the other things that make one's life." It's an elegant quote, though nearly as tricky to interpret as O'Keeffe's heady florals and sweeping desertscapes. Was she positing art as the sinew of...ideas? As an undergirding for the stuff of life?
Or did she have a different kind of thread work in mind? O'Keeffe owned several pairs of low suede heels from Saks Fifth Avenue, rigorously simple but for the raised seams running down their centers and branching off the sides like the boughs of a tree. If art can do that to the fabric of existence transform the banal (and bourgeois) into the beguiling-then what can clothes do to art? While her fondness for dresses (and for skirt suits and jeans and chambray shirts) didn't quite show up on O'Keeffe's canvases, a taste for dreamy, creamy pastels certainly did.
Where other painters may lack O'Keeffe's abundant wardrobe, they can afford to have more fun with fashion in their work. (See "When Art Met Fashion," on page 156, for some notable recent examples.) This is especially true of portraitists. As the overlapping tides of Abstract Expressionism, minimalism, and conceptual art receded with the turn of the 21st century, a new generation of figurative artists emerged, keen to reimagine the form. About 100 years after John Singer Sargent became the most important portrait painter of his generation, capturing captains of industry (and their wives and daughters) across the northeast and Europe, Kerry James Marshall, Peter Doig, and others leveled their gazes on the triumphs and trials of more ordinary people and in doing so, gave clothing, once the marker of a sitter's social status, more to say.
Denne historien er fra December 2023-utgaven av Vogue US.
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Denne historien er fra December 2023-utgaven av Vogue US.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Trust Your Gut - New at-home biome tests offer insight into the microorganisms that rule much more than just our stomachs.
According to a publication called Nutrition in Clinical Practice, these days, internet searches for "gut microbiome" and "gut microbiota" generate millions of results. Amazon teems with microbiome books, including microbiome books for kids- Meena and the Microbiome (forthcoming in 2025) and dogs- Healthy Gut, Healthy Dog. Gut health is taking over TikTok. Scan your refrigerator for the word "probiotic". Brands are shilling directly to your bacteria!
The First Wild Garden - A new book celebrates the historic English garden that launched a modern movement.
Without naming the most grotesque examples of tree mutilation in England, it is clear that much beauty is lost in our gardens by the stupid and ignorant practice of cutting trees into unnatural shapes,” wrote the Victorian-era gardener William Robinson in Gravetye Manor: Or Twenty Years’ Work round an Old Manor House (1911). Robinson’s fighting words were laid out in the preface to his book, an account of the decades he spent creating his garden at the Elizabethan house of Gravetye Manor in Sussex, England, and recently reproduced in facsimile by Rizzoli alongside stunning contemporary photographs.
Clean Sweep- Two seasons into her tenure at Carven, Louise Trotter is reimagining the label with pieces at once mindful, freeand beautiful.
Two seasons into her tenure at Carven, Louise Trotter is reimagining the label with pieces at once mindful, freeand beautiful. In February of last year, Trotter took up the role of creative director at the 79-year-old maison, reawakening it from a five-year slumber, and a chauffeur—customary for an artistic director at the helm of a Parisian fashion house—simply doesn’t fly with her bluff Sunderland upbringing.
Testament of Youth
In a new production of Romeo and Juliet, Jack Antonoff, Rachel Zegler, Kit Connor, and Sam Gold transform a classic into a timely, urgent work.
GLOWING UP FAST
I’m slick as an otter. I’m greased up like a Thanksgiving turkey
TIME'S ARROW
A celebrated Broadway-bound play by Jez Butterworth, The Hills of California, captures the youthful ambitions and dashed dreams of a quartet of English sisters.
The Shape of Things
Annabelle Selldorf has built a soaring career on gentle interventions, subtle forms—a design language of elegance and restraint. Dodie Kazanjian meets the architect of our moment.
SWING SHIFT
With the election of their lifetimes looming on the horizon, eight models— each of them with ties to a battleground state—tell us what’s important to them, what they’re fighting for, where they’re voting, and how they’re finding value and purpose in uneasy times.
Walk This Spray
Scented runways are the latest merger of perfume and fashion
Hidden Gems
With its timeworn cities and sweeping seascapes, the Southern Italian region of Basilicata is rich with splendors.
