HISTART 338-001

Representing Fashion: Costume and Dress in the Visual Arts

MLB Lec Room 1
MW 2:30-4:00pm
4 Credit Lecture

The course focuses on representations of fashion and costume in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe. Our goal is to examine the relationship between clothing and its representation in fine art painting, the illustrated press, and photography. Our principal objectives are to explore:
• The visual and verbal rhetoric of fashion.
• The relationship of clothing to the body, a central concern of both artists and clothes designers.
• The engagement clothing manufacture and marketing with ideologies of class and gender.
• The performance of fantasy through dress displays, and the ways in which the visual arts mediate such fantasies.

Over the course of the semester, we will seek to understand how the visual culture of fashion shapes our understanding of the aesthetic and social roles of fashion and costume in the past. Field trip required.

Estimated cost of materials: 0-$50.

HISTART Concentration Distributions: 4. Modern and Contemporary, D. Europe and the U.S.

This course fulfills the LS&A Humanities distribution requirement