Modernity, Fashion, and Impressionism

Feeling artsy and chic on a Thursday night in Nashville my chic artsy friends and I outdid
ourselves in over the top chic artsy do’s and took our chic artsy selves to the Frist. We could not have felt more out of place. We took seats near the back, even though our outfits placed us in the front row, to listen to Gloria Gloom (a chic artsy name if you ask me) lecture on the “Painter of ‘La Vie Modern’”. In correspondence to the Frist’s “Birth of Impressionism” collection Gloom’s lecture was to address the early Impressionists’ responses and challenges to the modern. In an age of transitioning painting styles Gloom insists we look not only at the subject, but what they’re wearing.Gloom cites the fall of the republic, following the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), as the break down in court life. After France’s loss in the Franco-Prussian War a sort of democratization took place and the court in Paris took on a relaxed attitude, as seen in relaxed positions of the salon portraits. Tissot depicts this casual fashion-forward woman in a fringed bolero surrounded by her books in a middle class room. “Mademoiselle L.L.” (1864) provides further proof of the break from the previous aspirations to be a part of La circle de la rue Royale. With the development of department stores and the circulation of fashion magasins fashion norms were created in which social classes could buy the same silhouettes. Tissot’s “modern” portrait in fact took me to the housewives of the 1950’s and 60’s (minus a few feet on the hem), with the cropped ball-fringe bolero, full skirt, and dainty hair piece. In this way Gloom makes her point clear—that art and fashion are intricately linked and it is through this link that we can give form to certain periods.

American Animals I

Jesse Shaw does not bother depicting anything other than what he sees. Jesse Shaw does not bother depicting exactly what we want to see. Although I, personally, haven’t seen his collection in the gallery at Austin Peay University, he grabbed the attention of my Art History teacher, who I’m pretty sure has seen a lot of art. His “American Animals I” is as up front as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. In a scheme of little blank space he depicts a snake enveloped by cicada-like bugs and skunks, monster-like ants dragging beavers demonically into their ant-hole, agitated interwoven bulls, fish carcasses below bears fishing in buckets, a crowded mass of screaming chickens, and group of feisty horses eating away at a whale carcass.
Although obviously open for interpretation, the work speaks to me about the treatment of American animals in a consumer society. The chickens recall a disturbing scene of the documentary “Food Inc.” in which the consumer of those McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets is confronted with the source. He says of the whale and shrimp motif: “your white whale and my white whale are shrimp to everyone else” (http://americanprintmaker.blogspot.com/) which speaks to me as our age of JUMBO shrimp—an apparent and disturbing oxymoron. His interwoven bulls appear as a hybrid, as if the previous form wasn’t sufficient. The skunks, cicadas and snake appear as jumbled road-kill. Jesse Shaw’s overall message of “American Animals I” may not be totally clear to the observer, but I think most can discern this view is not a pleasant one.

King of the Jungle

In relief (ha) of Romanesque art and architecture, my Art History class was presented with the task of creating our own tympanums. Inside our tympanum, Hannah and I depicted (the suggestion of) Simba from “The Lion King”. His power is represented through his (somewhat sacrilegious) placement inside a mandorla, the surrounding bowing animals and framing monkeys cooling him with fan-like leafs, and his very size at the center of the lunette. He appears (literally) “putting his foot down” or ruling over the jungle, with a powerful roar that scares away even the hunters on the lintel. We recreated an archivolt from leaf voussoirs and 2 jambs and a trumeau from trees.

Although characterized by the renewal of “Roman-like” and

classical elements, the Romanesque age is also characterized by the revival of monumental sculpture in stone. As a sort of updated Greco-Roman pediment, these Roman wannabes depicted large-scale carved Old and New Testament figures (rare in Christian art) in the lunettes (formally: tympanums) above the doorways to religious sanctuaries. Beneath the voussoirs, didactic images appeared in a symbolic image of each doorway as a the beginning of the path to salvation through (the doorway of) Christ— “I am the door; who enters through me will be saved” John 10:9

From this process I have a much greater respect for the detail of Romanesque tympanums (and their artists). I highly doubt, however, that any Romanesque church would consider our efforts anything more than comical.