What might have been an unstable mix of essays and reviews on a
variety of art forms - dance, film, fashion, and painting - instead
coalesces into a thematically sound and richly varied collection.
Critic Hollander (Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress,
1994) knows how to link subjects - even those that seem to bear
little or no relation to one another - by isolating underlying
themes and teasing them to the legible surface. Which is not to say
that she manipulates her material; she simply remains true to her
priorities as a critic. And her work benefits. In this latest
collection, Hollander takes pains to assert that artists are
increasingly working in mediums that reflect movement. Well, maybe,
but her assertion functions largely as an excuse to indulge her own
abiding fascination with clothing, costuming, and the intersection
between artist and physical environment. Those obsessions seem
reason enough to group these pieces together, especially since
they're all imbued with Hollander's intellectualism. Expert and
deeply informed, she examines fellow authors' work with
considerable thoroughness - reading her can feel like eavesdropping
on a passionate, if somewhat biased, debate. In her review of Mark
Anderson's book Kafka's Clothes, she lauds his ability to combine
serious literary criticism with a discussion of 19th-century
attire. "Clothes have always made useful literary metaphor
(language is the dress of thought and so on)," she writes, "they
have also offered a useful descriptive device for most novelists,
however surreal their vision." Thus Gregor Samsa, "the fearsome
beetle, clad in his functional carapace," becomes "the new-made
Modern Artist." This contact point at which the artist's very body
meets the outer world - and is mediated by clothing or costuming -
always sparks Hollander's interest. And she brings a vital
freshness and droll sense of humor to subjects that seem possibly
trite, like the wearing of black, androgynous fashions, even
tight-lacing corsets. While Hollander's intellectualism may verge
on the academic, her passion for exploring the symbolism of art and
clothing is anything but. (Kirkus Reviews)
Since the advent of cinema, visual art has tended to be perceived
as if it were in motion. Artists now create less often in fresco or
carved stone and more on film and tape, on the dance stage, or in
the ever changing, ever moving medium of clothes. In this
remarkable collection, Anne Hollander ranges over art of the
twentieth and other centuries with unusual depth of historical
insight to explore these rich, diverse visual treasures and the
underlying themes that connect them.
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