Dandies : Fashion and Finesse in Art and Culture

by Fillen-Yeh, Susan

• ISBN13: 9780814726952
• ISBN10: 081472695X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-03-01
• Publisher: New York University Press

Summary

Dandies: Fashion and Finesse in Art and Cultureconsiders the visual languages, politics, and poetics of personal appearance. Dandyism has been most closely associated with influential caucasian Western men-about-town, epitomized by the 19th century style-setting of Oscar Wilde and by Tom Wolfe's white suits. The essays collected here, however, examine the spectacle and workings of dandyism to reveal that these were not the only dandies. On the contrary, art historians, literary and cultural historians, and anthropologists identify unrecognized dandies flourishing among early 19th century Native Americans, in Soviet Latvia, in Africa, throughout the African-American diaspora, among women, and in the art world.Moving beyond historical and fictional accounts of dandies, this volume juxtaposes theoretical models with evocative images and descriptions of clothing in order to link sartorial self-construction with artistic, social, and political self-invention. Taking into consideration the vast changes in thinking about identity in the academy,Dandiesprovides a compelling study of dandyism's destabilizing aesthetic enterprise.Contributors: Jennifer Blessing, Susan Fillin-Yeh, Rhonda Garelick, Joe Lucchesi, Kim Miller, Robert E. Moore, Richard J. Powell, Carter Ratcliffe, and Mark Allen Svede.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Preface	xi
Introduction: New Strategies for a Theory of Dandies	1	(34)
Susan Fillin-Yeh
The Layered Look: Coco Chanel and Contagious Celebrity	35	(24)
Rhonda K. Garelick
``Indian Dandies'': Sartorial Finesse and Self-Presentation along the Columbia River, 1790--1855	59	(42)
Robert E. Moore
Dandyism and Abstraction in a Universe Defined by Newton	101	(26)
Carter Ratcliff
Dandies, Marginality, and Modernism: Georgia O'Keeffe, Marcel Duchamp, and Other Cross-Dressers	127	(26)
Susan Fillin-Yeh
``The Dandy in Me'': Romaine Brooks's 1923 Portraits	153	(32)
Joe Lucchesi
Claude Cahun, Dandy Provocateuse	185	(19)
Jennifer Blessing
Cross-Dressing at the Crossroads: Mimicry and Ambivalence in Yoruba Masked Performance	204	(13)
Kimberly Miller
Sartor Africanus	217	(26)
Richard J. Powell
Twiggy and Trotsky: Or, What the Soviet Dandy Will Be Wearing This Next Five-Year Plan	243	(27)
Mark Allen Svede
Epilogue: Quentin Crisp: The Last Dandy?	270	(11)
Rhonda K. Garelick
Contributors	281	(4)
Index	285