Simulcast Presentation in Leonhardt Auditorium – International Fashion Historian
Life with the Pre-Raphaelites: Art, Dress & Beauty
The Pre-Raphaelites, a secret society founded in 1848 (the year of revolutions in Europe), were a group of young artists whose startling paintings attacked prevailing artistic theories, and whose liberated lifestyles shocked conventional society. While this may now seem a cliché of the artistic life, this was the first appearance of such beliefs and attitudes in England. Aileen Ribeiro’s illustrated lecture focuses on how these artists used clothing in their work, in which they rejected the elaborate styles of contemporary women’s dress as too materialist, often quite ugly, and lacking in spiritual values. Instead of representing fashion in new ways (to be seen slightly later in the work of the French Impressionists), the Pre-Raphaelite artists invented (and actually made for their female models) simple and flowing styles of dress inspired by the past. In addition they introduced, via their models, new concepts of beauty, women with striking features and red hair. A new concept of ‘artistic’ dress and appearance was created, not only beautiful but progressive and forward-looking.
Trained at the Courtauld Institute of Art, Aileen Ribeiro has an international reputation as a historian of fashion. From 1975 to 2009 she was the head of the Department of the History of Dress at the Courtauld, and is Professor Emeritus at London University. Her mission – through lectures and publications – is to discuss the importance of clothing not just in economic and political history but in culture generally, most particularly in the visual arts. Her many contributions to major art exhibitions in Great Britain, Europe and the U.S. focus on the links between art and fashion, as do her books, most recently Clothing Art, which won the Apollo magazine Book of the Year Award 2017. In 2018 she was presented by the Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts, Design & Material Culture in New York with an Iris Foundation Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award.