Drapery in visual culture: Past and present

Lecture at the National Gallery inspired by the current exhibition by the artist in residence Alison Watt given by Gen Doy. author of 'Drapery: Classicism and Barbarism in Visual Culture'.

I must admit I did not find this a very good lecture. It tried to cover too many themes of what drapery has meant in art, classicism, fetishism, materialism, femininity etc and therefore didn’t cover any of them properly. It made some of the themes just sound rather odd and dare I say kinky. Much to my amusement the lecturer insisted on giving the dimensions of many of the pictures which in the context of some of the themes made me want to shout “But size doesn’t matter”!

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