Storytelling is a bit of a buzzword nowadays, both in the fashion industry and among social media moguls, and for good reason. It is arguably one of the defining features of humanity, after all – name a culture that doesn’t have a rich narrative history. For me, that’s ultimately the reason why I love fashion so much: we use it to tell ourselves and others what we’re up to, who we are, how we feel, what our perspective is. It’s magnetic, visual, and tactile, so much more than what it seems.
It was just that which lured me and two of my pals to the James Tissot: Fashion and Faith exhibit at the San Francisco Legion of Honor. Well, to be real, what first hooked me was the title.
Fashion? I thought, I LOVE fashion!
Faith? – you see, this is how my genius works in real time – I LOVE faith! (after all, I do work part-time for a church).
After my brain toggled through the very profound observations above, to which I added annotations on culture, art history, lifelong learning, blah blah blah, I rallied the troops. Enter Ashley (president of the Fashion and Textiles Club in our days at UC Davis), and Jill (works for clothing rental company Le Tote), friends who are fashion-y enough to drool over the exhibit, but nerdy enough to opt-in to the guided docent tour. My kind of people.
Why James Tissot
I am not an art historian, not by a long shot. Everything I know about the art world I learned either from a Great Courses DVD I watched with Papa Mendes, Sister Wendy documentaries or from my art-history-major aunt. I know barely enough to know that I know hardly anything: there is just so much to know, it’s baffling. Despite my ignorance, it’s worth going over Tissot because of what his art can show us about our relationship with fashion (and, perhaps, faith).
I’ve included a video provided by SF Station if you’d like a lovely, short overview of the artist.
In a nutshell, Tissot was born in Paris in 1836, the son of a textiles merchant and a millinery shop owner. Apparently it is a major faux pas to equate him in any way with the Impressionists, although they did know each other and were painting at the same time. Their styles, though, are quite different – Tissot was a realist, mostly painting out of a studio, and even used photographs in place of models from time to time.
The Fashion
You can imagine how magical a textiles warehouse would be for a child – at least for me, it brought back memories of my mom taking us to the old Poppy Fabrics in Oakland and letting us explore. I loved all those bolts of different fabrics. Each one seemed to have a story, but at the same time was a blank canvas. It was just magic for a little kid.
The first thing that struck me, and I think strikes most people, about his work is how he paints fabric. Photos unfortunately do these paintings a disservice; in real life, his painted textiles almost look like mixed-media, they climb out on you, it’s difficult to not rub your cheek on the canvas, it’s … bonkers. He clearly understands how it behaves, how it wants to feel in different light or on different bodies, its folds and crinkles, so much so that it’s obvious that textiles were constant companions from infancy.
A lot of Tissot’s work was quietly funny – like these nouveaux riche partygoers awkwardly arriving on time to a party.
Then, there are the stories implied in each painting, stories of social climbers, dying muses, shopgirls, prostitutes, the sloppiness of aristocratic men, American tourists who only need a half hour to go through the British Museum (yes, he really painted that), all big paintings that were really about small moments.
Up close, you can see the clock reads 10:30. It was common knowledge that the museum opened at 10:00, and these American tourists are already on to the next sight on their list. Burn.
And those beautiful clothes – but it’s never really about the garment, is it? It’s about people dressing for the life they want, for the acceptance they crave, or for the fun of it, because life deserves exuberance, or because it makes them feel powerful, or maybe because they are too tired by life to care at all. The clothes are always a subject in the painting in their own right.
A cheeky, raunchy jab at his friend Manet’s (raunchier) Déjeuner sur l’herbe
Kathleen Newton was the love of Tissot’s life and frequent appears in his work. This portrait was done as Newton battled tuberculosis, shortly before her death.
The Faith
After the death of his muse, companion, and partner Kathleen Newton (this article on her is worth a read), as well as experiencing a visitation from Christ, Tissot’s art turned biblical. He created hundreds of watercolor illustrations of the Bible, many of which have been used as visual guides for 20th century film. There is just so much to say about Tissot’s faith and his paintings, and if you’re interested, I suggest you check out this site to see more.
The stories James Tissot told through his art, using fashion in many cases, were just so pure to me – people doing their best with what they had, or who were trying to decide who they were in the world, how to act, and ultimately how to just be.
Unfortunately, I only found out about this exhibit recently – and it ends February 9th. The good news, though, is that it’s moving to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and will run from March 23 through July 19, 2020. Maybe you’ll have to pop over to Paris, quel dommage.
Anything stick out to you in these paintings?
love,
Stig.
