BOOKS
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superficiality . Beattie does not get beyond this surface, because, hor–
ribly, there
is
nothing beyond this surface.
NEIL SCHMITZ
CLOTHES MAKE PEOPLE
SEEING THROUGH CLOTHES.
By
Anne Hollander. The Viking
Press. $25.
Anne Hollander has combined a compelling insight, im–
pressive learning, and a refreshingly literal attitude toward painting
to produce a provocative, ambitious, and - alas! - hopelessly idealist
and wrongheaded book.
Seeing Through Clothes
offers the most com–
plete consideration of the relation between fashion and art available
in any language. Neither art history, as usually understood, nor
history of fashion or costume, the book draws upon all three genres,
and much general culture besides, to interpret the stylized and con–
ventional ways in which humans perceive the human form. In short,
we see each other clothed. Representations of the human form in–
escapably look through clothes . The nudes offered us in painting are
clothed bodies that happen not to be wearing their clothes. "There is
no historically authentic look that is not the look of an artistic style ."
And the dress that governs the artist's perception is itself an artistic
act. "Dress is a form of visual art, a creation of images with the visual
self as its medium."
The core of Hollander's argument thus rests on her striking
perception that we never look on beauty bare. She weaves a multi–
colored design of strands that run from the earliest recorded depic–
tions of the human form to contemporary fashion photography.
Although the unfolding of the argument depends upon changing his–
torical manifestations of the relationship between art and clothes,
and of changes in fashion and in styles of perception, this is not a his–
torical study, properly speaking.
Seeing Through Clothes
is organized
into six large sections: I. Drapery; II. Nudity; III. Undress;
IV. Costume ; V. Dress; VI. Mirrors. In large measure, each
section looks upon the same material through a different prism, but
