Fashion and Painting

Fashion and Painting

The Fashion and Painting exhibition, featuring selected works from the Arkas Collection, offers a fresh perspective on figurative painting from the 19th to the 20th century. Bringing together works by Post-Impressionist and Modernist artists influenced by different art movements and geographies, the exhibition examines the social life, clothing culture, and aesthetic understanding of the period through the relationship between painting and costume.

The costume collection originates from La Dame d'Atours' collection, establishing a clear link with the Arkas collection. The rise of haute couture in the 19th century, Paris becoming a fashion center, and the changing lifestyles brought about by the Industrial Revolution, created radical transformations in the silhouettes of both men and women. This transformation, extending from the simplified lines of the post-French Revolution era to the opulent volume of the Second Empire and the modern simplicity of the Third Republic, can be traced through the paintings and costumes featured in the exhibition.

The exhibition presents visitors with 19th-century bourgeois life, the performative nature of fashion, and the forms that elegance took in different periods.