Images in Fashion – Clothing in Art. Photography, Fine Arts, and Fashion since 1900

About

Fashion and art are mirrors of social changes and individual needs. In the collection of the Berlinische Galerie, this theme is present in surprising and diverse ways. In addition to numerous fashion photographs spanning the twentieth century, just as many paintings and drawings testify to the role of fashion as a means of expression and representation of a particular era: from the reform dress around 1900 and the Dada dandies of the 1920s to avant-garde clothing designs in contemporary art.

On this broad basis and with loans of selected pieces of clothing, aproximately 270 exhibits shed light on artists’ relationship to fashion. What role has fashion played in the painting, drawing, and photography of the past century? With what rules were clothing and costumes employed in fine art? How did artists dress and present themselves then and now? How is fashion used as a medium in contemporary art?