Dressing the canvas |
Welcome back to AL-MONITOR Istanbul.
This week, we trade Istanbul’s familiar tempo for Izmir’s slower, more porous rhythm again to explore what’s going on in Turkey’s third city and ancient Levantine port. At Arkas Art Center, fashion steps out of the frame, revealing how clothes carry entire social scripts, from 19th-century silhouettes to modern identities. Then we will stop over at a new museum in Izmir and hop on to the galleries in Istanbul.
Given the current affairs agenda, we invite you to leaf through a book on Turkey and Iran on the way the two countries are seen, compared and narrated in relationship to one another.
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Nazlan (@NazlanEr on X)
P.S. Have tips on Istanbul’s culture scene? Send them my way at nertan@al-monitor.com.
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1. Leading the week: When Fashion Steps Out of the Frame
“Sweet Laziness” by August Toulmouche (Photo Nazlan Ertan)
At Arkas Art Center, painting refuses to stay still. In "Mode et Peinture" ("Fashion and Painting"), figures slip out of their frames as garments once confined to canvas are reconstructed and returned to the room.
Bringing together works from the Arkas Collection and the French costume archive “La Dame d’Atours,” the exhibition traces the ever-present dialogue between art and dress. These are not theatrical costumes but precise translations, fabrics and silhouettes recreated with period fidelity, allowing a dress in a painting to be seen in three dimensions.
From the neoclassical restraint of the early 19th century to the sharper lines of the 1940s, fashion emerges as a social script. As the bourgeoisie rises, men’s clothing settles into sobriety, while women’s bodies are reshaped by crinolines, bustles and corsetry in an unseen architecture dictating posture, movement and presence.
Dress codes and their reflections in paintings (Nazlan Ertan)
Beyond salons, the exhibition turns to everyday life. Painters captured workers, travelers and the........