What Artists Wear

“Our clothing is an unspoken language that tells stories of our selves,” writes style critic and art curator Porter in this fascinating survey of the fashion habits of artists. Weaving gorgeous photography with archival interviews, Porter unpacks how trailblazing artists, such as Marina Abramović and Louise Bourgeois, wielded their personal styles as tools of subversion and considers how their wardrobes reflected “the conditions in which they made their work.” Women artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Frida Kahlo, for instance, bucked against the historically “encoded meaning of male power” with their defiant tailored suits, while Jean-Michel Basquiat’s mismatched pieces, often loose-fitting and covered in paint, spoke his language—“off-kilter, chaos in control”—as they called back to his youth in homeless shelters. Porter also mines the sociopolitical mechanisms of fashion, such as contemporary artist Martine Syms’s procuring of “bootleg products” to explore the cultural appropriation of Asian and Black communities, and David Hockney’s “expression of queerness through clothing.” Inquisitive and insightful, Porter’s skillful dissection of the historical context, social commentary, and personal symbolism behind each artist is a pleasure to get lost in, and he makes a spirited case for the power and potential that can be unlocked through the simple act of dressing. Materialism gets a whole new meaning in this perceptive outing. (May)