Mondrians Dress

An extraordinary look at how the style of Piet Mondrians abstract paintings was posthumously appropriated by 1960s fashion, Pop art, and consumer culture. Yves Saint Laurents 1965 Mondrian dresses are among the twentieth centurys most celebrated and recognizable fashions, but the context of their creation involves much more than meets the eye. In Mondrians Dress, Nancy J. Troy and Ann Marguerite Tartsinis offer a fresh approach to the coupling of Piet Mondrians interwar paintings with Saint Laurents couture designs by exposing the rampant merchandising and commodification that these works experienced in the 1960s. The authors situate the consolidation of Saint Laurents fashion brand alongside the work of such Pop artists as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann, and show how conventional understandings of Mondrians avant-garde abstractions were transformed by the mass circulation of his signature style. Beyond its attention to 1960s fashion, Pop art, and consumer culture, Mondrians Dress offers critical assessments of Saint Laurents so-called dialogue with art, the remarkable art collection that he built with his partner Pierre Berge, and the crucial role that photography plays in the marketing of couture. The first book-length study of its kind, Mondrians Dress is a provocative reevaluation of how art, commerce, and fashion became fundamentally intertwined in the postwar period.