The Carol and Les Ballard Endowed Lecture Series: Fabrication of Identity: The Language of Clothi...

Nov 10, 2009 6:30 PM
at the Caroline Wiess Law Building

The Carol and Les Ballard Endowed Lecture Series
Fabrication of Identity: The Language of Clothing in Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American Portraits

Presented by Dr. Susan Rather, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Texas at Austin

The clothes represented in 18th century portraits have much to tell about the aspirations, attainments, and values of Anglo-Americans, without being a wholly reliable gauge of what people actually wore. Even seemingly realistic works—such as the portraits of John Singleton Copley—involved a high degree of calculation and some degree of negotiation between sitter and artist. Dr. Susan Rather explores the reality and fantasy of 18th century dress for both men and women, as projected in works by a wide range of painters working in colonial British North America.

Dr. Susan Rather has been a member of the art history faculty at the University of Texas, Austin since 1986. Although she began her career as a specialist in early 20th-century sculpture and is author of Archaism, Modernism and the Art of Paul Manship (1993), she turned to the 18th-century for a break—and has never looked back.

Admission to the lecture is free and open to the public. A reception to meet the speaker follows the program.

The twice-yearly Bayou Bend lectures are known as the Carol and Les Ballard Endowed Lecture Series, thanks to a generous endowment gift from Mr. and Mrs. A. L. Ballard to the Bayou Bend 50th Anniversary Campaign.