Jane Brettle

(re)Current Allegories

What happened there is in a way not so important. Forever a stage; unprincipled, inscrutable.

name your fantasy – others have.

From the classical sobriety of the Greek column dress….Heavenly body….

What was there? A way of explaining the inexplicable, infusing the everyday with the divine, a practice of bestowing honour on those that furthered the common good according to the code? An ethics of survival and making sense – no more.

Grecian 2000; Classical Stature. Golden Girl, simply divine, Siren charm…

Who would foresee how history would shape and edit until some chapters became little more than a nostalgic dream, background to the models of the preferred possibilities. The extremes.

Grand illusion. Olympic stunners…

Physical supremacy, racial superiority. The democracy of wealth. It wasn’t like that the protest says – we were always aware of that other time, change was necessary but we paid the homage – lip service. But history has its own impetus as it shapes the present; collective memory becomes cultural tourism becomes collective avoidance - no one has control. No? Then who silences the dissenting voices. Is the path of inevitable development so smooth? Who mourns what deaths?

These are noble dresses of beauty and integrity…

And the myths – what a misnomer – became, sooner or later, economic realities; hard currency in the meaning market.

…wear them with pride.

And we exchanged our confusion for desire.

Sally Rice

Fashion quotes from ELLE magazine, July 1990.

 

Dimensions of original work: 61cms x 51cms