Art: Scolding Show

Every now & then Manhattan’s glassy Museum of Modern Art stages a strange but provocative show. Some visitors are impervious; others leave with their bonnets abuzz. Last week, on the somewhat dusty subject, “Are Clothes Modern?,” the” Museum confronted visitors with some sharp displays and comments by Austrian-born Architect-Designer Bernard Rudofsky. On the thesis that clothes are always artificial, often absurd, sometimes harmful, the exhibition ranged from clanky chest armor to bird-cage bustles.

“Are Clothes Modern?” jeers at the world and his wife for wearing symmetrical shoes on unsymmetrical feet, for walking on the punishing pavements of cities when resilient plastic composition would carry weary legs twice as far, for not wearing toga-like clothes—the only truly modern costume, which can flow from machinery like newspapers from presses.*

The show was not the Museum’s most successful flea-in-the-ear. But the average visitor was bound to react to some of the exhibits, come away with an idea or two, even a few private demurrers:

¶ On observing a plaster foot with the big toe in the middle: Looks better there. Why not change the feet and keep the shoes?

¶ On seeing a centaur-like figure caricaturing the bustled woman: Rather decorative as a matter of fact.

¶ On reading that women passionately defend high heels because they are a focus of erotic attention: Is that bad?

¶ On gazing into the last exhibit, a plain, full-length mirror: It’s a good thing that woman behind me doesn’t know how funny she looks.

* Reports from Germany last week said that Reich Marshal Hermann Göring had taken to wearing a toga at tea.