Costume and the Modernist Body: Fashioning August Strindberg

• Employing a fashion perspective, this snapshot explores Swedish scenographer Knut Ström’s costume sketches, made in Düsseldorf in 1915-18, for his production of August Strindberg’s A Dream Play. In Ström’s sketches, the main character, the Daughter of Indra, is portrayed as a modernist woman in a slim dress and short hair. Drawing on Caroline Evans’ definition of the modernistic body and the renegotiated perceptions of the ideal female figure in the early 1900s, the text discusses how fashion and the new view of the female body were linked at the time. The ‘modernist body’ was about a clothed body in motion, a new, streamlined silhouette and a female body with agency. Ström’s staging of the Daughter of Indra as a modernist woman gives the character visual impact and anchors her in the process of social change that was underway at the time.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Konstvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Art History (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Scenkonst (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Performing Arts (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Design (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Design (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Costume

Costume sketch

Fashion

Modernism

Modernist body

Knut Ström

August Strindberg

A Dream Play

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