CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/27/2015

Vogue: Like a Painting

In Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza's exquisite new collection of painterly fashion photography from the last seven decades of Vogue, Lucy Davies invokes Nick Knight's assessment, "It isn't painting, it isn't photography—it's a new medium altogether." And a beautiful one at that. "Unsettling? Perhaps, but artists aren’t here to comfort us. Photographers might have started mimicking paintings because it was low-hanging fruit — an easy means of reassuring the viewer that what he was looking at was worthwhile (and, more importantly, worth thousands of dollars), but we’ve moved way beyond that. ‘I rather think art is the absolute opposite of that," she quotes Peter Lindbergh, whose 2012 "One Enchanted Evening" is reproduced here. "'Wonder is the beginning of wisdom, after all.'" For other favorite fashion titles, see our 2015 Holiday Gift Guide. >>