Thu, 04 Sept 2025
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11:00

University of Zürich
The history of dress and fashion constitutes an essential yet frequently underappreciated dimension of art theory. While garments in visual art have long functioned as carriers of symbolism, identity, and social codes, dress analysis remains a marginal subject within mainstream art historical discourse. Despite the disciplinary challenges posed by its non-institutionalized status, scholars such as Rosita Levi Pisetzky—and many others—have produced foundational research that continues to shape our understanding of visual culture and material identity. This presentation draws on a multidisciplinary theoretical framework encompassing dress history, art history, social history, and semantics. It investigates the methodological potential of iconographic dress analysis in Early Modern artworks, with a particular focus on how clothing functions not merely as decoration but as a semiotic system embedded in the image. The aim is to explore how dress contributes to the construction of meaning within the pictorial space—revealing not only what is seen, but how and why it is seen. Moreover, what possible bridges can be built at the intersection of dress iconography and Artificial Intelligence in the study of Early Modern Art History?